Abstract

In Information Systems (IS) research, the relational understanding of affordances explains how technologies enable or constrain action possibilities for goal-oriented actors. Following this relational view, affordances are subject-dependent: the same technology may afford different possibilities to different actors, depending on their roles, abilities, and actions; suggesting that the subject of an affordance does not have to be a single individual. With multi-actor affordances, action possibilities whose actualization depend on more than one actor such as a dyad, group, collective or organization. For example, Leonardi (2013) introduced the notion of shared and collective affordances to explain how technology use can enable network change when members of organizations converge around common uses of technology. Vaast et al., (2017) developed the idea of connective affordances to explain how social media enables collective action across emergent roles. Weichold and Thonhauser (2020) proposed the joint affordances when the realization depends on more than one individual. More recently, Claggett and Karahanna (2025) conceptualize coordination affordances as action possibilities that support coordination through configurations. In all, they offer rich insights on how multiple actors are situated within the affordance lens. However, shared, collective, connective, joint, and coordination affordances fail to contribute to cumulative research on generalizable theories of affordances associated with more than one actor, because each study offers a local and varying way of defining and classifying affordances for more than one agents. We argue that IS research needs a systematic framework for theorizing affordances involving more than one actor. We propose that multi-actor affordances should be analyzed along several dimensions. First, researchers should specify the unit of the affordance subject: individual, dyad, group, collective, or organization. Second, they should examine the relationship among actors: whether actors belong to the same social group, such as two players on the same volleyball team, or to different role groups, such as a student and an advisor. Third, researchers should consider task interdependence and reciprocity: whether actors’ outcomes have an influence on others or not. Finally, they should account for power asymmetry between the actors, including institutional and hierarchical differences.

Download

Share

COinS