Advances in information and communication technologies are associated with a wide and increasing range of social consequences, which are experienced by individuals, work groups, organizations, interorganizational networks, and societies at large. Understanding the relationships between communication, digital technologies and organizations is an increasingly important and urgent societal and scholarly concern in many disciplinary fields.

Information and Organization seeks to publish original articles on the relationships between digital technologies, communication, and organizations. It seeks a scholarly understanding that is based on empirical research and builds novel theoretical contributions. A particular focus of Information and Organization is to publish qualitative and interpretive research which adopts case studies, ethnography and in-depth longitudinal empirical studies, including critical theory and science and technology studies.

Papers that provoke critical thinking on important subjects are welcomed, including articles that focus on research impact and contributions to knowledge in our special section (RICK). The aim is to provide a forum that brings together innovative, reflective, and rigorous scholarship while being relevant for practice.

Of special interest are contributions on the social construction of information technologies, the implications of digital technologies for innovation and organizational change, alternative organizational designs such as virtual organizations and ecosystems, ICT's for institutional and societal change, global strategy and digitalization, data driven organizations and changes in work, ethics of digital technologies and data governance. The journal seeks contributions from fields such as information systems, organization theory, history and philosophy of science and technology, practice theory, institutional theory, strategy, and communication studies.

Special Issue on Algorithmic Assemblages—Fields, Ecosystems, and Platforms: An Interpretive Approach
Día de Entrega: 2026-05-15

1. Overview

This Special Issue is devoted to interpretive approaches to studying algorithmic assemblages constitutive of and by fields, ecosystems, and platforms and combining research from an organizational and information systems view about such organizing features and their dynamics. Information technologies have progressively enabled, even necessitated, a shift in the locus of value creation, capture, and resource orchestration and the processes they entail from within organizations to these more loosely coupled and emergently structured sociotechnical systems (Winter et al., 2014; Yoo et al. 2012). The interpretive approach broadly stems from the relational turn in organization theory (Bailey et al., 2022; Lounsbury & Gehman, 2024; Pakarinen & Huising, 2023), but more proximately, considers assemblages and algorithmic organizing as views of these key constructs and their associated processes. To date, there has been less theory-building and empirical research connecting these more mezzo and macro constructs with the more micro-dynamics of these systems (Hinings et al., 2018; Schildt, 2020). In particular, it is not clear how algorithmic technologies enable the discursive and material interconnections of organizational ecosystems (Hannigan et al., 2022; Miranda et al., 2022a; Shaikh & Vaast, 2023) and facilitate the legitimacy dynamics of institutional fields (Lounsbury & Glynn, 2019). Nor is it clear the ways in which algorithmic technologies differentially circumscribe meaning across global fields and societies (Höllerer et al., 2017).

For example, blockchain communities contain organizational imaginaries (Dylan-Ennis et al., 2023) around decentralized organization (Seidel, 2018), and ongoing work is needed to examine how protocols are governed and established as new “rules of the game” (Hsieh & Vergne, 2023; Halaburda et al., 2024) and how community discourses around digital technologies shape institutional fields (Miranda et al., 2022a). Relatedly, the metaverse offers novel opportunities for commerce, government, and society within emerging ecosystems (e.g., Lowry et al. 2025). Similarly, for AI technologies it is important to parse through the rhetoric and reality of how field level discourse influences organizational adoption and vice versa (c.f., Zbaracki, 1998, also see Lebovitz et al., 2021). As quantum computing threatens to disrupt our digital world, it is important to understand the broad material, social, and cultural ecosystem with the potential to reshape global business and geopolitics (e.g., Avital et al., 2024). To examine the institutional dynamics of technologically mediated organizing, it is necessary to methodologically zoom in and out (Nicolini, 2009) with configurations (Furnari et al., 2021) to examine how realities are constructed based on shared meanings and interpretations (Goldenstein et al., 2022).

To unpack these dynamics around technology-based and –mediated fields, ecosystems and platform we call for theory and research that relies on relational approaches coming from both organization theory and information systems, such as we see in Faik et al. (2020), Hsieh & Vergne (2022); Miranda et al., (2022b); Wang (2021), and Zachariadas et al. (2019). In those approaches, we see how theories of assemblages (Glaser et al., 2024; Sesay et al. forthcoming) and algorithmic organizing (Saifer & Dacin, 2022; Stark & Broeck, 2024), when combined with more traditional organizational views such as of routines and institutions, offer powerful new ways of thinking about these dynamics.

2. Guest Editors

1) Hannigan, Timothy. Associate Professor of Strategy and Organization, Telfer School of Business, University of Ottawa, Canada.

2) Jennings, P. Devereaux. Professor of Strategy, Entrepreneurship & Management, Alberta School of Business, University of Alberta, Canada.

