Affordance Theory Research Articles

Taking crime guns seriously: A socio-material perspective

This article argues that guns, as objects used in and for crime, have received insufficient criminological attention. It proposes a socio-material perspective for taking crime guns seriously as material agents in the ways many serious crimes are planned and executed. Drawing in part upon affordance theory, the perspective links the ‘objective’ physical properties of guns to their allure and take up for the purposes of carrying out crime. Guns are powerful organising objects in the commission of crime, it is argued, capable of provoking as well as enabling a range of threatening and harmful activities. The perspective is developed drawing upon interview data from a large qualitative study of convicted gun criminals. These data enable the notion of materiality to be considered at different stages of criminal career, particularly prior to first criminal gun use through to enforced or voluntary desistance. The article concludes with a consideration of policy options suggested by the socio-material perspective. In a post-Covid 19 world in which guns have gained greater salience in many countries, it is argued that the need to ‘dematerialise’ gun attraction and use has never been greater.

The role of marketing and innovation in services

Big data technologies and analytics enable new digital services and are often associated with superior performance. However, firms investing in big data often fail to attain those advantages. To answer the questions of how and when big data pay off, marketing scholars need new theoretical approaches and empirical tools that account for the digitized world. Building on affordance theory, the authors develop a novel, conceptually rigorous, and practice-oriented framework of the impact of big data investments on service innovation and performance. Affordances represent action possibilities, namely what individuals or organizations with certain goals and capabilities can do with a technology. The authors conceptualize and operationalize three important big data marketing affordances: customer behavior pattern spotting, real-time market responsiveness, and data-driven market ambidexterity. The empirical analysis establishes construct validity and offers a preliminary nomological test of direct, indirect, and conditional effects of big data marketing affordances on perceived big data performance.

Houkuttelevan asumisen ainekset

Asukas- ja käyttäjälähtöinen suunnittelu vaatii tuekseen laajempaa ymmärrystä asumisen arjesta ja asukkaiden kokemuksista, joista tulisi suodattaa suunnittelulle hyödyllistä tietoa. Artikkelissa vastataan haasteeseen tarkastelemalla asukkaiden näkemyksiä asumisen koetuista laatutekijöistä. Tarkastelu perustuu tarjoumateoriaan, jota sovellettiin osallistavaa valokuvamenetelmää hyödyntävien fokusryhmähaastattelujen analyysissa. Tulokset nostavat esiin sellaisia houkuttelevan asumisen aineksia, joita on käsitelty vähän tutkimuskirjallisuudessa. Jotta tulokset palvelisivat mahdollisimman hyvin asukas- ja käyttäjäkeskeisen suunnittelun tiedontarpeita, on niitä reflektoitu erityisesti tästä näkökulmasta.

Understanding the role of employees in digital transformation: conceptualization of digital literacy of employees as a multi-dimensional organizational affordance

PurposeMuch of recent academic and professional interest in exploring digital transformation and enterprise systems has focused on the technology or the organizations' external forces, leaving internal factors, in particular employees, overlooked. The purpose of this paper is to explore digital literacy of employees as an organizational affordance to capture contextual factors within which digital technologies are situated and are used.Design/methodology/approachWe used the evidence-based practice for information systems approach, and undertook a systematic literature review of 30 papers coupled with brainstorming with 11 professional experts on the neglected topic of digital literacy and its assessment.FindingsThis paper draws upon affordance theory, and develops a novel framework for conceptualization of digital literacy of employees as an organizational affordance. We do this by distinguishing digital literacy at the individual level and organizational level, and by assessing digital literacy through Information/Cognitive and Social Practice/Articulation affordances.Research limitations/implicationsThe current paper contributes to the notion of organizational affordances by examining the effect of interactions between employee-technology through digital literacy of employees in using digital technologies. We offer a novel conceptualization of digital literacy to improve understanding of the role of employee in digital transformation and utilization of enterprise systems. Thus, our definition of digital literacy offers an extension to the recent discussions in the IS literature regarding the actualization of affordances by bringing a lens of employees into the process.Practical implicationsThis paper operationalizes digital literacy at organizational and individual levels, and offers managers a high-level tool to assess digital literacy of their employees. By doing so, managers can achieve the fit between employees' capabilities and digital technologies that will improve affordance actualization and support their digital transformation initiatives.Originality/valueThe study is one of early attempts to apply and extend affordance theory on digital literacy at organizational level by not limiting the concept to the individual level. The proposed framework improves the communication among researchers and between researchers and practitioners.

