Lets get digital: understanding different discourses on digitalization

Berber Pas and Jasper van den Berkmortel

Chapter 2 in Framing the Economy of the Future, 2024, pp 42-69 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: This chapter aims to provide an overview of the different perspectives and related discourses on digital technology, and the use of it in organizations and society at large. In academia and practice, the normative discourse is the most dominant and most used discourse. Despite its emphasis on the benefits gained from digital technology, we highlight other discourses that offer just as insightful aspects that need to be taken into account when digital technology is used to create sustainable future economies. For example, the constructivist perspective, with its duality understanding of how technology and human action are co-constitutive, offers a deeper understanding on how digital technology in interaction with humans produces the way in which digital technology is used in our daily practices, instead of taking it as a convenient tool for humans to obtain advantage. The critical and dialogic discourse addresses issues in terms of how digital technology should also be seen as a tool or mechanism of power. With digital technology relying more and more on opaque techniques such as algorithms and machine learning, the time seems more right than ever to address the underlying disciplining and normalizing mechanisms of workers and customers in our society. With growing global inequality in terms of social and economic benefits, as well as climate deterioration, the most prominent question that needs to be addressed is how digital technology contributes, instead of corrodes, to reaching the Sustainable Development Goals. This starts by understanding and addressing different discourses on digital technology.

Keywords: Business and Management; Development Studies; Economics and Finance; Environment; Sociology and Social Policy; Sustainable Development Goals (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
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