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This article considers the implications of Latour's notions of durability and delegation for theorizing the relationship between technology and organization. Two central themes are the heterogeneous character of the fabric of organizational life which interweaves both humans and non-humans (including machines and inscriptions); and the question of power/domination in matters technological. To contextualize the discussion, the paper reflects on some of the recent developments in the UK National Health Service (the NHS) which centre on the development and use of information systems for purposes of management control, decision-making, contracting and the search for greater efficiency and organizational rationality through the operation of an internal market.

This paper examines some fundamental issues pertaining to the use of, as well as to the distinctive characteristics of, information technology in relation to the development of information systems within the UK National Health Service (NHS). The paper refers to the current Resource Management Initiative in the NHS, which involves the fabrication of information systems to connect medical activity to resource usage, and thus to costs. Examining the features of some of the rival inscriptions undergoing development to make this connection visible, the paper highlights the properties of information technology in enhancing their mobilization. It also addresses the immutability and combinability of these inscriptions, and discusses some of the implications, in terms of medical practice and knowledge, which may follow from their use.

This paper explores the connection between language and our thought and beliefs about computers. In particular it considers how certain features of language - such as verbal habits, or the traces in language due to social interests and power - help to shape particular reports and interpretations of the behaviour of computer programs and thereby sustain or reinforce beliefs about the organisational role of computers and even their status vis-a-vis human beings. It is contended that when computers and computer-related practices are introduced into an organisation users become members of computer cultures where new or reshaped ways of thinking and speaking are acquired in order subsequently to discuss or operate the technology. It is suggested that these cultures and their language be made the focus of sociological scrutiny.

This paper applies Bloor's extension of Douglas's grid/group theory to a novel case-namely, a debate which took place concerning the `retrodiction' or `backcasting' of system dynamics global simulation models. The paper has two aims: first, in terms of understanding this debate, it seeks to link the different treatments of anomalies within it both to the strategies for dealing with mathematical counter-examples described by Lakatos, and to the social experiences of the different protagonists; secondly, in terms of methodology, it attempts to illuminate both the possibilities and the difficulties of applying Bloor's scheme to cases outside pure mathematics.

This article seeks to situate pharmacological cognitive enhancement as part of a broader relationship between cultural understandings of the body-brain and the political economy. It is the body of the worker that forms the intersection of this relationship and through which it comes to be enacted and experienced. In this article, we investigate the imaginaries that both inform and are reproduced by representations of pharmacological cognitive enhancement, drawing on cultural sources such as newspaper articles and films, policy documents, and pharmaceutical marketing material to illustrate our argument. Through analysis of these diverse cultural sources, we argue that the use of pharmaceuticals has come to be seen not only as a way to manage our brains, but through this as a means to manage our productive selves, and thereby to better manage the economy. We develop three analytical themes. First, we consider the cultural representations of the brain in connection with the idea of plasticity – captured most graphically in images of morphing - and the representation of enhancement as a desirable, inevitable, and almost painless process in which the mind-brain realizes its full potential and asserts its will over matter. Following this, we explore the social value accorded to productive employment and the contemporary (biopolitical) ethos of working on or managing oneself, particularly in respect of improving one's productive performance through cognitive enhancement. Developing this, we elaborate a third theme by looking at the moulding of the worker's productive body-brain in relation to the demands of the economic system.

This article focuses on how the categories of 'normal' and 'extreme' in the context of work might be renegotiated through the development of human enhancement technologies which aim to enable the human body to be pushed beyond its biological limits. The ethical dimensions of human enhancement technologies have been widely considered, but there has been little debate about their role in the broader world of employment—nor, conversely, the recognition that prevailing employment relationships might shape the development and uptake of such technologies. Addressing the organisation of work within 'advanced' capitalist economies, this article considers the arguments for the potential use of cognitive enhancers, so-called 'smart drugs', in various domains of work such as surgery and transportation. We argue that the development of human enhancement technologies might foster the normalisation of 'working extremely'—enabling longer working hours, greater effort or increased concentration—and yet at the same time promote the conditions of possibility under which workers are able to work on themselves so as to go beyond the norm, becoming 'extreme workers'. Looking at human enhancement technologies not only enables us to see how they might facilitate ever greater possibilities for working extremely but also helps us to understand the conditions under which cultures of extreme work become the norm and how workers them/ourselves accept or even embrace such work.