Affording Affordance Moral Realism

In this article I elaborate a scientifically based moral realism that I call affordance moral realism, and I offer a promissory note that affordance moral realism is the best current explanation of morality. Affordance moral realism maintains that morality is constituted by the interaction of moral agents and moral affordances. The latter are the natural and social environments in which moral agents’ activities take place and contain the objects of moral agents’ activities whose actualizations are the manifestation of substantive moral goods. In making this argument, I take a scientific naturalistic approach that includes both the natural and social sciences, aiming to make my account both methodologically and substantively naturalistic. On the subject side of my affordance view, I offer a scientific account of moral agency, one based on an extension of social cognitive theories of agency to the realm of morality. And I argue that affordance moral realism explains the nature of moral agency, its acquisition, maintenance, and successful performance. To explain its origin and maintenance, I make use of a general theory of selection that embraces biological, social, cultural, and intentional selection. On the object side, I offer a theory of moral affordances and their actualizations, employing the findings and theories of moral developmental psychology and moral psychology to understand their actualizations through the successful operations of moral agents. I conclude that a scientifically based naturalistic affordance moral realism promises to provide the best current account of morality. It is not only affordable; it’s a bargain.

Digital platformisation as public sector transformation strategy: A case of Ghana's paperless port

Public sector organisations around the world are deploying digital platforms as part of their transformational strategy. However, prior research has predominantly focused on developed economies with stable institutional environments, while limited studies exist on less developed economies. Notwithstanding the digital divide, institutional voids, economic and development challenges facing less developed economies, digital platformisation as a strategy is fuelling technology leapfrogging in public sector transformation. Drawing on a case study of Ghana's paperless port digital transformation and the technology affordance theory, we address the research question: “How can digital platformisation facilitate public sector transformation?” Based on the findings and the technology affordance theory, this study develops a transformational affordance framework (TAF) and offers propositions on how digital platforms can enable public sector transformation.

Knowledge sharing behaviors in social media

PurposeUsers on Social Media (SM) platforms make many decisions related to content sharing, such as whether to create or reuse content, whether to label for easy access by an interest group or not, and whether to disseminate to targeted individuals or broadcast to general audiences. In this study, we investigated if these content-related strategies on SM, called social media knowledge sharing behaviors, are determined by user characteristics. MethodologyUsing concepts from Self-Motivation Theory and the Affordance Theory, we examined if the knowledge sharing behaviors are influenced or correlated with user characteristics, such as the intensity of engagement on SM, a strong preference attitude for a SM platform, and multiple functional intentions for using SM. Based on this survey study of one hundred and twenty-three subjects, we developed hierarchical regression analyses to test if the SM user's knowledge decisions (Creation, Framing and Targeting) are corelated with the user's online usage intensity, their SM online platform preferences, and their functional intentions (Intensity, Preferences and Functionality). We complemented the regression models with a more comprehensive path analysis for an integrative hypothesis testing. FindingsThe main findings show that knowledge creation and knowledge targeting behaviors were correlated with multiple functional intentions (or needs) of users, meaning that users who utilized SM in order to fulfill many needs create and broadcast knowledge more than users that utilized SM in order to fulfill fewer needs. OriginalityThe study investigates the relationship between detailed knowledge sharing behaviors afforded by the social media tools and different user self-determination factors, such as intensity, preference and needs. This study further describes the attributes of social media sharing as a bundle of content sharing strategies of creation, sharing and targeting, which are used differently based on different user characteristics and motivations.

The effect of technical installations on evacuation performance in urban road tunnel fires

Tunnels are separated from the ground by structural linings, and are enclosed and unfamiliar for occupants. In tunnel fires, occupants are faced with a dangerous environment and they need to evacuate. Conveying and obtaining information about the evacuation is the key issue for evacuees. Since tunnels typically have low lighting and little connection outside the tunnel, technical installations are the only approach to deliver information to occupants in order to guide their fast and safe evacuation. This is particularly an issue for urban road tunnels with large occupants’ flow in a large underground space. The present study explores the effect and role of technical installations (alarms, information signs, and lighting) on people’s evacuation performance in urban tunnel fires, through field experiments, questionnaires and interviews. Theory of affordance (sensory affordance, cognitive affordance and functional affordance) is taken into consideration and provides an integral evaluation for technical installations. Technical installations are useful in helping occupants notice the emergency, finding exits and guiding path, and information signs are regarded as the most powerful among those three. Besides, this experiment points out some side effect from alarms and ambiguity of signs which will result in serious consequence potentially. This study leads to guidance on improvement of technical installations on evacuation planning and procedures on urban road tunnels.

