The digital is different: Emergence and relationality in critical realist research

IF 5.7 2区 管理学 Q1 INFORMATION SCIENCE & LIBRARY SCIENCE Information and Organization Pub Date : 2022-06-01 DOI:10.1016/j.infoandorg.2022.100408
Alexander Moltubakk Kempton
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引用次数: 6

Abstract

When analyzing empirical phenomena, the implicit or explicit assumptions we have of relationality guide what we take as the primary units of analysis and how we study them. This paper investigates and expands on the notion of relationality and relational explanations in the Critical Realist (CR) paradigm of Information Systems (IS) research. As digital technologies are becoming increasingly adaptive to the social and socio-technical structures they are embedded in, it is necessary to expand the field's conceptual tools in its study of digital phenomena. Therefore, to explain why the digital seems more tightly coupled to social phenomena than other types of technologies, the concept of transformational emergence is introduced. The key argument is that the malleability of digital entities entails that they are disposed to transform by emergence, which is key to understanding the constitutive relationality between the social and the technical in contemporary digital phenomena. This has fundamental implications for CR-based theories in the IS field, most notably Affordance theory and Representation theory.

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数字是不同的:批判现实主义研究中的涌现和关系
在分析经验现象时,我们对关系的隐式或显式假设指导我们将什么作为分析的主要单位以及如何研究它们。本文对信息系统(IS)研究的批判现实主义范式中的关系概念和关系解释进行了研究和扩展。随着数字技术越来越适应其所嵌入的社会和社会技术结构,有必要在数字现象研究中扩展该领域的概念工具。因此,为了解释为什么数字技术似乎比其他类型的技术更紧密地与社会现象联系在一起,我们引入了转型涌现的概念。关键的论点是,数字实体的延展性意味着它们倾向于通过出现进行转换,这是理解当代数字现象中社会和技术之间构成关系的关键。这对信息系统领域中基于cr的理论具有根本性的影响,尤其是功能提供理论和表征理论。
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来源期刊
CiteScore
11.20
自引率
1.60%
发文量
18
期刊介绍: Advances in information and communication technologies are associated with a wide and increasing range of social consequences, which are experienced by individuals, work groups, organizations, interorganizational networks, and societies at large. Information technologies are implicated in all industries and in public as well as private enterprises. Understanding the relationships between information technologies and social organization is an increasingly important and urgent social and scholarly concern in many disciplinary fields.Information and Organization seeks to publish original scholarly articles on the relationships between information technologies and social organization. It seeks a scholarly understanding that is based on empirical research and relevant theory.
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