Prelims

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DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION AND INSTITUTIONAL THEORY

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RESEARCH IN THE SOCIOLOGY OF ORGANIZATIONS

Series Editor: Michael Lounsbury

Recent Volumes:

RESEARCH IN THE SOCIOLOGY OF ORGANIZATIONS ADVISORY BOARD

Series Editor

• Michael Lounsbury

• Professor of Strategic Management & Organization

• University of Alberta School of Business

RSO Advisory Board

• Howard E. Aldrich, University of North Carolina, USA

• Shaz Ansari, Cambridge University, UK

• Silvia Dorado Banacloche, University of Massachusetts Boston, USA

• Christine Beckman, University of Southern California, USA

• Marya Besharov, Oxford University, UK

• Eva Boxenbaum, Copenhagen Business School, DENMARK

• Ed Carberry, University of Massachusetts Boston, USA

• Lisa Cohen, McGill University, CANADA

• Jeannette Colyvas, Northwestern University, USA

• Erica Coslor, University of Melbourne, AUSTRALIA

• Gerald F. Davis, University of Michigan, USA

• Rich Dejordy, California State University, USA

• Rodolphe Durand, HEC Paris, FRANCE

• Fabrizio Ferraro, IESE Business School, SPAIN

• Peer Fiss, University of Southern California, USA

• Mary Ann Glynn, Boston College, USA

• Nina Granqvist, Aalto University School of Business, FINLAND

• Royston Greenwood, University of Alberta, CANADA

• Stine Grodal, Northeastern University, USA

• Markus A. Hoellerer, University of New South Wales, AUSTRALIA

• Ruthanne Huising, Emlyon Business School, FRANCE

• Candace Jones, University of Edinburgh, UK

• Sarah Kaplan, University of Toronto, CANADA

• Brayden G. King, Northwestern University, USA

• Matthew S. Kraatz, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA

• Tom Lawrence, Oxford University, UK

• Xiaowei Rose Luo, Insead, FRANCE

• Johanna Mair, Hertie School, GERMANY

• Christopher Marquis, Cambridge University, UK

• Renate Meyer, Vienna University, AUSTRIA

• William Ocasio, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA

• Nelson Phillips, University of California at Santa Barbara, USA

• Prateek Raj, Indian Institute of Management Bangalore, INDIA

• Marc Schneiberg, Reed College, USA

• Marc-David Seidel, University of British Columbia, CANADA

• Paul Spee, University of Queensland, AUSTRALIA

• Paul Tracey, Cambridge University, UK

• Kerstin Sahlin, Uppsala University, SWEDEN

• Sarah Soule, Stanford University, USA

• Eero Vaara, University of Oxford, UK

• Marc Ventresca, University of Oxford, UK

• Maxim Voronov, York University, CANADA

• Filippo Carlo Wezel USI Lugano, SWITZERLAND

• Melissa Wooten, Rutgers University, USA

• April Wright, University of Queensland, AUSTRALIA

• Meng Zhao, Nanyang Business School & Renmin University, CHINA

• Enying Zheng, Peking University, CHINA

• Tammar B. Zilber, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, ISRAEL

Title Page

RESEARCH IN THE SOCIOLOGY OF ORGANIZATIONS - VOLUME 83

DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION AND INSTITUTIONAL THEORY

EDITED BY

THOMAS GEGENHUBER

Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria

Leuphana University Lüneburg, Germany

DANIELLE LOGUE

University of Technology Sydney, Australia

C.R. (BOB) HININGS

University of Alberta, Canada

University of Calgary, Canada

and

MICHAEL BARRETT

University of Cambridge, UK

United Kingdom – North America – Japan India – Malaysia – China

Copyright Page

Emerald Publishing Limited

Howard House, Wagon Lane, Bingley BD16 1WA, UK

First edition 2022

Editorial matter and selection © 2022 Thomas Gegenhuber, Danielle Logue, C.R. (Bob) Hinings and Michael Barrett.

Individual chapters © 2022 the authors.

Published under exclusive licence by Emerald Publishing Limited.

Chapter 3, Digital Technology and Voice: How Platforms Shape Institutional Processes through Visibilization, copyright © Ali Aslan Gümüsay, Mia Raynard, Oana Albu, Michael Etter and Thomas Roulet. Chapter 10, The Institutional Logic of Digitalization, copyright © Henri Schildt. Published by Emerald Publishing Limited. These chapters are published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) licence. Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and create derivative works of these chapters (for both commercial and non-commercial purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and authors. The full terms of this licence may be seen at http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode.

