What an IT artifact affords a user depends on the cultural mechanisms of meaning present in the social environment. Despite theoretical arguments and some scant evidence backing up the relationship between organizational culture and IT affordances, research has not aimed at understanding the set of cultural values underlying an organization and how this set shapes the IT affordance actualization process. We propose to fill this gap by studying the effect that IT-culture fit has on IT affordance actualization. The notion of IT-culture fit focuses on comparing an organization's shared values to the set of ideal actualization values: those assumed in the behavioral patterns that would result in affordances to be successfully actualized. We claim that differences in the two sets of values should be negatively reflected in actualization outcomes. We suggest accomplishing our goal by conducting a case study that builds on prior research about affordance actualization of EHR/EMR technologies.
