Paper Type
Complete
Abstract
Understanding the history of and variety of uses for a given theoretical perspective in a discipline is useful for insight into the acceptance, evolution, and diversity of scenarios to which the theory has been applied. This literature review analyzes Actor-Network Theory (ANT) in IS journals over 25 years. It descriptively codes nearly 60 papers published in leading IS journals from 1999 to 2023. After coding for the attributes of the papers’ genre (conceptual, empirical, or review), research methods, and the authors' country affiliation, I conclude that authors from the UK and Scandinavia are highly represented, those from North America are sparsely represented, and ones from Australia, France, and Spain are present to a moderate extent. While observing broader distribution of ANT to various research genre – beyond the qualitative, field studies that I expected to find, ANT seems to represent an innovation that has “stalled” in its diffusion to North American IS scholars.
Paper Number
1381
Recommended Citation
Gallivan, Mike J., "What Has Been the Uptake of Actor-Network Theory among IS Scholars: An Analysis of a Stalled Innovation Diffusion" (2024). AMCIS 2024 Proceedings. 1.
https://aisel.aisnet.org/amcis2024/sig_phil/sig_phil/1
What Has Been the Uptake of Actor-Network Theory among IS Scholars: An Analysis of a Stalled Innovation Diffusion
Understanding the history of and variety of uses for a given theoretical perspective in a discipline is useful for insight into the acceptance, evolution, and diversity of scenarios to which the theory has been applied. This literature review analyzes Actor-Network Theory (ANT) in IS journals over 25 years. It descriptively codes nearly 60 papers published in leading IS journals from 1999 to 2023. After coding for the attributes of the papers’ genre (conceptual, empirical, or review), research methods, and the authors' country affiliation, I conclude that authors from the UK and Scandinavia are highly represented, those from North America are sparsely represented, and ones from Australia, France, and Spain are present to a moderate extent. While observing broader distribution of ANT to various research genre – beyond the qualitative, field studies that I expected to find, ANT seems to represent an innovation that has “stalled” in its diffusion to North American IS scholars.
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