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HYPOTHESIS AND THEORY article

Front. Sociol.
Sec. Work, Employment and Organizations
Volume 9 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fsoc.2024.1426930
This article is part of the Research Topic Organizations between Continuity and Disruption – The Organization and Management of perpetual change in Times of Digitalization View all articles

Redefining Organizational Digitality: A relation-ontological approach inspired by Neo-materialism

Provisionally accepted
  • Free University of Berlin, Berlin, Germany

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Organizations, as central actors in societal structure, undergo significant transformations due to the impact of digitalization, often resulting in disruptive changes. Consequently, organizations increasingly view digitalization as an ongoing process of negotiation, which has led to the emergence of new operational modes and organizational norms. In this context, the interaction between organizations and digital technologies is characterized by recursive dynamics, which blur conventional boundaries. This presents a challenge in defining the distinct domains of the digital and the organizational within the framework of recursivity. This article draws upon neo-materialism and agential realism to propose an ontological-relational approach to understanding organizational digitality. This approach suggests a reconceptualization of organizational digitality as a mechanism that generates relational entities, thereby reshaping their inherent meanings. By transcending traditional boundaries between organizations and digital, this perspective provides a nuanced understanding of digital phenomena within organizational contexts.

    Keywords: organizational digitality, relational onotology, intra-action, apparatus, neomaterialism, organizational orders

    Received: 02 May 2024; Accepted: 08 Aug 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Maack. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Linda Maack, Free University of Berlin, Berlin, Germany

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