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-1-80262-222-5 (Print)

ISBN: 978-1-80262-221-8 (Online)

ISBN: 978-1-80262-223-2 (Epub)

ISSN: 0733-558X (Series)

Contents

List of Figures and Tables

Institutional Perspectives on Digital Transformation

Institutional Logics, Technology Affordances and Hybrid Professionals: Developing a Billing App for Hospital Physicians

Digital Technology and Voice: How Platforms Shape Institutional Processes Through Visibilization

Augmenting a Profession: How Data Analytics Is Transforming Human Resource Management

From Micro-level to Macro-level Legitimacy: Exploring How Judgments in Social Media Create Thematic Broadness at Meso-level

Digitalization Versus Regulation: How Disruptive Digital Communication Technologies Alter Institutional Contexts Through Public Interest Framing

Representations of Self in the Digital Public Sphere: The Field of Social Impact Analyzed Through Relational and Discursive Moves

Integrating Information Systems and Institutional Insights: Advancing the Conversation with Examples from Digital Health

The Institutional Logic of Digitalization

About the Editors

Thomas Gegenhuber is Professor for the Management of Socio-Technical Transitions at JKU Linz and Visiting Professor at Leuphana University Lüneburg. Under the umbrella of digital transformation, he researches novel forms of organizing, crowdsourcing, various types of openness (open strategy, open social innovation, and open government) and (cultural) entrepreneurship in a digital economy. His work appears in international journals such as Human Relations, Long Range Planning, Business & Society, Information & Organization and Government Information Quarterly.

Danielle Logue is Associate Professor, University of Technology Sydney in Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Management. Her research draws from a broad base of institutional theory, in exploring the diffusion and theorization of innovations within and across organizational fields and markets, with an empirical focus on social and digital innovations. She has published in Strategic Management Journal, Academy of Management Annals, Human Relations, Journal of Management Inquiry, Organization Studies and others. She serves on the editorial board of several journals including Organization Studies and is a Senior Editor for Information & Organization.

C.R. (Bob) Hinings is Professor Emeritus at the University of Alberta, Senior Research Mentor at the Haskayne School of Business, University of Calgary, a Fellow of Cambridge Digital Innovation and an Honorary Research Fellow at the Judge School of Business, University of Cambridge. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and a Fellow of the US Academy of Management. He is an Honorary Member of the European Group for Organizational Studies, and he received an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Montreal for his contributions to the discipline of organization theory. His research interests are in organizational change and institutional theory.

Michael Barrett is Professor of Information Systems and Innovation Studies at Cambridge Judge Business School. He is Academic Director of Cambridge Digital Innovation and Distinguished Visiting Professor of Innovation at the Stockholm School of Economics. In 2016, he was awarded the Distinguished Scholar award by the OCIS division of the Academy of Management for his contributions to practice theory on digital innovation and transformation. He is currently Editor-in-Chief of Information & Organization and has held several editorial responsibilities including Senior Editor of MIS Quarterly.

About the Contributors

Oana Albu is an Associate Professor at Copenhagen Business School, Department of Management, Communication and Society. Her research is situated at the intersection of activism, visibility and datafication studies.

Verena Bader is a Research Associate in Human Resources Management and Organization Studies at the Bundeswehr University Munich, Germany. Her research interests lie at the intersection of organization, work and technology. Specifically, she examines the agency of social actors such as humans, (digital) technology, materiality and their interrelation through a practice lens.

Nicholas Berente is Professor of IT, Analytics and Operations at the University of Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business. He received his PhD from Case Western Reserve University. His research interests include digital innovation, artificial intelligence, and institutional change in organizations.

Andrew Burton-Jones is a Professor of Business Information Systems at the UQ Business School, University of Queensland, Australia. He has a Bachelor of Commerce (Honours) and Master of Information Systems from the University of Queensland and a PhD from Georgia State University. Prior to returning to Australia, he was on the faculty of the University of British Columbia, Canada. He undertakes research on how effectively organizations use IT, how to improve methods for systems design and how to improve theories and methods in IS research. Currently, much of his research focuses on the digital transformation of healthcare. He has taught a wide range of information systems courses across the undergraduate, professional graduate, doctorate and executive levels. Prior to his academic career, he was a senior consultant in a big-4 accounting/consulting firm. He is a Fellow of the Association for Information Systems and the current Editor-in-Chief of MIS Quarterly.

