Temporality in Socio-material Relations in Organizations

Abstract

Recent debates in information systems research on the relationship between organizations and the technologies they deploy have conceived the social and the material as mutually constituted in socio-material relations, an approach that is heavily influenced by structuration theory. However this perspective is inherently synchronic due to the temporal conflation of the synchronic and diachronic within structuration theory. This paper contributes to information systems theory by complementing the arguments of those who have advocated a perspective derived from morphogenetic theory and its critique of structuration theory in the synchronic dimension to argue for the inclusion of the diachronic dimension in socio-materiality. This, we will argue, is necessary because of the inherent differences in the temporal dynamics of the development of technology and organization. We will thereby demonstrate the theoretical importance of holding the social and the material as temporally distinct each with its own dynamic of emergence with which managers continually grapple to align. On this basis we will make a distinctive contribution to information systems theory by presenting a “tectonic” model of socio-material relations in organizations.