CoChat
Sign Up
Cited by 145Digitalization, Law, and RegulationEthics and Social Impacts of AIInnovation, Technology, and Society

The DOI matches its Crossref record.

The concept of function creep

Open access
Koops, Bert-Jaap·2021·Law Innovation and Technology
DOI 10.1080/17579961.2021.1898299
Open this paper in CoChat — free account

Abstract

Function creep – the expansion of a system or technology beyond its original purposes – is a well-known phenomenon. Correction: it is a well-referenced phenomenon. Yearly, hundreds of publications use the term to criticise developments in technology regulation and data governance, but surprisingly, no-one has ever written a paper about the concept itself. This paper fills that gap in the literature, by analysing and defining ‘function creep’. This creates conceptual clarity that can help structure future debates and address function creep concerns. After analysing the term ‘function creep’ itself, I discuss concepts that share family resemblances, including other ‘creep’ concepts and many theoretical notions from STS, economics, sociology, public policy, law, and discourse theory. Function creep can be situated in the nexus of reverse adaptation and self-augmentation of technology, incrementalism and disruption in policy and innovation, policy spillovers, ratchet effects, transformative use, and slippery slope argumentation. Based on this, I define function creep as an imperceptibly transformative and therewith contestable change in a data-processing system’s proper activity. Argumentation theory illuminates how the pejorative ‘function creep’ functions in debates: it makes visible that what looks like linear change is actually non-linear, and simultaneously calls for a much-needed debate about this qualitative change.

Overview

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1080/17579961.2021.1898299

Cites

Statistics

Verification

Claims the paper makes

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

Self-check

Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.

The self-check needs the paper’s full text.

Citations

Cites

Still being checked.

Research works printed but not linked: 3

  1. 121 DA Schön, ‘Generative Metaphor: A Perspective on Problem-Setting in Social Policy’ in A Ortony (ed.), Metaphor and Thought (Cambridge University Press, 2nd edn 1993) 137.
  2. 123 I Ayres and J Braithwaite, Responsive Regulation: Transcending the Deregulation Debate (Oxford University Press, 1992).
  3. 124 R Owen, J Bessant, and M Heintz, Responsible Innovation: Managing the Responsible Emergence of Science and innovation in Society (Wiley, 2013).

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Related

See all

Metadata

Authors
Koops, B.-J.
Affiliations
Tilburg University (NL)
Corresponding author
Koops, Bert-Jaap
ORCID
Koops, Bert-Jaap
Venue
Law Innovation and Technology
Publisher
Informa UK Limited
Published
2021-01-02
Volume
13
Issue
1
Pages
29-56
ISSN
  • 1757-9961 (ISSN-L)
  • 1757-997X
DOI
10.1080/17579961.2021.1898299
OpenAlex
W3014550337
Cited by
145
References
0
Citations by year
2026: 31 · 2025: 28 · 2024: 20 · 2023: 33 · 2022: 20 · 2021: 12
FWCI
140.44
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Licence
Locations
  • Law Innovation and Technology (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
  • Research portal (Tilburg University) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
  • Data Archiving and Networked Services (DANS) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
  • SSRN Electronic Journal (submittedVersion)
Funders
European Union’s Horizon 2020 (653626)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Law › Digitalization, Law, and Regulation
  • Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Artificial Intelligence › Ethics and Social Impacts of AI
  • Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Innovation, Technology, and Society
Keywords
function creep, technology regulation, data governance, conceptual definitions, incrementalism, disruption, policy spillovers, ratchet effect, transformative use, argumentation theory, nonlinear change, data processing systems

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review