Towards an Enactive-Ecological Approach to Sociomateriality in Information Systems Research

The study of sociomateriality in Information Systems (IS) research has been increasing its impact and interest. Primarily focusing on how the material and the social are intertwined and its implication for organizations, IS research on sociomateriality does not account for role of the individual and the “self”. Enactive approaches to cognition are also concerned with sociomateriality focusing on how the self –individual– engages with an intertwined sociomaterial environment. To contribute to bridging this gap, we leverage from developments in the cognitive sciences and philosophy of mind to propose an enactive-ecological approach to sociomateriality. In this paper, we bridge the phenomenological concept of solicitations and the affective-self approach to previous research on sociomateriality and affordances in the IS community. IS researchers and practitioners will benefit from a strong and robust theoretical foundation with a richer account of the individual engagement in sociomaterial studies as well as new research possibilities