3) Miranda, Shaila. Professor and Department Chair, Information Systems Sam M. Walton College of Business, University of Arkansas, USA.

4) Faraj, Samer. Professor and Canada Research Chair in Technology, Innovation & Organizing, Desautels Faculty of Management at McGill University, Canada.

3. Theoretical and Methodological Foundations

The relational turn in the study of technology and organizing (Baygi et al., 2021; Bailey et al., 2022; Pakarinen & Huising, 2023) has presented a rich view of the intertwined construction of technologies, practices, and organizations. Concepts such as conjoined agency (Murray et al., 2021) help to capture the human and non-human ensemble that explain how technologies emerge, and how they affect organizations. Particularly with algorithmic technologies that process information as inputs and make decisions based on design criteria within organizational routines (Constantiou et al., 2024), the imperative has been to examine the co-construction of how humans and technologies interact.

While algorithmic technologies have been studied in terms of how they affect intraorganizational routines (e.g., Lebovitz et al., 2021; Pachidi et al., 2021), less studied are the ways that algorithmic technologies affect and are shaped by interorganizational (e.g., van den Broek et al., 2021), field (Lounsbury & Glynn, 2019), and platform/ecosystem dynamics (e.g., Heimburg et al., 2025). These technologies can affect how organizations “see” and engage in sensemaking in fields (Hannigan et al., 2022; Constantiou et al., 2023). But they can also be used to shape and perform field boundaries (Grodal, 2018). For example, as a type of “symbolic machine” (Phillips & Moser, 2024), generative AI used by organizations can participate in the construction of social categories (Phillips et al., 2024). For organizations, these categories form a critical part of digital strategy capabilities (Cepa & Schildt, 2023). For example, facial recognition algorithms have notably been inaccurate in their identification of Africans and Asians (Bushwick, 2019). Technology firms increasingly curate the knowledge they provide, ranging from DeepSeek declining to respond to politically sensitive questions in China, to US counterparts, such as Meta and X removing content moderation in response to the 2024 presidential election results (Qi, 2025; Kang, 2025). And research is beginning to note the ways in which our social world is being progressively homogenized by algorithms (Endacott & Leonardi, 2024).

In recent years, relational theories of assemblages and algorithmic organizing have not only been at the frontier of information systems and organizational scholarship, but encouraged the use of novel, mixed methodologies (Wellman et al., 2023). There has been work “biographies” of an algorithmic assemblage (Glaser et al., 2021) and interactions in a system through relational ethnography (Anthony et al., 2023). This ethnographic research has been around processes and routines, with strong sensemaking roots. It is important to extend the research design and methodology of this work to grapple with organizing processes and forms at the field, ecosystem or platform levels. Those designs and methods require novel work on mapping meaning (Goldenstein & Poschmann, 2019; Nelson, 2019) and new structures in these domains (Hannigan & Casasnovas, 2020). These foci push investigators to embrace qual-quant mixed- and multi-methods and with and across source designs (Creswell & Creswell, 2017).

4. The Special Issue's Objectives, Potential Themes, and Scope-Related Criteria

The objectives of this Special Issue are twofold. First, we wish to foster the development of cutting-edge research (theory and method) among scholars interested in organizational and institutional studies of the use and effects of data science and algorithms on decision-making. Second, we wish to continue building and strengthening the community of scholars engaged in that work, especially at the intersection of organization theory and information systems. In doing so, we reiterate Orlikowski and Barley’s (2001) call for synthesis of information systems and organizational studies scholars’ knowledge trajectories of technology change and institutional contexts. Since their call, there has been a growing convergence between these knowledge trajectories (Barley & Orlikowski, 2023), culminating in studies of how actors remake institutional fields (Essen & Varlander, 2019); change power relationships (Rahman, 2021; Curchod et al., 2020); and construct meanings about technology beyond institutionalized paths (Massa & O’Mahony, 2022; Vaast & Pinsonneault, 2021).

We can envision a variety of ways in which empirical papers can showcase the way in which interpretive algorithms affect assemblages, ecosystems, and fields. We stand on the shoulders of Barley & Orlikowski (2023:4) and their call for papers that navigate “futures far different from the pasts we have known” with “more in-depth empirical studies and less speculation and hype.” Below are illustrations of this vision that is not intended to preclude other innovative approaches to algorithmic assemblages.

