Digital Technologies: Carrier or Trigger for Institutional Change in Digital Transformation?
Digital Transformation and Institutional Theory
ISBN: 978-1-80262-222-5, eISBN: 978-1-80262-221-8
Publication date: 23 September 2022
Abstract
Given widespread digital transformations in all sorts of organizations, it is increasingly difficult to ignore the role of digital technologies in institutional change. In this essay, we characterize existing scholarship in terms of whether it emphasizes how digital technologies are either “triggers” or “carriers” of institutional change. As triggers, digital technologies serve as catalysts that afford novel structuring as they are enacted in practice. As carriers, digital technologies can shape those practices in ways that are consistent with the structuring of other fields. We propose a view of institutionally embedded affordances, where digital technologies are both triggers and carriers that afford institutional change. We conclude with a reflection on how digital technologies are implicated in the convergence of previously distinct industrial fields.
Keywords
Citation
Berente, N. and Seidel, S. (2022), "Digital Technologies: Carrier or Trigger for Institutional Change in Digital Transformation?", Gegenhuber, T., Logue, D., Hinings, C.R.(B). and Barrett, M. (Ed.) Digital Transformation and Institutional Theory (Research in the Sociology of Organizations, Vol. 83), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 197-209. https://doi.org/10.1108/S0733-558X20220000083008
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2022 Nicholas Berente and Stefan Seidel