Making sense of visual management through affordance theory

Abstract

a cardiff Business School, cardiff university, cardiff, uK; b computing and information Systems, university of Melbourne, australia ABSTRACT Visual management is much used within operations management practice, particularly in association with process improvement initiatives in diverse areas such as production and healthcare. The practitioner literature abounds with suggested best practice. However, there is little attempt to theorise about why the design and use of 'visual' devices for such process improvement works in practice. Within this paper we describe a novel theory of operation which highlights the role that material and visual artefacts proposed by visual management practitioners play within particular ways of organising work. We develop an innovative way of employing the theory of affordances to explain how first-and second-order affordances, situated around the visual devices at the heart of visual management, connect three domains of action, which we refer to as articulation, communication and coordination. Our analysis of three cases from healthcare, clothing manufacturing and software production help ground the theorisation discussed.Everything that one can see in an organization sends a message, even a blank wall. (Liff and Posey 2004)

Blockchain for good?

“…Affordances are bestowed upon artefacts—they are the qualities that users perceive objects, places, contexts, and constructs uphold and encompass (Beynon‐Davies & Lederman, ; Choy & Schlagwein, ; Ciavola & Gershenson, ; Faraj, Jarvenpaa, & Majchrzak, ; Gaver, ; Lankton, McKnight, & Tripp, ; Maier & Fadel, ; Majchrzak & Markus, ; Withagen & Chemero, ; Xenakis & Arnellos, ; Zammuto, Griffith, Majchrak, Dougherty, & Faraj, ). Affordances are bound to expectations of what artefacts can be/can do and thus reputational information (Kewell, ) that tells us whether the actions they ought to assist (Ciavola & Gershenson, , p. 252) or facilitate are worthwhile, valuable, risky, or unwise (Zammuto et al, ).…”

“…Original construals of affordance can change markedly by the end of this learning curve (Gaver, ). Dual affordances can also emerge over time, once an artefact, prototype, or design has acquired up‐take (Beynon‐Davies & Lederman, ). Thus, the recycling movement has also recently shown how the original meaning of an artefact’s affordances can be usurped or overturned by, for example, making objects with established or traditional affordance perform tasks for which they were not originally intended.…”

“…When positioned within social networks (Boyd, ), the affordances of simulated technology (such as platforms and blockchains) are percieved to foster new forms of communitarian action and social exchange (Choy & Schlagwein, ; Faraj et al, ). When considered within an organizational context, these technologies are said to change perceptions of what may be afforded by systems, structures, and processes, for example, those illustrated in workflow visualization software (Beynon‐Davies & Lederman, ), allowing previously hidden sources of value to become more self‐evident (Ciavola & Gershenson, ; Faraj et al, ; Zammuto et al, ).…”

Visual Analytics Tools for Sustainable Lifecycle Design: Current Status, Challenges, and Future Opportunities

“…Bendoly [121] proposes standard visual variables and plug-and-play components for business processes. Similarly, Beynon-Davies and Lederman [122] attempt to distill theoretical affordances for particular kinds of effective visual variables for tracking the development of products. Case studies in health-care, clothing manufacturing, and software production are presented by the authors.…”

What’s in a face? Making sense of tangible information systems in terms of Peircean semiotics

“…The philosophy is taken from that of Charles Sanders Peirce (Houser, 1998;Houser & Kloesel, 1992); the design science (Hevner, March, Park, & Ram, 2004) is directed at the construction of visual devices in the area known as visual management (Galsworth, 2005). The utilisation of such devices within their wider visual management systems we take to be instances of what we refer to as tangible information systems (Beynon-Davies & Lederman, 2017). Tangible information systems use tangible artefacts, such as whiteboards and magnetic tokens, to accomplish information.…”