When pandemic strikes hard: Digital diversity makes a difference

The Covid-19 pandemic, whose effects on the forms of social organization are still far from being fully explored, has opened the door to forms of experimentation unprecedented in their speed and extent. The pandemic outbreak has required immediate responses from organizations that have drawn on both intentional and unintentional repertoires. In particular, the use of IT architectures was characterized by unintended responses that nevertheless allowed organizations to respond to the demands of health systems and bureaucracy to document population protection activities. The work we present here confirms that in the case studied, the benefits manifested themselves most clearly when organizations were able to be flexibility-by-deviation by drawing on infrastructural projects considered by ordinary management to be non-strategic until the arrival of the pandemic.