1) Papers could focus on how algorithmic technologies enable the discursive and material interconnections of organizational ecosystems;

2) Papers could focus on platforms and their interorganizational and societal dynamics as a lens for sewing together different levels of field phenomena;

3) Papers might be around intra-, inter-, or extra-organizational routines and the ways in which these algorithmic technologies influence how organizations and other collectives “see” and engage in sensemaking in fields;

4) Papers might use “biographical” approaches to algorithmic assemblages to trace the interactions in a multilevel system through relational ethnography;

5) Papers might showcase use of innovative techniques for interpretive research such as latent class analysis and concept class analysis, application of such computational techniques to critical discourse analysis, and the development of (innovative) textual and visual artifacts in form of (multidimensional) quantitative measures or displays from visualization software (e.g., LDAvis or Gephi), being deployed in novel ways for capturing ecosystems, fields, platforms or assemblages;

Our Special Issue call is open to and agnostic about: levels of analysis; choice of organization theories; specific research topics within the four related domains of meaning, identity, materiality, and culture; types of symbolic systems (verbal, visual etc.) and texts––including the languages in which they are expressed, so long as the submission itself is written following Information and Organization’s guidelines.

5. The Guest Editors' Objectives

The Guest Editors aim at selecting a diverse mix of submissions for the Special Issue that different theoretical and empirical lens on the emergence and behavior of ecosystems, fields, platforms and assemblages. At the same time, we encourage strong engagement with technologies, algorithms, and information processing, including communication processes, as is befitting any special issue for Information and Organization.

6. Difference from Existing Special Issues and Special Sections

The Special Issue in Information and Organization, to our knowledge, would be the first one devoted to focusing on the how ecosystems, fields, platforms and assemblages as a collective operate, and doing so by drawing on a combination of organization and information systems theories In addition, our proposed Special Issue differs from other Special Issues and Special Sections in that these other collections have focused on methods, but less on theory development; whereas our proposes to build theory and a strong theory to method match using multi-method designs Among these prior Special Issues or the ongoing Calls have been:

    Information and Organization: Special issue on Organizing for Emerging Digital Technologies: The Good, the Bad & the Ugly (in process); Special issue on Digital Technology, Societal Change, and Institutional Logics (2023).
    Academy of Management Review (in process): Special Topic Forum - Artificial Intelligence in Management.
    Organization Studies (in process): Algorithmic Organizing.
    Organizational Research Methods (2018): Feature topic on big data and modern-day data analytics, 21(3).
    Poetics (2013): Topic models and the cultural sciences, 41(6).
    MIS Quarterly (2021): Special issue on managing AI, 45(3).

In sum, we wish to take a “big tent” approach to our special issue, but pull together relational theorizing research from organizations and information systems around fields, ecosystems and platforms, particularly work that embrace more novel methods. Those methods might be inductive or deductive, but we think there is some virtue, as mentioned above, in using mixed methods. Hence, such designs will have additional interest for us.

7. Advertising and Attraction of Reviewers

To generate a high number of submissions, we will promote the Special Issue through various channels including the newsletters of the Academy of Management, the American Sociological Association, the European Group of Organizational Studies, the International Communication Association, the Association for Information Systems, and the International Political Science Association.

In addition, we distribute our call for papers within more specialized interest groups including the new institutionalism network, the population ecology network, various networks for computational social sciences, and specific analytics hubs of the Interpretive Data Science (IDeaS) Group and at the University of Ottawa, University of Alberta, University of California Santa Barbara, and Imperial College London.

We will use the same pools to attract reviewers who are at the intersection of organization and information systems theory, and who have methodological flexibility and expertise in that area. We will do our best to ensure that no conflict-of-interest arises between these reviewers and the submitting authors, given the groups may overlap. Not only will we remind authors to attach cover letters revealing the origins of the paper and potential conflicts of interest, but we will use our knowledge of the field and the Information and Organization online system to avoid other issues, such as being current or recent prior co-authors or university colleagues. Assignment of papers to guest co-editors will also be done in a way that avoids such conflicts.

8. Proposed Schedule

    Paper submissions - May 15, 2026
    First round reviews due - September 15, 2026
    First round decision letters sent out – October 31, 2026
    First round paper resubmissions – February 28, 2027
    Second round reviews due – May 31, 2027
    Second round decision letters sent out – July 15, 2027
    Second round paper resubmissions – October 15, 2027
    Final papers selected, introductory editorial paper written – March 15, 2028

Manuscript submission information:

You are invited to submit your manuscript at any time between 15 April 2026 and 15 May 2026. For any inquiries about the appropriateness of contribution topics, please contact Associate Professor Timothy Hannigan via Tim.Hannigan@telfer.uottawa.ca.

The journal’s submission platform (Editorial Manager®) is now available for receiving submissions to this Special Issue. Please refer to the Guide for Authors to prepare your manuscript, and select the article type of “VSI: Algorithmic assemblages” when submitting your manuscript online. Both the Guide for Authors and the submission portal could be found on the Journal Homepage here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/information-and-organization

All the submissions deemed suitable to be sent for peer review will be reviewed by at least two independent reviewers. Upon its editorial acceptance, your article will go into production immediately. It will be published in the latest regular issue, while be presented on the specific Special Issue webpage simultaneously. In regular issues, Special Issue articles will be clearly marked and branded.