A Threesome Dance of Agency: Mangling the Sociomateriality of Technological Regimes in Digital Innovation

In this paper, we develop a sociomaterial perspective for appreciating tensions between different technological regimes in digital innovation. Our case study research specifically looks at the tension between the deep-rooted component-based logic of two automakers’ innovation practices and their attempt to introduce a new software architecture based on service orientation. Our evidence suggests that digital architectures need to materialize and be shaped in a dialectical way in the mangle of both existing regimes. We argue that the threesome dance of physical material agency, digital material agency and human agency can explain this finding and yield implications for our understanding of digital innovation in the traditional industries. Digital innovation is a result of a dialectical process, resolving various elements of resistance, subjection, and accommodation across the three types of agency.