Abstract
In recent years, there has been an increasing demand to investigate IT-associated organizational change with equal consideration of the materiality of IT artifacts and their human interpretation. Many researchers consider affordances to be a promising theoretical concept that enables a middle ground between technological determinism and social constructivism. However, the transfer of the affordance concept that originated in ecological psychology to the field of Information Systems gave rise to ontological discussions and methodological questions. With our research, we aim to answer the call for more precise methodological guidelines for affordance research. Therefore, we conducted a systematic literature review of empirical affordance studies in Information Systems publication outlets. Our search resulted in 152 relevant articles, from which we analyzed 29 journal articles as part of our research-inprogress. From these articles, we extracted data regarding the concepts of technology type, application area, technology affordances, research design, research methods, and methodological best practices. In our article, we provide insights about the current state of affordance research and derive eight recommendations for conducting affordance research in the field of Information Systems. By doing so, we contribute to a systematic approach for developing affordance-based theories of IT-associated organizational change in the field of Information Systems.
Recommended Citation
Fromm, Jennifer; Mirbabaie, Milad; and Stieglitz, Stefan, "A SYSTEMATIC REVIEW OF EMPIRICAL AFFORDANCE STUDIES: RECOMMENDATIONS FOR AFFORDANCE RESEARCH IN INFORMATION SYSTEMS" (2020). ECIS 2020 Research-in-Progress Papers. 42.
https://aisel.aisnet.org/ecis2020_rip/42
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