The proliferation of enterprise social media generates an ever-growing record of digital traces that provides ample opportunities to study the social making of organisations. Subsequently, we present the social fabric framework, which comprises a structured five-step approach for eliciting, interpreting, and representing the situated social idiosyncrasies and underlying patterns of the social making of organisations. The paper focuses on the application of the social fabric framework as a research method. However, the framework also lends itself to practice as a diagnostic tool that can detect emergent changes in the social fabric of an organisation as well as support organisational development and change. Moreover, by providing a vocabulary for articulating the social making of organisations, the framework can help organisation members reify their dispositions, make sense of the social dynamics, and enable a constructive discussion at the grassroots level about any controversy or aspiration.

Digital transformation (DT) is typically described as a strategic, top-down initiative where new digital technologies fundamentally disrupt an organisation’s structure, procedures, and processes to enhance its value proposition. We propose a middle-range theory which highlights that DT of professional practices in healthcare follows a different path. To build this theory, we transpose the metaphor of a “fitness landscape” from evolutionary biology to a professional healthcare context to build an intermediate conceptualisation, which is then refined through an empirical study. Our theory highlights that external events, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, changing patient behaviours or the availability of new digital resources, transform the “value landscape” upon which healthcare professionals create and deliver healthcare services to patients. Empowered by their professional autonomy and driven by their service orientation, healthcare professionals search for new paths and peaks for value creation and delivery across a rugged landscape. As digital resources are leveraged, new value propositions in practice emerge, and professional healthcare practices are digitally transformed.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the adoption of healthcare information systems (HIS) from a user perspective. Our case study concerns how a group of orthopaedic surgeons experienced and reacted to the adoption and mandatory use of an Electronic Patient Record system in a Danish hospital. We propose to use the concepts of hospitality and hostility to turn our attention to the interaction between the host (the surgeons) and the guest (the information system) and consider how the boundaries between them evolved in the everyday work practices. As an alternative to previous studies on technology adoption, these concepts help us appreciate and put special emphasis on particular aspects of the adoption process: the mutual and co-constitutive relationship between the users and the technology and the continued co-existence of both positive and negative attitudes among the users. The findings suggest an alternative way of thinking about an adoption process that is considered relevant to managers who strive to ensure successful adoption of HIS.