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Moving between places
 2.2.3 Theory of affordances
The theory of affordances was initially proposed by Gibson (1979). Affordances refer to action possibilities that emerge in the interaction of an individual's intention, perceptions, and goals with their material environment (Gibson, 1979). For example, a nomadic worker may perceive cafés as a place to work, whereas a tourist perceives it as a place to relax. This example illustrates that any object or environment can be used in a variety of ways, can have different affordances, and thereby can also have different effects on the organization of work (Fayard & Weeks, 2006; Zammuto et al., 2007). Thus, affordances are inherently relational, as they are "constituted in the relationship between people and the materiality of the things with which they come in contact" (Leonardi & Vaast, 2017, p. 146). Instead of perceiving what something is, workers perceive what kinds of uses it affords (Leonardi & Vaast, 2017). Affordances are situated and emergent in practice (Faraj & Azad, 2012). Thus, instead of focusing only on the ‘means’ (the material environment) or the actor (the organizer doing the organizing), we are able to zoom in on the results of the interaction of both.
The theory of affordances has been widely used in human- computer interaction (Norman, 1999) as well as in studies on IT artifacts (Faraj & Azad, 2012). Common perspectives are technological affordances (Norman, 1999), relational affordances (Faraj & Azad, 2012) or perceived affordances (Norman, 1999). In particular, we draw on Fayard and Weeks (2006) who emphasize the social aspect of affordances and state that it is not sufficient to only consider the physical features of a place. Rather, when studying affordances, it is also necessary to consider the norms and routines in a place (Fayard & Weeks, 2006).
So far, affordances have been studied in the digital context of organizations (Leonardi & Vaast, 2017; Oostervink et al., 2016; Treem & Leonardi, 2012), as physical affordances of objects and technology in disciplines like industrial design (Norman, 1999) but much more infrequently in workplaces (Fayard & Weeks, 2006). Most informative is the study by Fayard and Weeks (2007) who focused on informal interaction in
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