@article{8582542,
  abstract     = {Since British sociologist Titmuss authoritatively conceived blood donation as an altruistic ‘gift relationship’, blood establishments have adopted blood’s highly symbolic status as a core professional belief. However, important developments since the 1970s have resulted in blood’s bio-objectification, making blood a renewed object of concern. Because different versions of this bio-object are simultaneously present and interfere with one another, we ask how the organization renders this multiplicity workable? Studying how ontological versions are enacted in a specific blood establishment and how the organizational model of a blood establishment functions as a mode of coordination, we develop a praxiographic appreciation of blood in the context of a specific Belgian blood establishment. We show how the organizational mode of coordination allocates versions of blood in specific departments along functional and chronological dimensions. Blood remains the object of a gift relationship but is accompanied by blood’s enactment and representation as the object of suspicion, management, research/biology, and a blood economy. Furthermore, the organizational mode of coordination also allocates personalized and depersonalized enactments according to the level of contact with the donor population. This reflects a third dimension: (de)personalization of blood. Whereas the organizational mode of coordination is successful in rendering blood’s multiplicity workable, at times, it causes suboptimal practices. Moreover, we showed how sometimes a focus on intra-departmental modes of coordination is necessary to understand how blood’s multiplicity complicates the practices of the blood establishment.},
  author       = {Wittock, Nathan and De Krom, Michiel and Hustinx, Lesley},
  issn         = {1350-5084},
  journal      = {ORGANIZATION},
  keywords     = {Blood-supply management,enactment,modes of coordination,multiplicity,organization,praxiography,renewed object of concern},
  language     = {eng},
  number       = {4},
  pages        = {470--491},
  title        = {Blood’s ontologies-entangled: qualitative inquiry into the enactment, representation, and organizational modes of coordination of blood’s multiplicity in a Belgian blood establishment},
  url          = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1350508418808234},
  volume       = {26},
  year         = {2019},
}

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