Framing has been presented as a way for micro-level actors to change and diffuse innovations. However, most framing studies have given primacy to language, whereas the role of material artifacts has been largely ignored. The aim of this study is to conceptualize and illustrate how the materiality of technology enables and constrains framing practices. We use empirical data about the development and diffusion of an e-service in the Swedish rheumatology setting from 2000 to 2014. Our results show how three different material features of the technology (data content, user rights, and system integration) initially afforded two different framings of the technology: normalizing and radicalizing framings. The material features, however, lost their ability to afford radicalizing framings over time, along with changes in the collective-action frames governing the field studied.
BattilanaJ.LecaB.BoxenbaumE. (2009). How actors change institutions: Towards a theory of institutional entrepreneurship. The Academy of Management Annals, 3, 65-107.
2.
BechkyB. A. (2003). Sharing meaning across occupational communities: The transformation of understanding on a production floor. Organization Science, 14, 312-330.
3.
BenfordR. D.SnowD. A. (2000). Framing processes and social movements: An overview and assessment. Annual Review of Sociology, 26, 611-639.
4.
BlumerH. (1971). Social problems as collective behavior. Social Problems, 18, 298-306.
5.
CarlileP. R. (2002). A pragmatic view of knowledge and boundaries: Boundary objects in new product development. Organization Science, 13, 442-455.
6.
CharmazK. (2006). Constructing grounded theory: A practical guide through qualitative research. London, England: Sage.
7.
CollinsS. (2004). Framing the complexity of a participatory democracy in a public primary classroom. Journal of Research for Educational Leaders, 23, 160-172.
8.
DewulfA.GrayB.PutnamL.LewickiR.AartsN.BouwenR.Van WoerkumC. (2009). Disentangling approaches to framing in conflict and negotiation research: A meta-paradigmatic perspective. Human Relations, 62, 155-193.
9.
EisenhardtK. M. (1989). Building theories from case study research. The Academy of Management Review, 14, 532-550.
10.
EssénALindbladS. (2012). Innovation as emergence in healthcare: unpacking change from within. Soc Sci Med, 93, 203-11.
11.
FeldmanM. S.OrlikowskiW. J. (2011). Theorizing practice and practicing theory. Organization Science, 22, 1240-1253.
12.
FriedlandR.AlfordR. R. (1991). Bringing society back in: Symbols, practices and institutional contradictions. In PowellW. W.DimaggioP. J. (Eds.), The new institutionalism in organizational analysis (pp. 232-263). Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press.
13.
GibsonJ. J. (1979). The ecological approach to visual perception. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin.
14.
GiddensA. (1984). The constitution of society: Outline of the theory of structuration. Berkeley: University of California Press.
15.
GoffmanE. (1974). Frame analysis: An essay on the organization of experience. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
16.
GrayB.PurdyJ. M.AnsariS. S. (2015). From interactions to institutions: Microprocesses of framing and mechanisms for the structuring of institutional fields. Academy of Management Review, 40, 115-143.
17.
HuntS. A.BenfordR. D.SnowD. A. (1994). Identity fields: In (eds.) LarañaEJohnstonHGusfieldJR. New Social Movements) Framing processes and the social construction of movement identities. In New social movements: From ideology to identity Temple University Press, PA (pp. 185-208).
18.
HutchbyI. (2001). Technologies, texts and affordances. Sociology, 35, 441-456.
19.
KaplanS. (2011). Strategy and power point: An inquiry into the epistemic culture and machinery of strategy making. Organization Science, 22, 320-346.
20.
KurzweilR. (2005). The singularity is near: When humans transcend biology. London, UK: Penguin.
21.
LeonardiP. M. (2011). When flexible routines meet flexible technologies: Affordance. Constraint, and the Imbrication of Human and Material Agencies, Management Information Systems Quarterly, 35, 147-167.
22.
LeonardiP. M.BarleyS. R. (2008). Materiality and change: Challenges to building better theory about technology and organizing. Information and Organization, 18, 159-176.
23.
MarkusM. L.SilverM. S. (2008). A foundation for the study of IT effects: A new look at DeSanctis and Poole’s concepts of structural features and spirit. Journal of the Association for Information Systems, 9, 609-632.
24.
MeyerD. S. (1995). Framing national security: Elite public discourse on nuclear weapons during the cold war. Political Communication, 12, 173-192.
25.
MeyerR. E. (2014). Re-localization as micro-mobilization of consent and legitimacy. In DroriG. S.HöllererM. A.WalgenbachP. (Eds.), Global themes and local variations in organization and management: Perspectives on glocalization (pp. 79-89). New York, NY: Routledge.
26.
MeyerR. E.HöllererM. A.JancsaryD.Van LeeuwenT. (2013). The visual dimension in organizing, organization, and organization research: Core ideas, current developments, and promising avenues. The Academy of Management Annals, 7, 489-555.
27.
NepstadS. E. (1997). The Process of cognitive liberation: Cultural synapses, links, and frame contradictions in the U.S. Central America peace movement. Sociological Inquiry, 67, 470-487.
28.
OrlikowskiW. J. (1992). The duality of technology: Rethinking the concept of technology in organizations. Organization Science, 3, 398-427.
29.
OrlikowskiW. J.GashD. C. (1994). Technological frames: Making sense of information technology in organizations. ACM Transactions on Information Systems, 12, 174-207.
30.
PinchT. (2008). Technology and institutions: Living in a material world. Theory and Society, 37, 461-483.
31.
PurdyJ.AnsariS.GrayB. (2017). Are logics enough? Framing as an alternative tool for understanding institutional meaning making. Journal of Management Inquiry, 28(4) 409-420. doi:10.1177/1056492617724233
32.
SchatzkiT. R. (2001). Practice mind-ed orders. In CetinaK. K.SchatzkiT. R.Von SavignyE. (Eds.), The practice turn in contemporary theory (pp. 50-64). Oxford, UK: Routledge.
33.
SpradleyJ. (1979). The ethnographic interview. New York, NY: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston.
34.
StiglianiI.RavasiD. (2012). Organizing thoughts and connecting brains: Material practices and the transition from individual to group-level prospective sensemaking. Academy of Management Journal, 55, 1232-1259.
35.
StrangD.MeyerJ. W. (1993). Institutional conditions for diffusion. Theory and Society, 22, 487-511.
ThorntonP. H.OcasioW.LounsburyM. (2012). The institutional logics perspective. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
38.
TristE. L.BamforthK. W. (1951). Some social and psychological consequences of the longwall method of coal-getting. Human Relations, 4(1), 3-38.
39.
VishwanathA. (2009). From belief-importance to intention: The impact of framing on technology adoption. Communication Monographs, 76, 177-206.
40.
WeedF. J. (1997). The framing of political advocacy and service responses in the crime victim rights movement. Journal of Sociological Social Welfare, 24, 43-61.
41.
WernerM. D.CornelissenJ. P. (2014). Framing the change: Switching and blending frames and their role in instigating institutional change. Organization Studies, 35, 1449-1472.
