Coping Strategies for Tensions Between Digital Data and Data Practices in Data-Driven Organizations

This paper examines how workers cope with digital data tensions in railway operations at a safety-critical and data-intensive transport organization in Sweden. We show that the material properties of digital data and data practices create tensions in work practices, resulting in technostress under high accountability and time pressure. We identify five coping strategies: workarounds, negotiations, modifications, compromises, and abandonments. These strategies are sociomaterial; blending technical fixes, tacit expertise, and informal networks, and show how workers enact data in practice. Our findings contribute an empirical account and understanding of digital data tensions in railway operations, demonstrating that coping enhances workflows and data quality, but introduces invisible labour and new complexities. Building on these findings, we extend theoretical discussions on digital data tensions, technostress and coping, and propose conceptualizing data as dialogue, where meanings are continuously negotiated, and as a capacity-building tool, where coping generates organizational learning and resilience over time.