This dissertation draws on a field-level, qualitative study of business analytics to explore the legitimation and design of knowledge practices. In the last few decades, both the power and the acceptance of business analytics have advanced dramatically; nonetheless, end-users and clients can still be deeply sceptical of particular analytics practices and findings. Specific analytics practices, and sometimes analytics per se, continue to face a clear and enduring challenge of legitimation – and analysts struggle to build trust in their techniques, their products, and themselves. Across the three papers of this dissertation, I explore: (a) how analysts legitimate specific knowledge practices in the eyes of others; (b) how they design practices that are capable of producing knowledge for others, and which are thus well-suited to legitimation; and (c) how the analytics community provides its members with the soft skills required for this work of cultural innovation. In the process, I contribute to the literatures on legitimation, knowledge, and cultural entrepreneurship. More generally, my dissertation casts light on the dynamics by which particular knowledge practices emerge as credible, and by which they gain an increasing grasp on the attention and faith of organizational members.

Last modified

• 02/20/2018

Creator

• Christopher William John Steele

DOI

• https://doi.org/10.21985/N2QM3C

Subject

• Management and Organizations

Keyword

• Organizational Theory

Date created

• 2016-01-01

Resource type

• Dissertation

Rights statement

• In Copyright