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Prompted by perceived shortcomings of prevailing conceptualizations of digital technology in IS, we propose a theory aimed at capturing both the ontological complexity of digital objects qua objects, and how their identity and use is bound up with various social associations. We begin with what it is to be an object, the differences between material and nonmaterial objects, and various categories of nonmaterial objects including syntactic objects and bitstrings. Building on these categories we develop a conception of digital objects and a novel “bearer” theory of how material and nonmaterial objects combine. The role of computation is considered, and how the identity and system functions of digital objects flow from their social positioning in the communities in which they arise. Various implications of the theory are identified, focusing on its use as a conceptual frame through which to view digital phenomena, and its potential to inform existing perspectives with regard both to how digital technology per se and the relationship between people and digital technology should be theorized. These implications are illustrated with reference to secondary markets for software, the treatment of digital resources in the resource-based, knowledge-based, and service-dominant logic views of organizing, and recent work on sociomateriality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The founders of sociomateriality argue that the difficulty of maintaining distinctions between material and social entities, increasingly encountered empirically, also necessitates a commitment to inseparability at the ontological level. Yet reservations have been voiced that this proposal is contrary to experience, incoherent, and of little practical use. While not denying the phenomenon, the critics insist that the ontological commitment to separated entities must be maintained. We show that Heidegger’s work in Being and Time (1927, 1962) provides a careful exploration of ontological inseparability that reveals it to be plausible, coherent, and useful. Although his terminology is alien, Heidegger’s analysis proceeds from everyday experiences to provide a plausible account of ontological inseparability. His work provides a coherent ontology that treats inseparability as fundamental, but also shows that our familiar dualist experience of the world, far from justifying ontological separation, is actually derivative. We demonstrate the usefulness of Heidegger’s concepts with a case. Instead of proceeding from a priori separated categories meaningful to the researcher, Heidegger’s concepts allow investigation of what IT “is” when involved in particular user worlds. We conclude that IS must engage with the “being of IT” if it wants to adequately deal with the increasing ubiquity of IT in practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This special issue acknowledges important innovations in the world of service and within this domain we are particularly interested in exploring the rise and influence of web-based crowd-sourcing and algorithmic rating and ranking mechanisms. We suggest that a useful way to make sense of these digital service innovations and their novel implications is to recognize that they are materialized in practice. We thus need effective conceptual and analytical tools that allow us to take materiality seriously in our studies of service innovation. To this end, we propose some theoretical ideas relating to a sociomaterial perspective, and then highlight empirically how this perspective helps us analyze the specific service materializations enacted through the algorithmic configuring of crowd-sourced data, and how these make a difference in practice to the outcomes produced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The digital age has seen the rise of service systems involving highly distributed, heterogeneous, and resource-integrating actors whose relationships are governed by shared institutional logics, standards, and digital technology. The cocreation of service within these service systems takes place in the context of a paradoxical tension between the logic of generative and democratic innovations and the logic of infrastructural control. Boundary resources play a critical role in managing the tension as a firm that owns the infrastructure can secure its control over the service system while independent firms can participate in the service system. In this study, we explore the evolution of boundary resources. Drawing on Pickering’s (1993) and Barrett et al.’s (2012) conceptualizations of tuning, the paper seeks to forward our understanding of how heterogeneous actors engage in the tuning of boundary resources within Apple’s iOS service system. We conduct an embedded case study of Apple’s iOS service system with an in-depth analysis of 4,664 blog articles concerned with 30 boundary resources covering 6 distinct themes. Our analysis reveals that boundary resources of service systems enabled by digital technology are shaped and reshaped through distributed tuning, which involves cascading actions of accommodations and rejections of a network of heterogeneous actors and artifacts. Our study also shows the dualistic role of power in the distributed tuning process.

