Abstract
Abstract This essay expands upon the debate on sociomateriality with a critique of the current ontological agenda. Based upon the influential literature from the fields of management and organization studies, and information systems, it presents the emergence, the development, the consolidation and the popularization of the debate on the relations between the social and the material in organizations. Drawing on this trajectory, the paper suggests that the current agenda for a sociomaterial ontology is constituted predominantly through rhetorical uses of the notion of ontology. The relevance of this contribution lies in questioning the supposed development of a sociomaterial ontology, describing and exemplifying its rhetorical strategies: authorial randomness, theoretical centrifugation, and conceptual procrastination. It concludes that it is necessary to return to the phenomenon as relevant “in” the debate from the point of view of its trajectory: the diffusion of new technologies and the subsequent implications at the organizational and social levels. The main implication for future research is the adoption of pragmatic ontologies with the aim of restoring the primacy of the phenomenon over the ontology.
Highlights
This essay expands upon the debate on sociomateriality with a critique of the current ontological agenda
This article aims to expand upon the debate about sociomateriality at the organizational level with a critique of the current agenda for the development of a sociomaterial ontology, i.e., capable of ontologically fusing the social and the material
Given the controversies of the debate at this point, this article aims to contribute to its advance by adding a critique of the current sociomaterial ontology agenda, which has been constituted through rhetorical uses of the notion of ontology
Summary
This essay expands upon the debate on sociomateriality with a critique of the current ontological agenda. Based upon the influential literature from the fields of management and organization studies, and information systems, it presents the emergence, the development, the consolidation and the popularization of the debate on the relations between the social and the material in organizations Drawing on this trajectory, the paper suggests that the current agenda for a sociomaterial ontology is constituted predominantly through rhetorical uses of the notion of ontology. The notion of sociomateriality became prominent and has influenced the study of contemporary organizational phenomena, such as social media use in organizations (Treem & Leonardi, 2013), the implications of online evaluations for the organizations being evaluated (Orlikowski & Scott, 2014), the rise and influence of web-based crowd-sourcing and algorithmic rating and ranking mechanisms (Orlikowski & Scott, 2015b), and even a planetary exploration (Mazmanian, Cohn, & Dourish, 2014) The main research implication is the adoption of pragmatic ontologies aiming to restore the primacy of the phenomenon over the ontology
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