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Dismembering organisation: The coordination of algorithmic work in healthcare

Lookup NU author(s): Dr Dean PieridesORCiD

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Abstract

Algorithms are increasingly being adopted in healthcare settings, promising increased safety, productivity and efficiency. The growing sociological literature on algorithms in healthcare shares an assumption that algorithms are introduced to ‘support’ decisions within an interactive order that is predominantly human-oriented. This article presents a different argument, calling attention to the manner in which organisations can end up introducing a non-negotiable disjuncture between human-initiated care work and work that supports algorithms, which the authors call algorithmic work. Drawing on an ethnographic study, the authors describe how two hospitals in England implemented an Acute Kidney Injury (AKI) algorithm and analyse ‘interruptions’ to the algorithm’s expected performance. When the coordination of algorithmic work occludes care work, the study finds a ‘dismembered’ organisation that is algorithmically-oriented rather than human-oriented. In the discussion, the authors examine the consequences of coordinating human and non-human work in each hospital and conclude by urging sociologists of organisation to attend to the importance of the formal in algorithmic work. As the use of algorithms becomes widespread, the analysis provides insight into how organisations outside of healthcare can also end up severing tasks from human experience when algorithmic automation is introduced.

Publication metadata

Author(s): Bailey S, Pierides D, Brisley A, Weisshaar C, Blakeman T

Publication type: Article

Publication status: Published

Journal: Current Sociology

Year: 2020

Volume: 68

Issue: 4

Pages: 546-571

Print publication date: 31/07/2020

Online publication date: 31/03/2020

Acceptance date: 05/11/2019

ISSN (print): 0011-3921

ISSN (electronic): 1461-7064

Publisher: Sage

URL: https://doi.org/10.1177/0011392120907638

DOI: 10.1177/0011392120907638

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