Search results for "affordances"
showing 10 items of 39 documents
Understanding ICT in ICT4D : An Affordance Perspective
2017
Understanding the role of ICT for development is at the core of ICT4D research. However, prevailing research in this field most often focuses on access or readiness of a technology, or on the outcomes of the technology use. Less attention has been paid to understand the mechanism of the technology use that leads to the outcomes. The question of why ICT in a development context sometimes work and sometimes does not work still remains a subject of enquiry. To enhance our understanding in this regard, we propose to use the concept of affordances to unfold the “black boxed” nature of ICT. We revisited a case from Kenya to illustrate the application of affordances in a ICT4D context. The finding…
Varying numbers of players in small-sided soccer games modifies action opportunities during training
2014
This study examined the effects of the numbers of players involved in small-sided team games (underloading and overloading) on opportunities for maintaining ball possession, shooting at goal and passing to teammates during training. These practice constraint manipulations were assumed to alter values of key performance variables identified in previous research, such as interpersonal distances between players and time to intercept shots and passes. Fifteen male soccer players (age: 19.60±1.99 years) were grouped into three teams and played against each other in different versions of small-sided soccer games, in which the number of players was manipulated in three different conditions: 5 vs. …
A holistic perspective on the theoretical foundations for ICT4D research
2018
While many theories have guided research Information and Communication Technologies for Development (ICT4D), we are yet to construct a clear and coherent narrative that would help us answer the question of how ICT fosters development in underdeveloped communities. In this paper, we argue that one of the main reasons for this is that our holistic understanding of ICT4D is seldom grounded in theories to understand the core areas that define the field, namely, ICT, Development, and, ‘4’ which are the transformative processes that link the two. Through a brief literature review, we list theories that have informed ICT4D research in each of these areas. We present examples of theories, namely, C…
University Exchange Students’ Practices of Learning Finnish: A Language Ecological Approach to Affordances in Linguistic Landscapes
2020
In linguistic landscape (LL) studies, various projects have demonstrated how language learners benefit from tasks that involve the documentation and interpretation of the LL. In this chapter, we investigate how Finnish as a second language learner exchange students turned the local LL into affordances during their time abroad in Finland. While language awareness and its relation to learning and teaching have been extensively discussed, it has often been regarded as a property of an individual consciousness: a faculty or a tendency of a particular person to perceive, notice and reflect upon the linguistic features present in their environments. In contrast, we argue for an approach that cont…
Interpersonal dynamics in 2-vs-1 contexts of football: the effects of field location and player roles
2019
This study analyzed the spatial-temporal interactions that sustained 2-vs-1 contexts in football at different field locations near the goal. Fifteen male players (under 15 years, age 13.2 ± 1.03 years, years of practice 4.2 ± 1.10 years), 5 defenders, 7 midfielders, and 3 attackers, participated in the study. Each participant performed a game to simulate a 2-vs-1 sub-phase as a ball carrier, second attacker, and defender at three different field locations, resulting in a total number of 142 trials. The movements of participants in each trial were recorded and digitized with TACTO software. Values of interpersonal distance between the ball carrier and defender and interpersonal angles betwee…
Public note-taking on a digital platform as a workplace practice
2023
Unlike traditional note-taking with pen and paper, in which the note-taking process is only partially accessible to the co-participants, note-taking in the digitalized workplace may be done publicly, so that both the content of notes and the process of writing them are observable to the co-participants. Using multimodally oriented conversation analysis, this study focused on public note-taking in interaction sequences where the facilitator of a workplace project records the results of a workshop discussion on a digital platform. The analysis revealed that while the facilitator was entitled to decide which portions of talk are recorded, the affordances of digital technology, its publicness …
Managing collapsed boundaries in global work
2023
Global workers have long contended with the challenges of working across geographical, temporal, and cultural boundaries enabled by communication technologies. However, the global work research has rarely intersected with the literature on work–home boundary management—which has been brought to the forefront due to the forced move to remote work during the Covid-19 pandemic. Drawing on a qualitative field study of 55 in-depth interviews with global workers from a large organization headquartered in the Nordics, we found that global workers drew on sociomaterial affordances to manage both global work and work–home boundaries through strategies of boundary support and boundary collapse. Altho…
Enablers of and constraints on employees' information sharing on enterprise social media
2020
PurposeThe purpose of this study is to investigate the various enablers of and constraints on employees' information sharing on an enterprise social media platform. It draws on two theoretical perspectives, communication privacy management theory and the technology affordance framework, as well as on empirical data in an attempt to paint a comprehensive picture of the factors shaping employees' decisions to share or not share information on enterprise social media.Design/methodology/approachThis qualitative field study is based on semi-structured interviews and enterprise social media review data from a large Nordic media organization.FindingsOn an enterprise social media platform, privacy …
Visibility in Open Workspaces : Implications for Organizational Identification
2022
This study takes an affordance perspective to examine visibility in open workspaces and its relationship to organizational identification. Spatial visibility—the possibility for members’ behaviors to be visible to others in organizational space—was investigated in a Finnish organization following a transition to open workspace. Interview and survey data revealed that spatial visibility highlighted similarities among workers’ facilities and enhanced exposure and company branding, making attachment to the organization more salient. Visibility also afforded perceptions of inequality by exposing some workers’ space limitations and other constraints in the sociomaterial context, diminishing thei…
Organizing for collaboration in simulation-based environments : an affordance perspective
2023
Extant research has identified the significance of technological affordances in computer-supported learning environments. However, until recently, there is scarcely empirical research on affordances for organizing collaboration in these learning environments. To address this gap, this study empirically examines affordances for organizing collaboration in a simulation-based learning environment. We focus, in particular on understanding how the organizing affordances of the learning environment are perceived and employed by the learners during a simulation-based learning task. The study was executed among 177 undergraduate higher education (HE) business students from 10 universities in Belgiu…