Alex Chaudhuri is the Director of Infectious Diseases at The Prince Charles Hospital and underwent advanced training at the Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital, the Pasteur Institute, Paris, and in clinical epidemiology at the Harvard Medical School. He completed his MBA at The University of Queensland, where his drive for patient-centered care was channeled into system management in the hospital setting.

Elanor Colleoni is Assistant Professor at IULM University (IT). Her research has a particular focus on the impact of digital media on corporate reputation and legitimacy. Her research is published in leading management and communication journals, such as Academy of Management Review, Business & Society and Journal of Communication.

Rebekah Eden is a Senior Lecturer at the School of Information Systems at Queensland University of Technology, Australia. Prior to this, she was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Queensland. She has a Bachelor of Information Technology (Honours), Bachelor of Applied Science and a PhD from the Queensland University of Technology. Her research interests include understanding the users, effective use and impacts of information systems. She is particularly focused on complex, organizational-wide digital transformation projects within the healthcare industry.

Michael Etter is a Reader at King’s College London (UK) and an Associate Professor at Copenhagen Business School (DK). His research focuses on organizational reputation and legitimacy in the new media landscape. His works appear in Academy of Management Annals, Academy Management Review, Journal of Management Studies and Business & Society.

Ali Aslan Gümüsay is Senior Researcher at the University of Hamburg and Head of research group “Innovation, Entrepreneurship & Society” at the Humboldt Institute for Internet & Society. His current research focus is on digitalization, grand challenges and the future of organizing.

Kerem Gurses is an Associate Professor at Ramon Llull University (La Salle). He holds a PhD in Management from IESE Business School and an MBA from Illinois Institute of Technology. His research focuses on corporate political strategies of organizations and how organizations deal with regulation.

Laura Illia is a Professor at the University of Fribourg (CH). By applying new digital methods to big datasets, she looks into questions of legitimacy, stigma and social responsibility. Her works are published in Journal of Business Ethics, British Journal of Management, Journal of Management Inquiry, Business & Society and MIT Sloan.

Lee C. Jarvis is an Associate Professor of strategic management at the IÉSEG School of Management in Paris, France. He received his PhD in business administration from Florida Atlantic University’s College of Business, and his research interests include institutional micro-foundations, emotions, individual identity construction, organizational stigma and social movements. His work has been published in Academy of Management Journal, Academy of Management Review, Journal of Management Studies, Organization Studies and Human Relations, among other academic journals.

Robyn King is Senior Lecturer at UQ Business School, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia. Her research interests are management control systems, accountability and healthcare. She has published in international journals such as Accounting, Organizations and Society, Management Accounting Research and Accounting Auditing and Accountability.

Georg Loscher currently works at the Bundeswehr University Munich, Germany. His research interests include changes and innovations in professions which he researches from an institutional and practice theoretical perspective.

Katia Meggiorin is a PhD candidate at New York University’s Leonard N. Stern School of Business (USA). Her research interests lie at the nexus of strategy and organizational theory, with a focus on “sharing economy.” Her research is published in journals such as Strategy Science and Business & Society.

Achim Oberg is Professor of Sociology with a Focus on Digital Social Science at University of Hamburg, Germany.

Pinar Ozcan is Professor of Entrepreneurship and Innovation at Saïd Business School, Oxford University. She specializes in strategy and entrepreneurship in technology markets. Her current research includes strategy at AI and fintech ventures, and Big Tech disruption. She holds a PhD, MSc and dual bachelor’s degrees from Stanford University.

Walter W. Powell is Jacks Family Professor of Education, and Sociology, Organizational Behavior, Management Science and Engineering, and Communication at Stanford University. He has been faculty co-director of the Stanford Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society since its founding in 2006.

Mia Raynard is an Associate Professor in the Department of Management at Vienna University of Economics and Business. Her research focuses on processes of change at the level of organizations, fields and society. She is currently working on projects examining emerging economies, family-owned businesses, CSR and sustainability, social enterprises and professions.

Thomas Roulet is an Associate Professor in organization Theory at the University of Cambridge. His work focuses on negative social evaluations, institutions and systemic change.

