BEYOND THE SOCIAL: EMBRACING SOCIOMATERIALITY INTO STRATEGY FOR UNDERSTANDING EXTERNAL ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGES

Abstract

Current organizational studies addressing external environmental changes predominantly adopt a human-centric perspective, focusing on the unforeseen implications and social responses to such changes. This paper argues for a shift from viewing external environmental changes purely as social phenomena to recognizing the intertwined roles of both social and material elements. The methodology involved a literature review of organizational studies, specifically focusing on studies during and after the pandemic (2020–2024), using search terms like “COVID-19”, “pandemic”, “organizations”, “implication”, and “work”. The analysis employed a thematic approach to identify patterns within the literature. This paper concludes that a sociomaterial perspective can provide a robust framework for enhancing our understanding of environmental dynamics, advocating for its broader application in organizational research. This paper contributes to organizational studies in two ways. First, it brings the material into the foreground to amend deficiencies in our understanding of the organizational external environment within which organizational practices are formed and framed. Second, the paper synthesizes the literature on sociomateriality to eliminate the ambiguity often associated with this framework, facilitating its adoption in empirical research.