Анализ идеологического потенциала видеоигры с точки зрения теории аффордансов Джеймса Гибсона

The purpose of this article is to propose a method for analyzing the ideo­logical content of video games while taking into account the agency of the players. The interactivity of video games as a medium has been attracting the attention of researchers for many years, raising, in particular, the ques­tion of how this unique property serves to broadcast certain ideologies. The ability of games to make ideological statements was discussed by Bogost, Frasca, Aarseth, and many other pioneers of game studies. Video games were analyzed both in the context of older media forms that promoted certain ideas through plots, visuals, and other traditional means, and as unique types of objects that can make statements through rules. I aim to introduce the player — as a subject who is able to transform and conceptual­ize the game based on their own cultural background — to this discussion. Using James Gibson’s theory of affordances, I want to acknowledge the player’s freedom of interpretation, the potential to assign one or another ideology to the game in each playthrough. On the one hand, the player acts as a consumer of content; on the other hand, they are a co-author who will use the tools offered by the video game to produce their own state­ments, to be interpreted independently. This leaves the final decision about the ideology of the game to the consumer; thus, game studies need an ap­proach that allows the analysis of the ideological content of specific games. It is especially important in the light of more and more games prioritizing player freedom and not providing any clear plot or even victory conditions. Of course, research can still proclaim, and rightfully so, that the specific rules in such games bear traces of certain ideological systems — capitalism or secularism, for example. But individual players could undermine such interpretations both at the level of reading the game as a “text”, and at the level of interactive actions inspired by those readings.

Боги из машины: порядок взаимодействия в геймифицированном дистанционном обучении

The article analyzes the implementation of an online educational module and its impact on the organization of the classroom’s interaction order. The latter is institutionally constrained by the presence of a goal and the distribution of roles between teacher and students. The introduction of a digital learning platform adds a technological context to the institutional setting. The article considers technologies as possessing communicative affordances — opportunities for action made possible or delimited through their use. Technologies bring new interactive resources to the process of ed­ucation and can affect the organization of the classroom’s interaction order. Using multimodal conversation analysis, we analyzed video recordings of the telemediated interaction of Russia-based students and teachers within a gamified online educational module. We investigate a case in which a student’s correct answer is nevertheless corrected by the teacher. We dem­onstrate that the teacher initiates the correction because they are guided by the ordering of the game elements within the interface. Based on a detailed analysis of the teacher’s mouse movement in relation to ongoing turns-at-talk, we show that this orientation is sustained by all participants. The work contributes to classroom interaction studies and affordance theory and develops the methodology of multimodal transcription for mediated contexts. The primary result of the study is an empirical demonstration that the relevance of technological affordances for interactants is situation­ally produced, and that this process is associated with the interweaving of the institutional and technical context of interaction. The conclusion discusses the relationship between affordances and institutional norms.

New perspectives on person-centered care: an affordance-based account.

Despite the growing interest and supporting evidence for person-centered care (PCC), there is still a fundamental disagreement about what makes healthcare person-centered. In this article, we define PCC as operating with three fundamental conditions: personal, participatory and holistic. To further understand these concepts, we develop a framework based on the theory of affordances, which we apply to the healthcare case of rehabilitation and a concrete experiment on social interactions between persons with cerebral palsy and physio- and occupational therapists. Based on the application of the theory, we argue that in order for healthcare to be considered as PCC, professionals need to adopt a personalistic attitude in their care, defined (at the how-level) in terms of mutual affordances: how the professional and the person of care acknowledges each other as a person in an interaction. In opposition, we define (at the what level) the functionalistic attitude in terms of object affordances, those related to a concrete goal. We show that PCC requires a balance of personalistic and functionalistic attitudes, since this contributes to a participatory and holistic conception of, and interaction with, the person of care.

