[ecrea] Workshop "Decision Devices", Braunschweig, 27 Oct 2015

Workshop 27 Oct 2015, 2-7 pm, HBK Braunschweig

*Decision Devices. Genealogies of Managerial Media*

It is hard to imagine management without media. The larger an
organisation, the more vital are the means of administration and
control furnished by media infrastructures. With ideals of
accountability and (self-)optimisation deeply engrained into the logic
of contemporary 'audit societies', the interdependence between media
and management becomes even more evident.

At the heart of management is the act of making decisions. It is also
here where the role of media becomes the most manifest, from
the bureaucratic and logistical frameworks surrounding decisions to
Decision Support Systems and Decision Simulations directly addressing
the problem of executive decision-making.

The aim of the workshop is to develop a critical-genealogical
perspective on these ‘decision devices’, by discussing which
relationships between human and machine they establish. What does it
mean to 'support' or 'simulate' a decision, in terms of
automation, delegation, formalisation, and the reduction of complexity?
What notions of efficiency and rationality are inscribed into these
apparatuses and what kind of subjectivities do they (aim to) produce?
How can specific combinations between descriptive and prescriptive
aspects be distinguished?

The presentations have been selected to cover different time frames as
well as different technical and conceptual layers of the relevant
media infrastructures – from databases via data models and algorithms to
interfaces and visualisations. In combination, these
perspectives will provide a significant contribution to the history of
managerial media and shed light on the question why some of these
trajectories are currently gaining in relevance.


Programme:

14.00 Introduction

14.30 Jan Distelmeyer, Potsdam
Stable Instability. Managing Competition with Interfaces

15.30 Armin Beverungen, Lüneburg
Algorithmic Management: Decision and Control through Data, Clouds and Things

16.30 Coffee

17.00 Aleksandra Przegalinska, Warsaw
A Genealogical Analysis of Selected Ethical Decision Support Systems

18.00 Nathaniel Tkacz, Warwick
Decisions Everywhere (and Nowhere): The Taming of Cognition

Location: HBK, Mediothek, Room 02/008, Johannes-Selenka-Platz 1, 38118
Braunschweig

Participation is free of charge, but please register until 18 October:
(tagung /at/ kulturtechnik.biz) <mailto:(tagung /at/ kulturtechnik.biz)>

More information: www.kulturtechnik.biz/decision-devices
<http://www.kulturtechnik.biz/decision-devices>

Organisation:
Tobias Conradi, Rolf F. Nohr, Theo Röhle
Research Project “Business Games as a Cultural Technique”
HBK Braunschweig
www.kulturtechnik.biz <http://www.kulturtechnik.biz>


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