So what is reification
Another form of reification is creeping into the workplace in the guise of 'process'. The industrial process is being invested with roles, beliefs and rituals that tend to make these abstract objects into super 'knowledge artifacts'.
Consider a supermarket transaction. You are positioned alongside 'pick me up articles' to increase you likelihood (or your children's or spouse's) of an impulse buy. You are offered (or enticed by rebates) to proffer a store card to capture your demographics so the store can enhance their psychographics and sell your purchasing information back to merchants.
Just think of the energy, thought, technology and human investment tied to that single transaction. There is the cashier taking your money, the scanner taking your information, the data warehouse technician crunching your impulses, the store wide analyst pondering your buying rules, the logistics manager ordering replacements, the shelf packer filling the gap, the chain buyer trying to second guess your next visit and co-purchase......
We are witness to the rise of the reified process, the super knowledge artifact, we embed our learnings, infuse it with our ideas, invest it with our time, depend on it for survival, become constrained by our role. We rely on it for our identity and identify with it for our being & meaning.
We praise, curse, abuse, invent, deny, co-evolve and conspire with this complex, highly connected, ethereal thing. We invest energy, identity and being, perform rituals, make meaning, reify and create knowledge.
We make knowledge artifacts!
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