The Morphogenesis of Socio(-)material Relations in Organizations

Recent debates in information systems research on the relationship between organizations and the technologies they deploy have deployed the concepts of the social and the material, either fused without a hyphen in sociomateriality, or layered with a hyphen in socio-materiality. This paper contributes to theory by arguing that a morphogenetic perspective developed from Archer’s distinctively sociological version of critical realism can move this debate on and combine the strengths of both perspectives. This, we will argue, is necessary because of the differences in the temporal dynamics of the development of technology and organization. We will thereby demonstrate the theoretical importance of holding technology and organization as temporally distinct each with its own dynamic of emergence which managers continually grapple to align. On this basis we will make a distinctive contribution to theory by presenting a “tectonic” model of socio(-)material relations in organizations.