Abstract

Craftsmanship is a concept often left unaddressed in the IT innovation literature. Further, this literature often fails to consider innovation that involves human labor on the shop floor. With the sheer volume of organizations that operate in craft-based industries, placing a strident focus upon craftsmanship and predominantly innovating on the shop floor, this is particularly concerning. This work therefore examines the influence of considered craftsmanship on the nature and consequences of digital innovation in the guitar manufacturing process at C. F. Martin & Company. We propose a model of innovation that incorporates the concept of the activity system, drawn from the field of activity theory. Individual innovations cause disturbances in actor-tooltask relationships (activity systems). This drives a series of reconfigurations, in an effort to eliminate said disturbances. Preliminary qualitative evidence is provided, supporting the proposed model, in the form of a series of semi-structured interviews.

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