The presentation is embedded within the START (Self-Determination through technological support of Autonomy, Resilience and organisational Transformation) project in AT/CH (funding: FFG). One of START’s aims is to ensure and strengthen a self-determined life style for people with disabilities (PWD). START therefor co-develops an IT tool. This will digitally facilitate PWD’s access to a multitude of services or activities. Such services continue to be offered to a large extent by classical organisations that provide support for PWD. Just like other organisations, also organisations from this sector have been confronted with the effects of digitalisation (Bosse/Haage 2020:529f). Wherever digital services and tools are being introduced, aspects of education become an issue: for individual users inside the organisation (‘learning in organisations’), for the organisation as a whole (‘learning by organisations’) and for the ecosystems that the organisations are embedded in (‘learning between organisations’). In my PhD thesis I will pay attention to a new analytical sequence that I call ‘preceding digital situations’ and ‘subsequent target situations’ in the lives of service users (PWD) who (will) use digital tools like START’s prototype. A ‘preceding digital situation’ involves an IT tool to initiate, plan, prepare to guide or document a subsequent ‘target situation’, i.e. an activity of everyday life (like eating, cooking, shopping) and/or a suitable support service (feeding, mobility assistance, etc.). I hypothesise that (in this context) preceding digital situations can show a severe lack of self-determination, while most emphasis by the organisation’s staff or IT developers is put on ensuring and strengthening self-determination in the ‘target situations’. The (comparatively short) event of using the digital tool is not even regarded as a situation itself. My presentation will focus on the first part of the sequence: the often overlooked ‘digital situations’. It will showcase various examples, gathered by vignettes on situations (Miko-Schefzig 2022:114ff). They can help to raise awareness about action logics at the intersection of organisation, diversity and (constantly advancing) digitalisation (in the social field). Furthermore, they can contribute to negotiate new organisational orders and practices of action.

Bosse, Ingo; Haage, Anne (2020): Digitalisierung in der Behindertenhilfe. In: Handbuch Soziale Arbeit und Digitalisierung. Pp. 529-539. Weinheim/Basel: Beltz Juvena Miko-Schefzig, Katharina (2022): Forschen mit Vignetten. Gruppen, Organisationen, Transformation. Weinheim/Basel: Beltz Juvena