Virtually in this together – how web-conferencing systems enabled a new virtual togetherness during the COVID-19 crisis

ABSTRACT Regulations to contain the spread of COVID-19 have affected corporations, institutions, and individuals to a degree that most people have never seen before. Information systems researchers have initiated a discourse on information technology’s role in helping people manage this situation. This study informs and substantiates this discourse based on an analysis of a rich dataset: Starting in March 2020, we collected about 3 million tweets that document people’s use of web-conferencing systems (WCS) like Zoom during the COVID-19 crisis. Applying text-mining techniques to Twitter data and drawing on affordance theory, we derive five affordances of and five constraints to the use of WCS during the crisis. Based on our analysis, our argument is that WCS emerged as a social technology that led to a new virtual togetherness by facilitating access to everyday activities and contacts that were “locked away” because of COVID-19-mitigation efforts. We find that WCS facilitated encounters that could not have taken place otherwise and that WCS use led to a unique blending of various aspects of people’s lives. Using our analysis, we derive implications and directions for future research to address existing constraints and realise the potentials of this period of forced digitalisation.

Attachment to and Detachment from Favorite Stores: An Affordance Theory Perspective

AbstractLike homes, neighborhoods, and cities, retail locations offer significant opportunities for attachment far from domestic spheres. In commercial settings, consumers construct personal geographies, and find stable references for their lives. Our work advances previous consumer research by showing how these relationalities are situated, implicitly unstable and often impermanent. Individuals attach to commercial spaces in multiple ways, through both immediate and slow processes. We theorize that multiple affordances of spaces—whether sensual, symbolic, or cerebral—trigger meaningful ties, stimulate new affective and practice repertoires and may exert a transformative power in personal biographies. Bonds evolve in tandem with individuals’ life courses and are also impacted by events beyond consumers’ control, such as store closures. Whether disruptive or constructive, detachments can precipitate constructive change, allowing individuals to mobilize the emotional and cognitive resources at the base of their affective bond with treasured places, and redirect these assets more effectively. Forced and voluntary detachment from retail spaces are thus interpreted as integral and complementary components of attachment.

Perception-based analytical technique of evacuation behavior under radiological emergency: An illustration of the Kori area

A simulation-based approach is proposed to study the protective actions taken by residents during nuclear emergencies using cognitive findings. Human perception-based behaviors are not heavily incorporated in the evacuation study for nuclear emergencies despite their known importance. This study proposes a generic framework of perception-based behavior simulation, in accordance with the ecological concept of affordance theory and a formal representation of affordance-based finite state automata. Based on the generic framework, a simulation model is developed to allow an evacuee to perceive available actions and execute one of them according to Newton’s laws of motion. The case of a shadow evacuation under nuclear emergency is utilized to demonstrate the applicability of the proposed framework. The illustrated planning algorithm enables residents to compute not only prior knowledge of the environmental map, but also the perception of dynamic surroundings, using widely observed heuristics. The simulation results show that the temporal and spatial dynamics of the evacuation behaviors can be analyzed based on individual perception of circumstances, while utilizing the findings in cognitive science under unavoidable data restriction of nuclear emergencies. The perception-based analysis of the proposed framework is expected to enhance nuclear safety technology by complementing macroscopic analyses for advanced protective measures.

How and when do big data investments pay off? The role of marketing affordances and service innovation

Big data technologies and analytics enable new digital services and are often associated with superior performance. However, firms investing in big data often fail to attain those advantages. To answer the questions of how and when big data pay off, marketing scholars need new theoretical approaches and empirical tools that account for the digitized world. Building on affordance theory, the authors develop a novel, conceptually rigorous, and practice-oriented framework of the impact of big data investments on service innovation and performance. Affordances represent action possibilities, namely what individuals or organizations with certain goals and capabilities can do with a technology. The authors conceptualize and operationalize three important big data marketing affordances: customer behavior pattern spotting, real-time market responsiveness, and data-driven market ambidexterity. The empirical analysis establishes construct validity and offers a preliminary nomological test of direct, indirect, and conditional effects of big data marketing affordances on perceived big data performance.

Impact of Mobile Channel Adoption in Goal-directed Platforms

With the ubiquity of mobile devices and an increasing trend in extending real-world activities into the virtual, goal-directed platforms have experienced rising popularity as they provide individuals with enhanced capabilities for goal pursuit. Prior literature has demonstrated the important role of the diversity in goal pursuit approaches to individuals’ goal pursuit activities. However, a few studies have investigated the technology-mediated goal pursuits especially how mobile channel, as an additional means of web-based goal pursuit means, will affect users’ goal pursuit. In this research, we start with the theoretical perspective of affordance and goal pursuit theory, and then perform a series of empirical analyses to examine the impacts of multi-channel adoption on goal pursuit activity and persistence. Our results indicate that mobile adoption improves overall goal pursuit effort by 140.1%. A positive impact on goal pursuit persistence is also observed. Users spend 0.656 days learning content after they adopted mobile channel. Most notably, users with varying levels of goal specificity and goal pursuit competency benefit differently from the adoption of the mobile channel. Particularly, users with high-level goal specificity are observed to spent 0.234 more days and 56.5% more effort in their goal pursuit compared to uses with a less specific goal. Robustness checks and replication of data analyses further validate our findings under various scenarios.