The extraction of unconventional hydrocarbons, particularly through hydraulic fracturing ('fracking'), has generated both support and opposition in many countries around the globe. Along with arguments about economic benefits, decarbonisation, transition fuels and groundwater contamination etc., the rapid expansion of this industry presents a pressing problem as regards the disposal of the resultant waste – including drilling and cutting material, oil and gas residues, various chemicals used in the process, salts and produced water. One putative solution – 'landfarming' – is a disposal process that involves spreading oil and gas waste on to land and mixing it with topsoil to allow bioremediation of the hydrocarbons. This paper examines the case of landfarming in New Zealand where the practice has proved controversial due to its association with fracking, fears about the contamination of agricultural land and potential danger to milk supplies. Drawing upon Gieryn's notion of cultural cartography and boundary work as well as the literature on the politics of scale it analyses the struggles for epistemic authority regarding the safety of landfarming. The case has wider implications in terms of the management of waste from non-conventional hydrocarbons as well as other environmental issues in which the politics of scale figure in contested knowledge claims.

The article argues that the organization of destruction requires the same level of attention that organization studies have typically accorded to the organization of production. Taking as its starting point recent debates in the field concerning the embodied character of organizational ethics, the present paper sets out to explore what we might call the contemporary 'automation of warfare' by focusing on the proposed deployment of autonomous robots capable of exercising lethal force while governed by the 'ethical constraints' dictated by the Laws of War. Acknowledging the 'technical' challenges inherent in the development of 'ethical warrior robots', we propose that the importance of such technological fixes for the management of human conflict primarily lies not in their status as (potentially) functional artefacts but rather in their role as material expressions of the moral and philosophical conflicts haunting Atlantic (post?)modernity.

This article considers the protests through which a group of New Zealand women—MAdGE (Mothers Against Genetic Engineering in Food and the Environment)—enacted a campaign against genetic modification in food. Referring to the predominant visual/symbolic makeup of its efforts to communicate an alternative perspective on the research involved, the article examines the theatrics, posters, and disruptive protest of MAdGE's campaign. A major feature of the analysis concerns a billboard that provoked outrage in some quarters and led to official deliberations concerning the advertising code of practice in which public morality and the epistemic authority of science were intertwined.

This paper examines a controversial research programme aimed at the production of transgenic cows in New Zealand. It emphasizes the contested representation of the research, in its promotion, in its governance, and in the opposition sparked amongst environmental/anti-genetic modification groups and within the Māori community. The paper contends that the case of New Zealand's genetically modified cows certainly reveals some unique features of the prevailing economic, geographical and cultural context, but nonetheless has salience for the broader understanding of the promotion, public reception and governance of genetic modification.

This paper considers the UK Government's major modernization programme for local government and its aim to use technology to bring about a radical transformation in the delivery of public services by joining up hitherto separate service departments and focusing the organization of services around the citizen. Drawing upon empirical fieldwork in the North of England, the paper seeks to shed light on the realization and operation of modernization and considers the issues of power and hybridity involved in the emplacement of new organizational configurations (`front office' contact centres and `back office' service departments) to handle citizen inquiries.

This article focuses on science fiction and actor network theory as ways of writing displacement which are relevant to organization studies. Recent work within organizational theory and related (sub)disciplines has suggested that the articulation of organization as a privileged site of presence is made possible by that which is Othered and excluded (or rather deferred) as representing disorganization and disorder. Organizations in this view constitute `incomplete and transient' accomplishments always under threat from various forms of intrusion and displacement. By way of illustration, two examples of displacement! intrusion and their associated organizational `dramas of proof' are examined as a way of exploring how the Other, the alien and out of place, is realized in representation.