Abstract:

Socio-technical transition research has predominantly centered its analytical attention on technological innovation. Drawing on the Multi-Level Perspective (MLP), and predominantly its application in sustainability transition studies, this paper revisits this technological innovation focus in light of digital transformation. We argue that general-purpose, modular, and scalable digital technologies diffuse rapidly across regimes without requiring prior regime reconfiguration. This accelerated diffusion destabilizes established lock-in mechanisms and generates responsibility gaps within political, market, and socio-cultural sub-regimes. We conceptualize this dynamic as a two-sided innovation process in which technological diffusion unfolds alongside, and generates the need for, responsibility-oriented social innovation. Corporate Digital Responsibility is theorized as one manifestation of such social innovation, emerging through experimentation across organizations, industry networks, policy arenas, and academia. By clarifying how diffusion-induced regime destabilization creates conditions for social innovation, this paper refines the MLP and shifts analytical attention toward the interplay between rapid technological diffusion and responsibility-oriented regime stabilization in digital transitions.

Please choose your submission type: Developmental Paper

Primary Track: Sustainable and Responsible Business

Keywords: responsible business;technology/digital business);secondary research/concept paper

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Ms. Anna Sidorenko