How does the process of IT implementation unfold when an organisation mandates an IT‐led transformation spanning an entire sector that comprises hundreds or even thousands of companies?
As a result of our research we have found that:
• The alternation of disagreements and consensus building emerges as the most important processes at play in the effort of successfully mandating IT.
• The technology is neither accepted nor rejected as such, but neither can it be appropriated locally. Technology becomes the topic of a discourse between cooperatives and farmers: it is first created, then rejected, then changed and then adapted in a way that suits the interests, learning needs and appropriation skills of all interested actors.
• The ability to deal with managing misalignment increases an organisation’s capacity to change, adapt and adopt technological solutions.
• Misalignment is a condition that enables the institution to adapt via a process of negotiation in which mimetic, coercive and normative mechanisms interact in the production of new practices.
