Research ArticleWhile organizations implement information technology (IT) to effect change, current theories of IT-associated organizational change pay insufficient attention to the change goals, the role of IT in organizational change, and the multilevel nature of change processes. We take a fresh look at IT-associated organizational change using grounded theory methods. Our longitudinal study of an electronic health record (EHR) system implementation in a multi-site medical group found user behaviors that did not fit well with existing theories. Instead, we found that they fit better with the concept of affordances from ecological psychology. In developing our affordance-based theory of IT-associated organizational change from our field data, we discovered three gaps in the affordance literature; namely, the lack of theory for (1) the process of actualizing an affordance's potential, (2) affordances in an organizational context, and (3) bundles of interrelated affordances. This paper extends the theory of affordances to handle these three gaps and, in doing so, develops a mid-range theory for EHR-associated organizational change in a healthcare organization. While the resulting theory is specific to EHR implementations, it offers a template for other mid-range affordanceactualization theories and a more general affordance-actualization lens. Our affordance-actualization lens considers the materiality of the IT artifact, the non-deterministic process by which IT leads to organizational effects, the multilevel nature of IT-associated change processes, and the intentionality of managers and users as agents of change, and thus addresses important criteria for theories of IT effects in organizations. The paper also provides practical guidance for implementing EHR systems and other organizational systems.

Shape memory alloys (SMAs) exhibit peculiar thermomechanical, thermoelectrical and thermochemical behaviors under mechanical, thermal, electrical and chemical conditions. Examples of these materials are Cu-based SMAs, NiTi SMAs, ferrous SMAs, shape memory ceramics and shape memory polymers. NiTi SMAs in particular, have unique thermomechanical behaviors such as shape memory effect and pseudoelasticity, which have made them attractive candidates for structural vibration control applications. Numerous studies have been conducted in modeling and applications of NiTi SMAs in structural vibration control. Several active, passive and hybrid energy absorption and vibration isolation devices have been developed utilizing NiTi SMAs. In this paper we present an overview of NiTi behaviors, modeling and applications as well as their limitations for structural vibration control and seismic isolation.

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