The IS-Notion of Affordances: A Mapping of the Application of Affordance Theory in Information Systems Research

This paper presents the findings from a systematic literature review of affordance theory research in the information systems field. 71 articles from the top eight information system journals were analysed, from the first publication in 1999 until March 2021. The analysis combines quantitative trends with qualitative analysis of the application of the concept of affordances. Significant findings include that half of the reviewed articles label technology use, features and attributes as affordances, although Gibson proposed that the term should be a non-replaceable term. The main contribution of this paper is a proposal of a tentative IS-flavoured definition of affordances, distancing itself from the possibility of labelling technology use as affordances. I conclude the analysis by stressing the importance of a common understanding of affordances in order to move forward in affordance research in the information systems field

The Nested Affordance Process Model: Bridging Technology Use and Societal-Level Impact

This paper reports on an ongoing research endeavor in The Gambia. The study develops a nested affordance process model to make sense of the strengthening of the national education management information system. Distinguishing lower-level technology use affordances from mid- and higher-level affordances, the three-layered nested affordance process model guides the research and contributes to illuminating findings, explaining the implementation of the Gambian education management information system. The contribution of the paper is twofold. The paper contributes with the elaboration of a stepwise framework for affordance categorization in terms of granularity levels. Second, the paper illustrates how the actualization of mid-level affordances play a key role in an organization’s quest for societal-level changes, thus bridging the gap between technology use and societal-level impact

Introducing a complex health information system in a developing country : Case: The Gambia

The District Health Information System, version 2 (DHIS 2) is a complex health information system for collecting, analyzing and reporting health related data. DHIS 2 is free and open source and is implemented in many developing countries, such as Sierra Leone, Zanzibar, India and Vietnam. The Gambia implemented DHIS 2 autumn 2009/spring 2010 and is the case I’ve used for my research. It was the decided that DHIS 2 should be the official reporting tool for health data from January 2010. I had two field trips to the country during the spring 2010 and helped the Ministry of health in the implementation process. The research goal of this thesis is to explore how a complex health information system can successfully be implemented, maintained and used in a context with poor ICT knowledge. In this thesis I show that conception-reality gaps when implementing a health information system play a vital role. Extensive training of health workers and computer technicians is also important to secure sustainability of the system. I also show that data quality has been significantly increased after the implementation of DHIS 2 and that quality can be further increased. DHIS 2 has proved more user-friendly than previous reporting tools and thus contributed to ease the data entry task