Dear Colleagues,
Please join our presenter symposium that brings together four papers that examine how technologies mediate interaction at work, revealing how coordination, relationships, and opportunities are dynamically produced through situated practices rather than determined solely by technological capabilities or organizational design. Together, the papers illustrate how Chicago School–inspired perspectives can deepen contemporary debates on automation, AI, and digital transformation by centering the micro-processes through which social order is produced and contested at work. They show how technologies open and close developmental opportunities, generate new relational cleavages, reshape task-level work in practice, and enable alternative forms of agency within bureaucratic systems. In doing so, the symposium highlights the continued relevance of interactionist and ethnographic approaches for understanding technological change in organizations.
Date and Time: Monday, August 3, 2026, 1:45-3:15 PM ET
Location: Sheraton Philadelphia Downtown, Ballroom Level, Liberty Ballroom B (201 N 17th St, Philadelphia)
Discussant:
Vanessa Conzon, Boston College
Presenters:
Peter Cappelli, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania
Alex Kowalski, ILR School, Cornell University
Virginia Leavell, Judge Business School, University of Cambridge
Sara Mahabadi, Alberta School of Business, University of Alberta
Co-organizers:
Poonam Zantye, Boston College
Tim Englehart, Boston College
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Poonam Zantye
Boston College
Newton Center MA
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