Beyond Uberization: The co-constitution of technology and organizing

Authors: Samer Faraj, and S. Pachidi

Publication: Organization Theory, Volume 2, Issue 1, March 2021, Pages 1-14.

Abstract:

Uberization has emerged as a platform-based form of organizing that is reshaping work and labour markets and that is fundamentally challenging existing thinking on organizing. We suggest that organizational theorists have been reluctant to address the constitutive relation between technology and organizing. By emphasizing co-constitution, we argue against viewing technology as an entity that is separate, exogenous, or causal. Instead, we offer that technology can be fruitfully viewed as endogenous to and constitutively entwined with organizational actions and structures. To illustrate this co-constitution, we present a brief analysis of Uberization from a regime of organizing perspective that emphasizes how organizing practices, valuation schemes, authority arrangements and technological arrangements are entwined with each other. We conclude with an invitation to organizational theorists to more specifically engage with technology as they theorize new forms of organizing.