Scientific progress relies on contrarian thinking that questions assumptions shaping how scholars frame, study, or theorize phenomena. Unexamined, such assumptions perpetuate the same views, practices, and explanations, building entrenched research trajectories that limit scholarly debate on understanding the world. If we are interested in a healthy Information Systems (IS) discipline that contributes to a better world, we require precisely this openness to different understandings of the world. Therefore, for this special issue, we invited original submissions that embrace contrarian thinking and engage in value-reflexivity when investigating and theorizing about digital phenomena. In this editorial, we synthesize previous work to define contrarian thinking and link it to value-reflexivity. We then present how the special issue articles embrace such thinking through value-reflexivity. Our contribution to IS research is twofold: first, we illustrate the importance of such thinking for triggering and upholding vigorous debate on phenomena, research methods, and theory; second, we invite and encourage scholars to embrace contrarian thinking through value-reflexivity. By bringing contrarian thinking through value-reflexivity into explicit consideration, we hope to foster the boldness required for new, and even radical ideas for IS research to thrive and contribute to a better world.

• Investigates and theorizes the process of digital transformation of work in a human resources function through the lens of identity shifts. • Develops a process model that explains how the interplay of digital transformation work and function work entails identity tensions. • Vertical identity tensions emerge between identity claims and understandings while horizontal identity tensions emerge among identity understandings. • Reveals that digital transformation of work produces coexisting identities, shifting identity by addition. • Provides insights into vertical and horizontal identity tensions that call for a reframing of how we interpret organizational inertia in digital transformation. Organizations increasingly engage in digital transformation (DT) of work. Previous research has shown that DT of work can engender intended and unintended consequences, such as tensions signaling organizational inertia. Scholars and practitioners often attribute transformation failure to such inertia. However, not inertia but the failure to evaluate and address it entails transformation failure. To evaluate inertia, we must dissect the nature of tensions signaling it. For this, we must understand how the DT of work process, from which they emerge, unfolds. We theorize that DT of work unfolds from an interplay of DT work and function work. We empirically study this interplay through an ethnography of a large car manufacturer’s human resources function. We draw on identity theory—the concepts of identity claim and understanding—and illustrate that DT of work unfolds in three evolutionary periods marked by shifting identity claims and understandings reflected in DT work. We reveal that DT of work involves vertical (i.e., between claims and understandings) and horizontal (i.e., among coexisting understandings) identity tensions. Against previous literature’s contentions, these tensions indicate that DT of work shifts identity by addition, not substitution. We contribute twofold. First, we conceptualize a process model of how DT of work unfolds from an identity theory perspective. This model outlines how revised identity claims initiate DT work and how DT of work produces multiple identity understandings entailing vertical and horizontal identity tensions. While vertical tensions trigger revisions of identity claims that initiate adjustments in DT work, horizontal tensions suggest DT of work shifts identity by addition. Second, we outline how our insights into identity tensions in DT of work can inform research into DT-induced identity tensions and underlying inertia.

Digital technology enables the transformation of work and workplaces. Previous digital workplace transformation (DWT) literature has shown how organisations add new digital technologies to create new workplace routines. However, such an emphasis on addition may hinder scholarship from recognising that some established workplace technologies and routines must disappear for new ones to emerge. Adopting the concept of deinstitutionalisation, we examine the rationale for and the process of how an organisation abandons workplace routines that conflict with its intended DWT. Referring to this as subtraction logic, we advance two contributions. First, we conceptualise how deinstitutionalisation of established workplace routines and technologies unfolds in DWT by outlining a process model that synthesises addition and subtraction. Second, we highlight the underlying rationales for DWT. With these insights, we shift the gaze from the dominant addition logic, which advocates for appropriating new digital technologies, to the equally important value of subtraction, i.e., removing existing workplace technologies (or inscribed institutional rules) to abandon workplace routines that conflict with the intended DWT. Hence, our study highlights the oft-ignored subtraction logic in DWT.