Emergence of IT Implementation Consequences in Organizations: An Assemblage Approach

Ex nihilo nihil fit—nothing comes from nothing—fundamentally challenges IS scholars to explain how a new behavior may emerge and evolve into a recognizable practice from an organization’s IT implementation processes. Prior research addressing this problem has ascribed consequences to a pre-existent macro-level structure or micro-level interactions. We examine this issue by conceptualizing the emergence of IT implementation consequences as a multi-phased process with analytically disaggregated phases. Using an assemblage lens, our theorizing draws on data from a multisite case study of Body-Worn Camera technology implementation in three municipal police organizations in the U.S. We identify three emergence phases—individuation, composition, and actualization—and develop a process model theorizing a path from material and expressive components to IT implementation consequences through cascading properties and capacities. Our model shows that the emergence of IT implementation consequences is non-linear, and involves feedback loops across multiple phases. In some instances, IT implementation consequences may emerge via negative feedback loops involving tweaks and course correction before converging into recognizable new practices. In other instances, they may fail or delay converging into recognizable practices. We also show how combining existing components and assemblages results in nesting assemblages at successively larger scales. This helps us to relativize the micro-macro relationship and explain both top-down and bottom-up emergence of IT implementation consequences.