Enacting a Constellation of Logics: How Transferred Practices Are Recontextualized in a Global Organization

Abstract

We explore how new practices are transferred across locations in a global organization. The company we studied strove to infuse more user-centered innovation and quicker, more agile delivery of software into their development teams. The practices for doing so were crafted in the United States and then transferred to China and India. Over a period of 20 months, we observed how three practices were transferred to and enacted at each location. Our findings suggest a constellation of logics, which varied by site and by practice, molded the particular recontextualizations at each site. We contribute to a deeper understanding of how employees experience and respond to the transfer of practices from abroad by proposing that a constellation of logics guides recontextualization of meaning as well as action. Our empirical work and analysis also raises numerous questions about the effects of the recontextualizations on performance, what makes a particular logic or constellation of logics salient for a particular practice at a particular time, the stability and malleability of these logics, and what happens in global collaborations when different logics are invoked at different locations.

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