Henri Schildt is a Professor of Strategy with a joint appointment at the Aalto School of Business (Department Management Studies) and the School of Science (Department of Industrial Engineering and Management). His research interests span digitalization, organizational change, sensemaking and strategies of social organizations. He is currently the principal investigator in a research project on organizational solutions to displacement and marginalization. He also leads the subproject on organizing in Aalto University’s the Future of Work program.

Tino Schöllhorn is researcher at the Institute for SME Research at the University of Mannheim, Germany.

Stefan Seidel is Professor and Chair of Information Systems and Innovation at the Institute of Information Systems at the University of Liechtenstein and Honorary Professor of Business Information Systems at the National University of Ireland, Galway. His research focuses on digital innovation, digital transformation, and artificial intelligence in organizations and society.

David Smith is Dean of the School of Accounting, Information Systems and Supply Chain, and Professor of Management Accounting at RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia. He has published in international journals such as Accounting, Organizations and Society, Management Accounting Research and Behavioral Research in Accounting.

Leah Thompson is the Manager of Research and Quality for the Internal Medicine Program at The Prince Charles Hospital and has a Masters in Occupational Therapy studies. She passionately strives to work collaboratively with interdisciplinary teams to promote innovative solutions that can effectively and sustainably improve the delivery of high-quality healthcare.

April L. Wright is Professor of Organization Studies at Warwick Business School, University of Warwick, UK. Her research interests are in the areas of institutional change, professional work and healthcare. She has published in international journals such as Administrative Science Quarterly, Academy of Management Journal and Organization Studies.

Basak Yakis-Douglas is an Associate Professor of International Business Strategy at King’s Business School and Associate Fellow at Saïd Business School, University of Oxford. Her main areas of research involve topics under open strategy, use a practice lens and employ theories including attention-based view and behavioral theory of the firm.

Foreword: Research in the Sociology of Organizations

Research in the Sociology of Organizations (RSO) publishes cutting-edge empirical research and theoretical papers that seek to enhance our understanding of organizations and organizing as pervasive and fundamental aspects of society and economy. We seek provocative papers that push the frontiers of current conversations, that help to revive old ones or that incubate and develop new perspectives. Given its successes in this regard, RSO has become an impactful and indispensable fount of knowledge for scholars interested in organizational phenomena and theories. RSO is indexed and ranks highly in Scopus/SCImago as well as in the Academic Journal Guide published by the Chartered Association of Business schools.

As one of the most vibrant areas in the social sciences, the sociology of organizations engages a plurality of empirical and theoretical approaches to enhance our understanding of the varied imperatives and challenges that these organizations and their organizers face. Of course, there is a diversity of formal and informal organizations – from for-profit entities to nonprofits, state and public agencies, social enterprises, communal forms of organizing, nongovernmental associations, trade associations, publicly traded, family-owned and managed, private firms – the list goes on! Organizations, moreover, can vary dramatically in size from small entrepreneurial ventures to large multinational conglomerates to international governing bodies such as the United Nations.

Empirical topics addressed by RSO include the formation, survival and growth or organizations; collaboration and competition between organizations; the accumulation and management of resources and legitimacy; and how organizations or organizing efforts cope with a multitude of internal and external challenges and pressures. Particular interest is growing in the complexities of contemporary organizations as they cope with changing social expectations and as they seek to address societal problems related to corporate social responsibility, inequality, corruption and wrongdoing and the challenge of new technologies. As a result, levels of analysis reach from the individual, to the organization, industry, community and field and even the nation-state or world society. Much research is multilevel and embraces both qualitative and quantitative forms of data.

Diverse theory is employed or constructed to enhance our understanding of these topics. While anchored in the discipline of sociology and the field of management, RSO also welcomes theoretical engagement that draws on other disciplinary conversations – such as those in political science or economics, as well as work from diverse philosophical traditions. RSO scholarship has helped push forward a plethora theoretical conversations on institutions and institutional change, networks, practice, culture, power, inequality, social movements, categories, routines, organization design and change, configurational dynamics and many other topics.

Each volume of RSO tends to be thematically focused on a particular empirical phenomenon (e.g., creative industries, multinational corporations and entrepreneurship) or theoretical conversation (e.g., institutional logics, actors and agency and microfoundations). The series publishes papers by junior as well as leading international scholars and embraces diversity on all dimensions. If you are scholar interested in organizations or organizing, I hope you find RSO to be an invaluable resource as you develop your work.

Professor Michael Lounsbury

Series Editor, Research in the Sociology of Organizations

Canada Research Chair in Entrepreneurship & Innovation

University of Alberta