CRITICAL REALISM IN IS RESEARCH - CRITICAL REALISM AND AFFORDANCES: THEORIZING IT-ASSOCIATED ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE PROCESSES

Oct 19, 2026

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Paper argues for critical realism as a philosophical underpinning for information systems research, focusing on how to theorize IT-associated organizational change. It explains generative mechanisms using affordances, treating affordances as a specific type of generative mechanism that arises in the real domain through relations between organizational assemblages and IT artifacts. It further describes how organizational actors actualize affordances over time, producing observable empirical effects. Two published cases (ACRO and Autoworks) are reanalyzed to show how this approach improves explanation and supports researchers and managers in diagnosing IT implementation problems.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages17

Reading Time43 min

AccessFree to download

Introduction

Background Literature

Principles of Critical Realism

Generative Mechanisms and Affordances

Arguments and Theoretical Bridges

Case Reanalysis: ACRO and Autoworks

Implications for Researchers and Managers

SPECIAL ISSUE: CRITICAL REALISM IN IS RESEARCH CRITICAL REALISM AND AFFORDANCES: THEORIZING IT-ASSOCIATED ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE PROCESSES1 Olga Volkoff Beedie School of Business, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC V5A 1S6 [CANADA {ovolkoff@sfu.ca}](CANADA {ovolkoff@sfu.ca}) Diane M. Strong School of Business, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Worcester, MA 01609 [U.S.A. {dstrong@wpi.edu}](U.S.A. {dstrong@wpi.edu}) Convincing arguments for using critical realism as an underpinning for theories of IT-associated organizational change have appeared in the Information Systems literature. A central task in developing such theories is to uncover the generative mechanisms by which IT is implicated in organizational change processes, but to do so, we must explain how critical realism’s concept of generative mechanisms applies in an IS context. Similarly, convincing arguments have been made for using Gibson’s (1986) affordance theory from ecological psychology for developing theories of IT-associated organizational change, but this effort has been hampered due to insufficient attention to the ontological status of affordances. In this paper, we argue that affordances are the generative mechanisms we need to specify and explain how affordances are a specific typeofgenerative mechanism. We use the core principles of critical realism to argue how affordances arise in the real domain from the relation between the complex assemblages of organizations and of IT artifacts, how affordances are actualized over time by organizational actors, and how these actualizations lead to the various effects we observe in the empirical domain. After presenting these arguments, we reanalyze two published cases in the literature, those of ACRO and Autoworks, to illustrate how affordance-based theories informed by critical realism enhance our ability to explain IT-associated organizational change. These examples show how researchers using this approach should proceed, and how managers can use these ideas to diagnose and address IT implementation problems. Keywords: Affordance, critical realism, generative mechanism, organizational change, case study Introduction Over the last decade, the argument for critical realism as the philosophical underpinning for information systems research has been cogently made by a number of authors (Dobson 2001; Mingers 2004b; Mutch 2010; Smith 2006; Wynn and 1John Mingers, Alistair Mutch, and Leslie Willcocks served as the senior editors for this special issue and were responsible for accepting this paper. Williams 2012) . Our purpose is to advance this discussion by exploring in detail some of the elements that research informed by critical realism entails, and so help researchers developing theories consistent with critical realism take full advantage of what it offers. In particular, we explore critical realism’s concept of generative mechanisms and propose that the concept of affordances (Gibson 1986; Kane et al. 2011; Markus and Silver 2008) helps us specify mechanisms and so enables us to build better theories of the effects of introducing new systems into organizations. Our arguments are consistent MIS Quarterly Vol. 37 No. 3, pp. 819-834/September 2013 819 with arguments in recent IS literature that a renewed focus on the concept of affordances that returns us to its roots in Gibson (1986) would provide IS researchers with an appropriate foundation for developing better theories of ITassociated organizational change (Kane et al. 2011; Leonardi 2011c; Markus and Silver 2008; Zammutoetal. 2007) . While the claims about the value of critical realism and of affordances to IS researchers have both been argued persuasively, and despite their underlying similarities, there has been little to no connection developed between the two, and few suggestions about how IS researchers can make use of either of them. Our paper addresses this gap by constructing the necessary theoretical bridges, while

FAQs

How does the paper connect critical realism to IT-associated organizational change theories?

It argues that critical realism’s idea of generative mechanisms must be applied to explain how IT is implicated in change processes, providing a philosophical basis for theory development.

Why does the paper treat affordances as generative mechanisms?

It contends that affordances are the generative mechanisms to specify and that affordances themselves are a particular kind of generative mechanism within a critical realist framework.

How are affordances operationalized over time in organizations?

The paper explains that affordances arise from real-domain relations between organizational and IT assemblages and are actualized over time by organizational actors, leading to effects observed empirically.

Oct 19, 2026

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