Abstract

This paper examines how modelling grammars in Information Systems evolve when computational infrastructures alter the institutional conditions of organisational coordination. While Information Systems research has traditionally treated digital artefacts as tools for representing and processing information, distributed computational mediation increasingly requires systems to represent institutional commitments, authority structures, and accountability relations across organisational boundaries. To analyse this shift, the paper reconstructs the cognitive trajectory of Mike Martin’s theoretical development across three decades of work on distributed systems. Treating this trajectory as analytical material rather than intellectual biography, the study identifies a sequence of modelling crises in which dyadic specification frameworks—adequate for informational transactions within bounded organisations—became insufficient for representing institutionally mediated action. These crises progressively led to the articulation of a triadic modelling grammar in which institutional acts are represented as relations among actors, roles, and authorised actions. Drawing on longitudinal interviews, archival modelling artefacts, and published reflections by Martin, the paper traces how this modelling innovation emerged through practical design challengesand subsequently informed the architectural development of institutional infrastructures such as Trustworthy Governable Platforms. The analysis shows how modelling grammar itself evolves under computational mediation, shifting from informational representation toward architectures capable of preserving institutional accountability. The paper contributes to Information Systems theory by demonstrating how sustained engagement with programmable artefacts can generate conceptual innovations that reshape modelling frameworks and reorient the discipline from informational representation toward institutional infrastructure.

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