Prospecting Cooperative Intelligent Transport Systems acceptance by road management teams through activity theory – a qualitative study

This article aims to contribute to the development of third generation activity theorising to explore the future of professional situations following the implementation of a new technology and more particularly the acceptance of this technology. To do this, we describe formally the current work of subjects (road management teams) engaged in a job located at the boundary of several interacting activity systems. We therefore position ourselves in opposition to the classical approaches of acceptability, which focus mainly on the user-technology link at the individual level. We consider that acceptance is the consequence of an evolution of the activity systems. In the first stage, we collect observable dysfunctions in individual actions, which we translate into contradictions within or between activity systems. Secondly, we propose different scenarios of technological implementation, which we use to imagine the future of the professional situation. Our approach is of particular interest in complex professional contexts with interdependencies between employees from different professions and even different organisations.