Relationships between theoretical concepts

To develop its explanatory power, the conceptual framework needs to contain state-ments about the relationships between its concepts. The following relationships are proposed:

3.5.2.1 IT in large companies should be seen as digital infrastructures

This thesis argues that IT in large companies should be seen as digital infrastruc-tures. The review of the literature on organizational agility has shown that there is potential for conceptualizations of information systems in organizations that go

beyond traditional notions like IT as a tool. While there is a paucity of research on digital infrastructures relating to large companies (despite calls for digital infra-structure research at broader levels), the concept lends itself to such research, as it contains the notion of a historically grown, heterogeneous infrastructure. Especially the concept of the installed base creating inertia, and the people in the digital infra-structure engaging with it, seems to fit well with existing research on legacy systems.

3.5.2.2 Organizational agility should be seen as a practice within digital infrastructures

As argued above, the concept of organizational agility is adapted in this thesis to better accommodate the reality in large companies. It is conceptualized here as an organizational practice within digital infrastructures. Thus, it reflects an organiza-tion’s ability to influence the evolution of its digital infrastructures. This leads to a view of digital infrastructure change as evolution rather than planning, which stresses the focus on both the technology (Orlikowski & Iacono 2001) and the role of people engaging with it. It is in contrast with much research on agility that assumes a blank slate and the possibility to easily change things, led by the IT estate.

3.5.2.3 Digital infrastructures enable and constrain organizational agility

The literature review has shown a notion of a dual nature of technology, as it can both enable and constrain innovation in organizations. Hanseth & Lyytinen (2010, p.

4) argue that “the evolution of infrastructures is both enabled and constrained by the installed base”. Magnusson & Bygstad (2014) propose the term ‘technology debt’ to illustrate these constraints. Such constraints can turn into resources (for example when deadlines push people to get work done), as Star & Ruhleder (1996) show. As shown in the literature review, Yoo (2013, p.231) argues that “digital technology […] enables and constrains activities that produce generative innovations”. This notion is here extended to digital infrastructures, which are seen as simultaneously enabling and constraining agility. For example, their modularity and generativity may afford quick changes of the IT, whereas the growing installed base or the bureaucracy in a large organization may hinder them. This aligns well with the concept of bounded rationality that has been mentioned in some of the literature on digital infrastructures (Claggett & Berente 2012) and organizational agility (Mathias-sen & Stage 1992; Roberts & Grover 2012). This idea goes back to Simon (1957),

who points out that approaches like statistical decision theory “require of rational man powers of prescience and capacities for computation resembling those we usually attribute to God” (p. 3) and argues for a different view of rationality in which

“the nonrational and the rational are compounded in administrative man” (ibid.). Due to these limitations, organizations do not make optimal decisions, but satisfice by making good enough decisions. As an example, Mathiassen & Stage (1992) define uncertainty and complexity as the factors limiting rationality. Similarly, it is pro-posed here that the elements of digital infrastructures can constitute such boundaries for agility.

3.5.2.4 Focus on interactions between IT, information and people

Information is an important factor in conceptualizing both digital infrastructures and agility. It enables new activities of sensing and responding. It is explicitly seen as an element of digital infrastructures here. This enables a focus on the interactions between IT, information and people within the digital infrastructures. It also leads to a conceptualization of agility around activities involving information as sensing happens when data from within the organization or from the outside world is captured in the digital infrastructures, while responding refers to the interaction between the components of the digital infrastructures.

3.5.3 Summary

This chapter has defined the conceptual framework that will be employed to help answer the initial research question, “how can digital infrastructures support perfor-mances of agility in organizations?”. Digital infrastructures are conceptualized here as sociotechnical systems within an organization that serve a particular purpose.

They contain IT, seen as installed base, people (users and developers), and informa-tion. They are seen as relational, emerging from the relationship between technology and organizational practices and not amenable to direct managerial control. Agility is conceptualized as an organizational practice within digital infrastructures. Sensing and responding refers to activities around the flow of data into and within the digital infrastructures. Digital infrastructures simultaneously enable and constrain agility.

In elaborating its theoretical model, this thesis claims that IT in large companies should be seen as digital infrastructures, and organizational agility as a practice

within these infrastructures. Digital infrastructures are seen to both enable and con-strain organizational agility. In order to understand these processes, a focus on the interactions between IT, information and people is proposed. Thus, the conceptual framework combines the notions of digital infrastructures and organizational agility as a performance and shows how this can be used to understand the effect of digital infrastructures on agility. It is summarized in Figure 4.

Figure 4 Conceptual framework