Toward Third Wave Information Systems Research: Linking Sociomaterial Practice with Broader Institutional Logics

The sociomaterial movement has done much to strengthen the theorizing of IT artifacts in practice. This “second wave” information systems research, which focuses on theorizing of the interpenetration of IT artifacts and human activity, is a response to the positivistic, reductive accounts that overly simplified human activity around the development and adoption of IT in the name of generalizability. However, with their focus on local ideographic interpretation, sociomaterial views have abandoned the search for regularities across contexts and across time. In this paper, we take a step toward a “third wave” approach as we look to theoretically account for both idiosyncrasies in sociomaterial practice in situ, and the regularities across these practices. Drawing on institutional logics and the concept of sociomaterial practice, we develop a conceptualization that highlights how technologies afford the enactment of different practice scripts as users draw on different institutional logics