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Organizing Alignment: A Case of Bridge-Building

Lucy Suchman

Lancaster University, UK, suchman{at}workpractice.com

The project of building a bridge is a canonical example of what John Law (1987) has termed `heterogeneous engineering', involving the arrangement of human and nonhuman elements into a stable artifact. This paper reports ethnographic research on the work of civil engineers engaged in designing a bridge scheduled for completion by the year 2004. My emphasis is on a view of bridge-building as persuasive performances that both rely upon and reflexively constitute the elements to be aligned. The work of designing a bridge, on this view, is as much a matter of story-telling as of analysis, calculation, and work with concrete and steel.

Key Words: heterogeneous engineering • ordering • organizational ethnography • performance • planning

Organization, Vol. 7, No. 2, 311-327 (2000)
DOI: 10.1177/135050840072007
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