Who is Responsible? Transparency, Affordances, and Accountability of Ethical Algorithms

Scholarship across different disciplines has reached a consensus that algorithms cannot themselves be held responsible for the ethical implications of decisions. However, while management research argues that the designers of the algorithms should be held accountable for the ethical implications of management decisions, computer scientists believe that such accountability must be attributed to the owner or operator of the algorithms, except in the case of malfunctioning code. This article critiques the assumptions of both competing views and provides a perspective based on affordance theory to attribute the ethical obligation of management algorithms to different actors. The article uses an artifact-centric approach to create a framework that diagnoses transparency and accountability issues of algorithms in management practices. Recommendations for both research and practice are provided.

Exploring Smartphone Affordances Through a Power Lens: The Case of Refugee Daily Life Organizing

In the current study, we investigate the connections between power and the technology-organizing nexus. To do this, we explore how the lived experience of refugees shapes the enactment of smartphone affordances in their day-to-day organizing practices. Our central research question is: “How do refugees perceive the affordances of the smartphone to enable (empower) or constrain (oppress) their daily organizing during settlement?” To disentangle the role of technology from the activities necessary for organizing, we develop a hybrid lens that draws on a feminist interpretation of Affordance Theory and allows for an explicit consideration of power dynamics. We focus on the interrelation between the materiality of the smartphone, the action possibilities it provides in relation to organizing, and the related power dynamics. We adopt a qualitative analysis of 32 in-depth interviews with Syrian refugees settled throughout the Lebanese territory. Our findings highlight the specific affordances of the material characteristic whether empowering or subjecting the actor to oppression. Furthermore, we shed light on the pervasive role of the layers of power. Our main findings suggest that smartphone affordances can (1) be oppressive as well as empowering; (2) push the parameters of organizing thereby serving as a basis for mediated agency related to overcoming oppression; and (3) shape small changes impacting the experience of gender-based oppression. On a practical level, these findings suggest that initiatives aiming to empower refugees through technology should not build on empowerment and ignore oppression, but rather attempt to integrate both.

Development of an Intervention for Improving Ingestion in Elders with Oropharyngeal Dysphagia

Aim To describe the development of a dysphagia management intervention for elders with sarcopenic oropharyngeal dysphagia (OD). Methods The intervention development was guided by the UK Medical Research Council framework for developing and evaluating complex interventions. The steps included identification of the problem theory, the evidence base, the theory underpinning the intervention, the expected change mechanisms and a first draft of an intervention manual. This involved literature reviews and involvement of stakeholders, experts, and members of the target group. Results A manualized client-centered and activity-based intervention that integrates functional resistance training of skills essential for a safe and efficient swallowing during ingestion of daily meals was developed for elders with sarcopenic OD. The intervention is informed by occupational therapy theory, self-determination theory, motor learning and affordance theory, and international standards for OD diets. Conclusion The development steps resulted in a multicomponent intervention ready for feasibility testing before examining intervention efficacy.

Technological affordance discovery in enterprise social media success

PurposeThis paper aims to build on affordance theory from a discovery perspective, to illustrate how motivations and goals behind enterprise social media adoption by companies in the fashion and apparel industries are discovered and realized in performance. Enterprise social media and its exogenous technological affordances are introduced as action opportunities in an organization during implementation, to be discovered and acted upon by users to effect various performance outcomes.Design/methodology/approachA case study approach was adopted. Data was collected on five fashion companies that have implemented enterprise social media for their internal communication.FindingsThe findings show that fashion companies adopt enterprise social media offered by external vendors to actively seek more effective internal communication and collaboration among their employees. However, fashion companies embark on different pathways of discovering and actualizing the affordances from the newly implemented enterprise social media. As a result, these firms achieved various kinds of performance benefits, which range from improved customer loyalty to enhanced innovation performance.Originality/valueThis study is the first to introduce a discovery perspective to affordance theory and systematically document the success of enterprise social media appropriation by companies in the fashion and apparel industries.