We Are All Theorists of Technology Now: A Relational Perspective on Emerging Technology and Organizing

Diane E. Bailey (), Samer Faraj (), Pamela J. Hinds (), Paul M. Leonardi () and Georg von Krogh ()
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Diane E. Bailey: Department of Communication, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York 14850
Samer Faraj: Desautels Faculty of Management, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec H3A 0G4, Canada
Pamela J. Hinds: Department of Management Science & Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305
Paul M. Leonardi: Technology Management Program, University of California, Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, California 93106
Georg von Krogh: Department of Management, Technology, and Economics, ETH Zürich, 8092 Zürich, Switzerland

Organization Science, 2022, vol. 33, issue 1, 1-18

Abstract: Technologies are changing at a rapid pace and in unpredictable ways. The scale of their impact is also far-reaching. Technologies such as artificial intelligence, data analytics, robotics, digital platforms, social media, blockchain, and 3-D printing affect many parts of the organization simultaneously, enabling new interdependencies within and between units and with actors that many organizations have typically considered to be outside their boundaries. Consequently, today’s emerging technologies have the potential to fundamentally shape all aspects of organizing. This article introduces the special issue “Emerging Technologies and Organizing.” We treat these new technologies as “emerging” because their uses and effects are still varied and have yet to stabilize around a recognizable set of patterns and because the technologies themselves are, by design, always changing and adapting. To theorize the relationship between emerging technologies and organizing, we draw on relational thinking in philosophy and sociology to develop a relational perspective on emerging technologies. Our goal in doing so is to create a new way for organizational scholars to incorporate the ever-increasing role of technology in their theorizing of key organizational processes and phenomena. By developing a relational perspective that treats emerging technologies not as stable entities, but as a set of evolving relations, we provide a novel way for organizational scholars to account for the role of technology in their topics of interest. We sketch the outlines of this relational perspective on emerging technologies and discuss the implications it has for what organizational scholars study and how we study it.

Keywords: digital technology; digital transformation; information technology; organizational change; AI; work (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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