Special Issue on Human- Technology Interaction and Technology Adoption: Exploring Frameworks Other than Actor-Network Theory

Actor-network theory (ANT) has established itself as a valuable resource for the analysis of technology innovation and adoption. One of the main reasons for the success of the Innovation Translation Model (a specific instantiation of ANT) is the fact that it fits very well the emerging dominance of ecosystem or multiple stakeholder perspectives on technology development and technology adoption. At the same time the variety of technology adoption contexts would easily undermine the credibility of any methodology pretending to possess the ability to adequately address all possible contexts and research challenges. This is why in this special issue we have focused on exploring, in parallel to ANT, other approaches that have also proven valuable in studying technology adoption and human-technology interaction. Some of these approaches share significant common ground with ANT. They also diverge in some visible ways. The commonalities and differences are of particular interest because they provide the basis for shaping a particular method, or a specific combination of methods, in a specific research context. The special issue includes four papers focusing on Phenomenography, Consumer culture theory, Design in-use, Practice theory, Innovation diffusion, Consumer innovativeness and Activity theory. Bill Davey draws an insightful comparison between ANT and Phenomenography. His paper starts with a brief but systematic overview of the key aspects of Phenomenography in terms of its object of study, data collection method and research outcomes, and then moves on discussing its value in the light of a possible ANT approach to a very specific research problem – the continued failure of information systems professionals to incorporate research findings into requirements elicitation or, to put in other