Digital Tension Catalysis & Power Reconfiguration: Breaches of Responsibility in the Horizon Scandal

Breaches of digital responsibility can have serious societal consequences, especially in quasi-public organizations undergoing digitalization. This paper examines the British Post Office Horizon scandal—a case that devastated subpostmasters, their families, and society—to explore how such breaches unfold. Drawing on the organizational tension perspective, we identify two mechanisms: Digital Tension Catalysis and Digital Power Reconfiguration, which show how digitalization amplifies latent tensions, transforms them into salient ones, and reshapes power dynamics. Our analysis spans institutional, behavioral, and technological dimensions, revealing a progression of tensions from dilemmatic to dialectical to paradoxical. This progression highlights how digitalization intensifies contradictions and complicates their resolution. We propose a theoretical framework explaining how digital systems catalyze tensions and reconfigure power in quasi-public organizations. Our findings contribute to the literature on digital responsibility and organizational tensions and provide practitioners with tools to anticipate and mitigate breaches during digital transformation.