An Affordances Apparatus for Enterprise Social Media

• The current paper addresses one of the core yet complex issues in the study of technology in organizations: the relationship between the social and the material. Many scholars in the field of Information Systems have used the notion of affordance as a lens to investigate and theorize this relationship. However, knowledge contributions in this area are often abstract and impractical, or at least compel further conceptual development. This paper uses a relational view of affordances to study organizational social media affor- dances based on empirical data collected about the use of the Wiki technology at two large multinational organizations—CCC and IBM. It theorizes four key mechanisms—referring to other affordances (referential), collectively enacting significant affordances (communal), situation-dependent exploitation of affordances (situatedness), and exploiting other op- portunities for action (multiplicity), that embody the interaction between the social and the material. These mechanisms make up what is labelled in this paper as ‘the affordances ap- paratus’. The apparatus provides a conceptual structure for the interaction between social and material features that shows operational dynamics and processes underpinning the perception, enactment and exploitation of affordances. This apparatus is the main contribu- tion of the paper in that it gives researchers a conceptual tool for investigating affordances as relational constructs between the social and the material. It also helps in understanding how people navigate the use of technology features relative to their intentions and goals.

Subject headings

NATURVETENSKAP  -- Data- och informationsvetenskap -- Systemvetenskap, informationssystem och informatik (hsv//swe)

NATURAL SCIENCES  -- Computer and Information Sciences -- Information Systems (hsv//eng)

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Ekonomi och näringsliv -- Företagsekonomi (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Economics and Business -- Business Administration (hsv//eng)

Keyword

Affordances

Wikis

Social Media

Apparatus

Social

Material

Informatik

Information Systems

Affordances

Apparatus

Material

Social

Social media

Wikis

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

art (subject category)