Affordance Theory Perspectives on IT and Healthcare Organization

Affordance theory has promise for studying technology’s role in organizational change. By distinguishing properties of technology and their affordances in relation to its users, it facilitates the examination of technological consequences whilst avoiding technological determinism. This paper argues that it is useful to explore affordances and consequences of their actualization (or the lack of) at an organizational field level, because they might emerge from phenomena cutting across organizational and technological boundaries. Such a focus would include exploration of technological architectures not just specific artefacts, and mapping of complimentary affordances, as well as discontinuities helping or hindering organizations in achieving a shared goal. The paper introduces our study of IT-enabled change programs in healthcare to illustrate how such research might be conducted from the affordance theory perspective. Our ultimate aim is to contribute to the development of the affordance theory at an organizational field level.