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In the face of numerous explanations for why AI-driven decision support systems (DSS) have failed to deliver on their promise of improving organizational decision-making, this paper problematizes the under-theorized mismatch between the design of DSS and the actual decision-making processes that the technology is supposed to support. We examine this mismatch by studying the implementation of a DSS in the intensive care unit (ICU) of a large academic hospital.

Based on 27 months of ethnographic fieldwork, we contend that the studied DSS was designed on the assumption that individual intensivists are responsible for making life-critical discharge decisions at one particular moment in time.

However, our study of actual decision-making practices reveals that discharge decision-making is instead a protracted process, involving multiple actors fragmented across time and space. To account for these complexities, we advocate for a “dynamic routines” perspective, which highlights the actual patterns of action pursued throughout a clinical decision-making process.

Our application of this perspective contributes to a more granular understanding of discharge decision-making, which can help future DSS designers better grasp the peculiarities and complexities—or “anatomy”—of the decision-making process. We also suggest integrating an “anticipatory ethnographic approach” into the design and pre-implementation phases of future DSS to help bridge the current gap between design assumptions and actual decision-making practices.

Drawing on an intersectional perspective on racial, migrant and entrepreneurial identities, this paper investigates the identity work of racial minority entrepreneurs with native-born and migrant backgrounds, confronted to experiences of othering in a White entrepreneurial ecosystem.

The study takes a qualitative-interpretivist approach and builds on six cases of racial minority entrepreneurs in nascent stages of venture development within the Dutch technology sector. The dataset comprises 24 in-depth interviews conducted over the course of one and a half year, extensive case descriptions and online sources. The data is thematically and inductively analysed.

Despite strongly self-identifying as entrepreneurs, the research participants feel marginalised and excluded from the entrepreneurial ecosystem, which results in ongoing threats to their existential authenticity as they build a legitimate entrepreneurial identity. Minority entrepreneurs navigate these threats by either downplaying or embracing their marginalised racial and/or migrant identities.

The study contributes to the literature on the identity work of minority entrepreneurs. The paper reveals that, rather than “strategising away” the discrimination and exclusion resulting from othering, racial minority entrepreneurs seek to preserve their sense of existential authenticity and self-worth, irrespective of entrepreneurial outcomes. In so doing, the study challenges the dominant perspective of entrepreneurial identity work among minority entrepreneurs as overly instrumental and market-driven. Moreover, the study also contributes to the literature on authenticity in entrepreneurship by highlighting how racial minority entrepreneurs navigate authenticity threats while building legitimacy in a White ecosystem.