Abstract
Digital infrastructures increasingly encode not only organisational processes but the grammar of institutional action itself. Role-mediated commitments, contestation procedures, accountability rules, and evidence standards are embedded in executable architectures rather than sustained solely through practice or hierarchical authority. While structuration theory explains how institutions are reproduced through recursive action, and institutional work accounts for strategic transformation, existing theories do not address what occurs when the grammar governing institutional reproduction becomes computationally encoded and recursively modifiable. This paper introduces the concept of structurability to describe the condition in which institutional structuring acts are formalised as programmable conversation archetypes subject to meta-governance. Whereas structuration concerns the reproduction of structure through practice, structurability theorises the architectural encoding and revision of the rules that govern such reproduction. We formalise conversation archetypes as institutional primitives and identify key architectural variables—including archetype revision authority, meta-governance depth, contestation architecture, provenance density, mandate reconfigurability, and evidence discipline—that bound a morphological possibility space for institutional forms. We advance 1propositions concerning morphological constraint, institutional plasticity gradients, architectural power redistribution, and morphogenetic recursion. We argue that when structuring grammar becomes programmable, organisational morphology is no longer solely emergent from social interaction but becomes partially architected within infrastructural constraints. Institutional evolution shifts from incremental structural drift toward architected morphogenesis. By reframing institutional theory in architectural terms, the paper advances a computationally grounded account of institutional form and contributes to organisational theory under conditions of pervasive digital mediation.
Recommended Citation
Jacucci, Gianni, "preprint OISI26 6 morfo3 - Structurability: The Institutional Genome and Architectural Morphogenesis Under Programmable Institutional Grammar" (2026). OISI Workshop 2026. 10.
https://aisel.aisnet.org/oisiworkshop2026/10