Digitalization is a Virus: The Case of the Italian PA *

Abstract Digitalization is transforming organizations across sectors, yet its forms and effects vary widely depending on how digitalization processes interact with diverse organizational contexts. Drawing on virus theory and qualitative data collected between 2020 and 2022, in this article we examine the digitalization trajectory of the Italian public administration (PA). We show how digitalization is incubated and translated into locally specific configurations, producing heterogeneous organizational trajectories that progressively accumulate within the field. As the consequences of this accumulated variety become problematic for field-level coordination, central actors seek to govern it through digital infrastructures and standards that operate as a form of “vaccine”. Conceptually, we extend virus theory from the organizational to the field level by showing how heterogeneous digitalization trajectories may accumulate and become themselves an object of coordination and regulation. This perspective highlights how the role of technology may change over the course of field-level digitalization, from primarily enabling organizational variety through situated translations and mutations to increasingly becoming a material and regulative means through which such variety is governed.