Digital Practices: Unpacking the New Logics of Organizing in a Digital Age

This PDW (professional development workshop) session engages the workshop attendees to debate and get feedback on their research related to unpacking the essence and peculiarities of digital practices. In particular, the PDW is aimed at examining how the organizing logics in a digital age requires new theoretical viewpoints as well as expositions on how prior theories and assumptions may be used to unpack digital practices. Attention to digital practices is pertinent as digital is gradually becoming a sticker concept. In recent years, we have seen a growing trend in which the term digital is affixed to well-known management and IT concepts (Yoo et al. 2010; Bharadwaj et al. 2013; Baiyere et al. 2017; Tumbas et al. 2018; Hinings et al. 2018; Fuerstenau et al. 2019). One may be wary and skeptical about the ongoing digital relabeling considering there has been similar patterns with the rise and decline of trends such as mobile “x”, “e-everything”, to mention a few. Yet, there seem to be a sentiment in the community that digital is not necessarily another buzzword, but the emergence of a fundamental shift. A shift that may hold profound implications for extant management practices and assumptions. Evidence of this can be deduced in the growing use of the digital labels across several divisions and beyond management disciplines. But, going beyond mere labels, scholars have shown how digital organizing is an ongoing process (see for instance Garud, Jain & Tuertscher, 2008). To address these issues, this PDW is organized to attract scholars with interests in exploring, debating or unpacking the value, necessity and positioning of the digital notion within management scholarship. Specifically, we aim to engage in unpacking digital practices that we conceptualize as the logics of organizing in a digital age.