Information technology adoption in organizations is a process where managers and employees attempt to use and adapt information technology to carry out their everyday work. Given the different requirements of managers and employees, these adaptations often generate tensions around IT uses. We outline an alternative model of information technology based on the theatrical idea of performance where people use information systems not to resist but to project an image of compliance. Thus doing, they are able to erect an electronic façade that hides the improvised information systems needed to achieve their goals. We specify this model from a sociomaterial perspective on information systems use to highlight the role that the material properties of IT artifacts have in the adoption of prescribed information systems. Our dramaturgical model of IT adoption contributes to this emerging stream of research by exploring the social dynamics in sociomaterial performances of information systems
