Analytical technologies that structure and process data hold great promise for organizations but also may pose fundamental challenges for how knowledge workers accomplish tasks. Knowledge workers are generally considered experts who develop deep understanding of their tools, but recent observations suggest that in some situations, they may black box their analytical technologies, meaning they trust their tools without understanding how they work. I conducted a two-year inductive ethnographic study of the use of analytical technologies across four groups in an investment bank and found two distinct paths that these groups used to validate financial analyses through what I call “validating practices”: actions that confirm whether a produced analysis is trustworthy. Surprisingly, engaging in these practices does not necessarily equate to understanding the calculations performed by the technologies. In one path, validating practices are partitioned across junior and senior roles: junior bankers engage in assembling tasks and use the analytical tools to perform analysis, while only senior bankers interpret the analysis. In the other path, junior and senior members engage in co-construction: junior bankers do both assembling and interpreting tasks, and senior bankers engage in interpreting and provide feedback on junior bankers’ reasoning and choices. Both junior and senior bankers in the partitioning groups routinely black boxed the algorithms embedded in their technologies, taking them for granted without understanding them. By contrast, bankers in the co-construction groups were conscious of the algorithms and understood their potential impact. I found that black boxing influenced the knowledge outputs of these bankers and constrained the development of junior members’ expertise, with consequences for their career trajectories.

构建和处理数据的分析技术为组织带来了巨大的希望，但也可能对知识工作者完成任务的方式构成根本性挑战。知识工作者通常被认为是对其工具有深入了解的专家，但最近的观察表明，在某些情况下，他们可能会黑盒化他们的分析技术，这意味着他们信任他们的工具而不了解其工作原理。我对一家投资银行的四个群体使用分析技术进行了为期两年的归纳民族志研究，发现这些群体通过我所谓的“验证实践”来验证财务分析的两条不同路径：分析是可信的。出奇，参与这些实践并不一定等同于理解技术执行的计算。在一条路径中，验证实践分为初级和高级角色：初级银行家从事组装任务并使用分析工具进行分析，而只有高级银行家解释分析。在另一条路径中，初级和高级成员参与共建：初级银行家负责组装和口译任务，高级银行家从事口译工作，并对初级银行家的推理和选择提供反馈。划分组中的初级和高级银行家都经常将嵌入他们技术中的算法置于黑箱中，认为它们是理所当然的而不理解它们。相比之下，共建小组的银行家意识到了这些算法，并了解它们的潜在影响。我发现黑拳影响了这些银行家的知识产出，并限制了初级成员专业知识的发展，对他们的职业轨迹产生了影响。