The IT artifact and its spirit: a nexus of human values, affordances, symbolic expressions, and IT features

Abstract

This article theorises the IT artifact using a new conceptualisation of IT Spirit that highlights the interrelationships between IT Features, Affordances, and Symbolic Expressions. Although these concepts have been discussed in the IS literature, researchers have mostly examined them independently. Drawing on the philosophical theories of Aristotle and Heidegger, this article discusses the “essence of technology” by conceptualising the IT artifact in terms of the intertwining relationships that exist between IT Features, their Symbolic Expressions, the Affordances connected to them at different levels of abstraction, and the Values that emerge from the enactment of their action possibilities within a user group. It is argued that these essential components of the IT artifact operate at variant levels of abstraction, instigate user sense-making, and subsequently form the overarching IT Spirit. The latter is presented as the incorporeal essence of a technology that shapes – and is itself shaped by – user sense-making and appropriation. With the emphasis that it gives to human values, the concept of IT Spirit offers researchers a high-level unit of analysis to tackle the IT artifact and a systematic framework that facilitates the identification of its prominent action possibilities.