TuncerHeath&Luff2026
| TuncerHeath&Luff2026 | |
|---|---|
| BibType | ARTICLE |
| Key | TuncerHeath&Luff2026 |
| Author(s) | Sylvaine Tuncer, Christian Heath, and Paul Luff |
| Title | Adapting practices in digital transformation: A video-based, sociomaterial study of hybrid art auctions |
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| Tag(s) | EMCA |
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| Year | 2026 |
| Language | English |
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| Month | May |
| Journal | Information and Organization |
| Volume | 36 |
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| URL | |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1016/j.infoandorg.2026.100623 |
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Abstract
Beyond the established need for digital skills and a digital mindset, the role of workers on the ground in enabling digital transformation (DT) remains largely unexplored. In this paper, we recast DT as worker-centred practice adaptation with the case of auction sales of fine art and antiques shifting from mainly copresent to hybrid events during the COVID-19 pandemic, which contributed to a drastic acceleration of auction houses’ DT. With a longitudinal, sociomaterial study based on ethnographic fieldwork and video analysis, we show how auctioneers adapted their established practices in radically new and changing material configurations, to coordinate and order bids, to display the source of bids, and to pursue bidders. We show how hybrid copresence is created through new sociomaterial entanglements, reducing asymmetries between remote and copresent participants and bringing them together in a shared virtual environment encouraging participation and bidding. We theorise the empirical findings with three patterns of practice adaptation—imposing, transposing, and changing practices—correlated to the degree to which workers find partial or equivalent resources, or altogether different resources compared to previous material configurations. We integrate these patterns in a dynamic model of workers’ clusters of practices over time, providing a more fine-grained understanding of imbrication, the process through which material and social agencies interact and become interlocked into a durable structure. These finding shed new light on how the capabilities of new technologies are gradually enacted through practice adaptation and clusters of practices, ultimately supporting profound organisational restructuring like DT.
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