Information systems researchers have shown an increasing interest in the notion of sociomateriality. In this paper, we continue this exploration by focusing specifically on entanglement: the inseparability of meaning and matter. Our particular approach is differentiated by its grounding in a relational and performative ontology, and its use of agential realism. We explore some of the key ideas of entanglement through a comparison of two phenomena in the travel sector: an institutionalized accreditation scheme offered by the AA and an online social media website hosted by TripAdvisor. Our analysis centers on the production of anonymity in these two practices of hotel evaluation. By examining how anonymity is constituted through an entanglement of matter and meaning, we challenge the predominantly social treatments of anonymity to date and draw attention to the uncertainties and outcomes generated by specific performances of anonymity in practice. In closing, we consider what the particular agential realist concept of entanglement entails for understanding anonymity, and discuss its implications for research practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In taking into account the ways in which material and social realms are constitutively entangled within organizations, it is rhetorically tempting to say that technologies and social structures reconfigure each other. But what does it mean to reconfigure? How does one “figure” the other and how do we fully embrace a mutually constitutive relationship when examining fluid relations? This paper delves into these questions by exploring how physical, social, material, technological, and organizational arrangements dynamically reconfigure each other in the duration of organizational practice. Using the venue of space exploration, we present three empirical examples from an ethnographic engagement with a NASA mission orbiting an outer planet in the solar system to examine various configurations and sociomaterial relations. In this endeavor, we suggest that theoretical and empirical traction can be gained by focusing attention on the dynamic reconfigurations between social and material realms. In so doing, we call attention to the ways in which current sociomaterial perspectives have difficulty articulating the shifting, figural, asymmetric and dynamic negotiations between people, social structures, information technologies, and representational objects. This paper contributes to current discussions of sociomaterial relations in information systems research by presenting an empirical treatment of entangled and shifting reconfigurations and providing language for engaging with this perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sociomateriality has been attracting growing attention in the Organization Studies and Information Systems literatures since 2007, with more than 140 journal articles now referring to the concept. Over 80 percent of these articles have been published since January 2011 and almost all cite the work of Orlikowski (2007, 2010; Orlikowski and Scott 2008) as the source of the concept. Only a few, however, address all of the notions that Orlikowski suggests are entailed in sociomateriality, namely materiality, inseparability, relationality, performativity, and practices, with many employing the concept quite selectively. The contribution of sociomateriality to these literatures is, therefore, still unclear. Drawing on evidence from an ongoing study of the adoption of a computer-based clinical information system in a hospital critical care unit, this paper explores whether the notions, individually and collectively, offer a distinctive and coherent account of the relationship between the social and the material that may be useful in Information Systems research. It is argued that if sociomateriality is to be more than simply a label for research employing a number of loosely related existing theoretical approaches, then studies employing the concept need to pay greater attention to the notions entailed in it and to differences in their interpretation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While technology is most commonly associated with material things, tools, or artifacts, it is also associated as a concept with routines, patterns of action that provide capabilities. Researchers have struggled to bring these interpretations together. Drawing from Schatzki's practice theory, we offer an overarching perspective that ties tools as devices to routines in a broader social context, yielding insights into what is termed technology as routine capability in the advancement of practices. How change in technology occurs both within and among practices is examined from this perspective. Four principal modes of change are identified: (1) design, in creating new devices and routines; (2) execution, in operating devices and performing routines; (3) diffusion, in spreading devices and routines to a population's members; and (4) shift, in adapting devices and routines to change among a world's practices. Change is seen to be closely intertwined among the modes, suggesting that future research examine cross-modal change, in particular, to gain a better understanding of how new technology advances practices. Overall, our new perspective provides a lens that ties together previous strands of research, allowing insights from multiple studies to accumulate in a way that both illuminates and motivates further work. Enlarging on current interpretations, it suggests that routines are integral to technology itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper identifies challenges facing the development of contextual theory in Information Systems research. The IS literature is examined to identify the variation of approaches through which IS research accounts for contextual influences in the formation of IS phenomena. The literature review reveals issues that require methodological and theoretical attention. These concern the generalization of context-specific research findings; the partiality of theory due to trade-offs of scale and detail; the development of sociomaterial perspectives of contextual influences on IS phenomena; and the challenge posed to contextual explanation from ontologies that give primacy to processes of continuous change over existing entities. From the exploration of these issues, comparative research is suggested as a promising approach to generalization; an argument is made for research framing with explicit consideration of scale of the context domain under inquiry to allow for the comparison and complementarity of research findings; alternative theoretical perspectives of context related with theories of technology and theories of action are identified; and directions toward the development of a sociomaterial perspective of context are suggested. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors discuss research and theoretical perspectives on the subject of service innovations in the context of the increasing use of information and communication technologies (ICT), the focus of a special section of the issue, and introduce the articles in the section. Topics include the intersections between service innovation and information services (ISs), shifts in the conceptualization of the product-service distinction, and intrafirm and interfirm considerations. Articles are discussed on specific topics including self-service and customer retention, the application of sociomateriality theory to Internet services providing crowd-sourced information, and the use of technology to provide health services to underserved communities in India.