Digital platforms as meta-programmes: reframing inclusion through programmability

Purpose This paper examines why many small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) remain excluded from the digital and green transformations known as the Twin Transition. Drawing on Niklas Luhmann's social systems theory, it reconceptualises inclusion/exclusion not as a matter of resource deficits, but as a question of programmability, understood as the ability to generate communications that are intelligible within functionally differentiated social systems. Design/methodology/approach The study employs a qualitative, social systems theoretical approach grounded in second-order observation. It analyses an empirical case from a South Baltic Interreg project that developed a digital platform to support SME transformation. Rather than evaluating outcomes in managerial terms, the analysis observes how digital platform modules operate as meta-programmes that condition organisational decision programmes and structural coupling. Findings The findings show that digital platforms can function as socio-technical infrastructures that translate societal codes into organisationally useable semantic structures. By operating as meta-programmes, platform modules enable SMEs to reprogramme decision programmes related to digitalisation and sustainability, thereby enhancing their capacity to produce communications that resonate with multiple societal subsystems. Inclusion emerges as a semantic and programmatic effect rather than a direct out-come of access to resources Originality/value The paper contributes to Information Systems research by integrating Luhmann's distinction between code and programme into the analysis of digital infrastructures. It introduces the concepts of meta-programmes and programmable inclusion, highlighting programmability as a semantic condition of communicative connectability and extending current debates on socio-technical infrastructures, digital governance and organisational observability.