Abstract
Affordances have been increasingly used in the information systems literature to account for the usage and effects of information technology. However, a review of the literature shows that the construct has remained nebulously defined, rarely used in anything but singular forms and with little consideration of context. This has resulted in a lack of cumulative research on affordances. We propose that affordances need to be considered not only individually, but also as configurations of multiple affordances. Through a sociomaterial sequence analysis of two software development teams - one waterfall and one agile - we build a framework for the study of affordance ecologies. We highlight four dimensions of affordance ecologies: clustering, spread, concentration, and alignment. As such, we develop a general grammar for describing interactions between multiple technologies and actions in the form of affordance configurations that can aid scholars in analyzing variance in practice intertwined with technology.
Original language | English |
---|---|
State | Published - 2014 |
Event | 20th Americas Conference on Information Systems, AMCIS 2014 - Savannah, GA, United States Duration: 7 Aug 2014 → 9 Aug 2014 |
Conference
Conference | 20th Americas Conference on Information Systems, AMCIS 2014 |
---|---|
Country/Territory | United States |
City | Savannah, GA |
Period | 7/08/14 → 9/08/14 |
Keywords
- Affordances
- Sociomateriality
- Software development