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A Fluid Metaphor to Theorize IT Artifacts: A Post-ANT Analysis
Abstract
This chapter extends existing metaphors used to conceptualise the unique features of contemporary IT artifacts. Some of these artifacts are innately complex, and current conceptualisations dominated by a “black box” metaphor seem to be too limited to further advance theory and offer practical design prescriptions. Using empirical material drawn from a longitudinal case study of an Internet-based self-service technology implementation, this chapter analyses various aspects of an artifact's fluidity. Post-actor network theory concepts are used to analyse the artifact's varying identities, its vague boundaries, its unexpected usage patterns, and its resourceful designers. The successes and failures of the artifact, its complex and elusive relations, and the unintended ways user practices emerged, are also analysed. This chapter contributes by extending orthodox metaphors that overemphasise a stable and enduring IT artifact—metaphors that conceal the increasingly unpredictable and transitory nature of IT artifacts—with the distinctive characteristics of fluidity. Several prescriptions for the design and management of fluid IT artifacts are offered.
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