Abstract
Digital innovations have the potential to affect, not just their users and the organizations that develop and deploy them, but also society as a whole. However, the attempt to study the connections between digital innovations and societal transformation is fraught with challenges. These challenges include: the diversity of even apparently similar digital innovations, the long causal chains linking digital innovations with outcomes that might reflect societal transformation, and the difficulty of identifying contextual conditions that might make a difference in the societal outcomes of digital innovations. This chapter proposes a strategy for inquiry that builds upon what we already know about information systems. The strategy has two hallmarks: (1) it looks for relevant conditions that are both material and symbolic or ideational, and (2) it looks for relevant conditions arising throughout the course of the digital innovation’s developmental trajectory. The research strategy is illustrated by the case of a specific mobile money offering in sub-Saharan Africa (M-Pesa in Kenya). Evidence is first presented for the plausibility of hypothesizing that mobile money could be societally transformative in some sub-Saharan African countries. Then, the research strategy is applied to identify digitally-relevant contextual conditions that are plausibly linked to M-Pesa’s transformative outcomes in Kenya. These contextual conditions are offered as clues to where to search for causal conditions and mechanisms in the case of mobile money more generally. These conditions and mechanisms then might be progressively generalized by means of comparisons with other digital innovations.