Sociomateriality has been attracting growing attention in the Organization Studies and Information Systems literatures since 2007, with more than 140 journal articles now referring to the concept. Over 80 percent of these articles have been published since January 2011 and almost all cite the work of Orlikowski (2007, 2010; Orlikowski and Scott 2008) as the source of the concept. Only a few, however, address all of the notions that Orlikowski suggests are entailed in sociomateriality, namely materiality, inseparability, relationality, performativity, and practices, with many employing the concept quite selectively. The contribution of sociomateriality to these literatures is, therefore, still unclear. Drawing on evidence from an ongoing study of the adoption of a computer-based clinical information system in a hospital critical care unit, this paper explores whether the notions, individually and collectively, offer a distinctive and coherent account of the relationship between the social and the material that may be useful in Information Systems research. It is argued that if sociomateriality is to be more than simply a label for research employing a number of loosely related existing theoretical approaches, then studies employing the concept need to pay greater attention to the notions entailed in it and to differences in their interpretation.
Marshall Scott Poole identifies some important issues in the treatment of adaptive structuration theory in our review of the use of Giddens's structuration theory in IS research (Jones and Karsten 2008). We argue, however, that a number of his criticisms reflect differences in our respective use of particular terms and that the statements made in Jones and Karsten are reasonable, especially in the light of Giddens's own writings. There are some substantive differences between our position and that of Poole, though, especially in relation to the distinctiveness and compatibility of positivist and interpretive research, and the immateriality of Giddens's structures. Arguments are presented to show that, as Jones and Karsten discussed, Giddens's position is able to offer a plausible and self-consistent account of IS phenomena, including those such as the role of material artefacts in the U.S. legal system, "distributed cognition," and the use of GDSS that Poole suggests are incompatible with Giddens's account of structuration.
The work of the contemporary British sociologist Anthony Giddens, and in particular his structuration theory, has been widely cited by Information Systems researchers. This paper presents a critical review of the work of Giddens and its application in the Information Systems field. Following a brief overview of Giddens's work as a whole, some key aspects of structuration theory are described, and their implications for Information Systems research discussed. We then identify 331 Information Systems articles published between 1983 and 2004 that have drawn on Giddens's work and analyze their use of structuration theory. Based on this analysis a number of features of structurational research in the Information Systems field and its relationship to Giddens's ideas are discussed. These findings offer insight on Information Systems researchers' use of social theory in general and suggest that there may be significant opportunities for the Information Systems field in pursuing structurational research that engages sympathetically, yet critically, with Giddens's work.