Paper Number

1785

Abstract

Since its development in the field of ecological psychology, the concept ‘affordances’ has been prone to various adaptations. This is most evident in information systems (IS) research, where rapid developments and the generativity of today's digital technologies require a fast advancement of affordances theorization. Frequent but stepwise progress has been made to the concept over the past few years through IS researchers. While those advancements are necessary for understanding IT-associated organizational change, they carry the risk of theoretical fragmentation hindering knowledge accumulation. Applying a systematic five-staged literature review and reintegrating the results into existing conceptualizations of affordances, this paper strives toward a meta-view on affordances, constituted in a descriptive affordances framework and an affordances lifecycle model. The former provides researchers a tool for better identifying and understanding the meta-characteristics of affordances, while the latter offers a lens to interpret the circumstances of affordance emergence, actualization, and their outcomes.

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