Keywords

sociomateriality, affordances, software development

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 Publication Citation

Lindberg, A., Gaskin, J., Berente, N., & Lyytinen, K. (2014) “Exploring Configurations of Affordances: The Case of Software Development,” 20th Americas Conference on Information Systems, Savannah, GA, USA.

Document Type

Conference Paper

Publication Date

2014

Publisher

20th Americas Conference on Information Systems

Language

English

College

Marriott School of Business

Department

Information Systems Management

University Standing at Time of Publication

Full Professor

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