An Organization-And Process-Based Framework Of It Affordances For The Is Discipline

A growing number of Information Systems (IS) researchers are applying the theory of affordances to study the uses and consequences of the Information Technology (IT) artifacts in organizations, necessitating an integrative view of the subject. However, the definition of IT affordance varies in the originating literature, lacking coherence. We offer a framework for organizing the existing literature. This framework models affordances' manifestations as effects of people's actions at the organizational level. We reviewed 495 articles in IS, Organizational Studies, and Management literature, and closely examined a filtered subset of 220 articles. Our work makes three main contributions. First, we address the concept of IT affordance at the organizational level. Second, we looked and classified existing affordance literature into four main areas: affordance existence, affordance perception, affordance actualization, and affordance effect. We provided an exploration of each element in those areas and its implications at an organizational level and for a process-based orientation. Finally, we offer an analysis of the methodologies used on the literature to signal a potential venue for future research in the use of empirical quantitative methods to address an existing gap.