What Every Information Systems Researcher Should Know about Actor-Network Theory and its Potential Value to Their Work

Abstract

Actor-Network Theory (ANT) is an approach to conceptualizing the relationship between people associated with technology (as users, developers, managers, visionaries, and even resistors) and non-human actors - which may be organizations, funding sources, professional associations, research publications and the technologies themselves. While the Actor-Network approach has been around for over 35 years (since Bruno Latour first published Science in Action [26]), it has received uneven adoption across the IS research community. The goal of this paper is to familiarize IS scholars with the widespread embrace of Actor-Network Theory among specific research communities, academic programs, and journals, and to challenge the non-adoption and lack of awareness of this approach among others. Based on my structured review of the IS literature in ten leading journals, I demonstrate the widespread embrace of ANT among IS researchers in the UK and Scandinavia (as well as other authors who publish qualitative research), and conversely, the general neglect of ANT among five of the leading IS journals and by quantitative researchers, in general. After documenting this imbalance in the awareness of ANT, I offer some suggestions for researchers studying the design of new technologies, career trajectories of IT managers, and even the evolution of IS research projects over time.