[AISWorld] EGOS 2022, Vienna, Sub-theme 23: Digital Technology, Societal Change and Shifts in Institutional Logics

[Isam Faik]

This is a gentle reminder that the deadline for submitting short papers to
EGOS 2022 is 11 January 2022.


If you are doing research on the relationship between technological and
societal change, please consider submitting your short paper to subtheme
23.


***EGOS 2022, Vienna, Sub-theme 23: Digital Technology, Societal Change and
Shifts in Institutional Logics***


Convenors:

Isam Faik, Ivey Business School at Western University, Canada

Eivor Oborn, University of Warwick, United Kingdom

Patricia H. Thornton, Texas A&M University, USA, & HEC Paris, France
Call for Papers

Digital technologies are increasingly seen as a source of large-scale
societal changes, including positive transformations and grand societal
challenges. On the one hand, the incorporation of digital technologies in
our modes for organizing social and economic activities is contributing to
poverty alleviation (Jha et al., 2016), social inclusion (Andrade & Doolin,
2016), and increased political participation (Selander & Jarvenpaa, 2016).
On the other hand, it is leading to higher levels of systemic risks
(Tarafdar et al., 2013), lower standards in employment conditions
(Brynjolfsson & McAfee, 2012), and the undermining of democratic processes
(Allcott & Gentzkow, 2017).

Advancing a theoretical understanding of how large-scale societal changes
are related to the materiality (Jones et al., 2017) of digital technologies
requires attention to how technology is becoming integral to the wide range
of institutional processes that define twenty-first century societies. In
particular, understanding societal-level changes requires analyses of the
ways technology is becoming a defining element of the institutional logics
that shape individual cognition, action and evaluation in the different
areas of social life (Faik et al., 2020). Such analyses enable us to
explore how technology is altering the multiplicity of logics in different
domains and generating new institutional arrangements. Further analyses can
also help us explore how the multiplicity of institutional logics might
shape and influence the way technologies become used, which goals are
attended to, and which stakeholders or agents become more active in the
process of societal change (Oborn et al., 2021). We need studies for
example that investigate how and why some institutional logics are becoming
more salient as a result of technological change while other logics are
being undermined and silenced (Gawer & Phillips, 2013). Studies are needed
to examine how technological change is increasing the compatibility of
certain institutional logics while heightening the contradictions and
tensions among others (Berente & Yoo, 2012).

Despite significant advances in theorizing technology as a carrier of
institutions (Scott, 2013), the focus in the literature has been on
institutional relationships at the organizational and inter-organizational
levels (Winter et al., 2014). There is now a need for more studies that can
enrich our theoretical repertoire for explaining the implications of
technological change at the societal level. We need to advance our
theorizing of the constitutive role of technology in large-scale societal
changes, for example by enabling new actor constellations (Hining et al.,
2018), rendering the availability, accessibility, and activation of certain
logics (Gawer & Phillips, 2013), and linking collective action to new
sources of meaning (Raviola & Norbak, 2013). This sub-theme aims to
contribute to the development of our theoretical repertoire for studying
the complex relationships between technology and societal change, along
with its implications for individuals and organizations. We therefore call
for empirical and conceptual papers that examine the relationship between
technological change and the ongoing shifts in established institutional
arrangements.

More specifically, we invite papers from a variety of methodological
traditions, focusing on (but not limited to) the following issues:

   - How are emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence,
   blockchain, and the internet of things, challenging or reinforcing dominant
   institutional logics or activating previously dormant institutional logics?
   - How does the rapid scaling of new technologies, such as social media,
   alter institutions and institutional logics?
   - How are digital technologies enabling and/or constraining the
   emergence of hybrid institutional logics, hybrid organizing and
   collaborative governance (Pache & Thornton, 2021; Besharov & Mitzinneck,
   2021)?
   - How do digital technologies interact with the categorical elements of
   institutional logics such as expressions of identity, authority, and
   legitimacy (Thornton et al., 2012)?
   - How does the interaction of institutions and digital technologies
   affect societal outcomes such as inclusion, equality, and prosperity? How
   might these interactions influence the responses to crisis, or the
   recalibration of ‘new normal’ after a crisis?
   - How is the growing prevalence of digital technologies creating new
   institutional conditions that support solutions to societal challenges such
   as natural disasters and pandemics (Gümüsay et al., 2020)?
   - How does a focus on digital technology change what we know, i.e.,
   theoretical mechanisms and scope conditions, of classic theory, e.g., loose
   coupling and symbolic management (Meyer & Rowan, 1977; Westphal & Park,
   2020) and isomorphism (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983) in neo-institutional
   theory, conflicting logics in the institutional logics perspective
   (Thornton et al., 2012), valuation of categories (Durand & Paolella, 2016;
   Durand & Thornton, 2018; Zuckerman, 2017) and organizational and
   institutional hybridity (Battilana et al., 2017)?
   - How do digital technologies and institutions interact to impact
   contemporary popular press and public policy issues such as democratic
   election integrity, voter fraud, fake news, media bias, and big technology
   censorship?
   - How does fragmentation of the institutional environment and contending
   institutional logics affect how digital technologies are used and evaluated?


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