The Digital Undertow and Institutional Displacement: A Sociomaterial Approach

As “the digital” becomes pervasive within organizations and industries, it is increasingly evident that how we live, work, connect, coordinate, govern are being significantly changed by digitalization. Many of these digital transformations highly visible dramatic, involving a purposeful repositioning restructuring industries. But in addition to direct changes, argue processes digitalization also producing less core institutional values, norms, rules, which indirectly, yet more profoundly, reconfiguring industries perform. Referencing findings from two different sectors, posit the corollary effects waves digitalization—what conceptualize as “digital undertow”—are generating set dynamics displacing apparatuses their positions primacy authority We further suggest our conventional toolkits for studying organizational phenomena not well equipped examining such In addressing this challenge, consider relational performative theorizing strong sociomateriality provides powerful analytic investigating highlight offers valuable insights into displacements arising undertow.