Paper Number
ECIS2026-2148
Paper Type
CRP
Abstract
We theorize how and why mandated digital systems (MDS) emerge. MDS are IT artefacts that are no longer optional, but embedded, normalized, or required for societal participation through infrastructural entrenchment and institutional legitimation. Our work traces their development across a five-phase trajectory: digital first, digital normalization, digital enforcement, digital entrapment, and digital institutionalization. In doing so, we show how MDS differ from both enterprise systems and market-driven systems, while synthesizing and extending extant IS concepts and theories in the process. Our work offers a novel theoretical lens to examine digital human experiences and explores how users may navigate, internalize, or contest digitally structured obligations imposed onto them. Ultimately, this study contributes to the Information Systems (IS) literature by rethinking digital participation in society as a condition shaped not by choice, but by embedded and encoded institutional arrangements or infrastructural forces.
Recommended Citation
Huang, Weihang and Breidbach, Christoph, "Investigating The Emergence Of Mandated Digital Systems" (2026). ECIS 2026 Proceedings. 12.
https://aisel.aisnet.org/ecis2026/is_adopt/is_adopt/12
Investigating The Emergence Of Mandated Digital Systems
We theorize how and why mandated digital systems (MDS) emerge. MDS are IT artefacts that are no longer optional, but embedded, normalized, or required for societal participation through infrastructural entrenchment and institutional legitimation. Our work traces their development across a five-phase trajectory: digital first, digital normalization, digital enforcement, digital entrapment, and digital institutionalization. In doing so, we show how MDS differ from both enterprise systems and market-driven systems, while synthesizing and extending extant IS concepts and theories in the process. Our work offers a novel theoretical lens to examine digital human experiences and explores how users may navigate, internalize, or contest digitally structured obligations imposed onto them. Ultimately, this study contributes to the Information Systems (IS) literature by rethinking digital participation in society as a condition shaped not by choice, but by embedded and encoded institutional arrangements or infrastructural forces.
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