Adaptive Structuration Theory

Fundamentals

AST was originally applied in the study of group decision support systems, but it has also been used to study enterprise level systems, geographic information systems, electronic billing systems, context aware applications, and mobile systems. It has also been applied to non-ICT topics including leadership, virtual teams, the evolution of standards, and implementation of innovations.

AST posits that social systems, such as groups and organizations, can best be understood in terms of how their members actively structure practices such as decision making. This process of structuring is referred to as structuration, defined as the production and reproduction of a social system through members’ appropriation of generative rules and resources. Underlying this definition is a distinction between system and structure. A system is an observable pattern of relationships among actors, such as a group or organization. Structures are the rules and resources that members of the system employ in their activities and interactions that give the system its pattern. Structures are not directly observable, and in fact, the term structure is itself a useful reification that is employed for analytical purposes. Structures are dualities in that they are both the medium of activity and its outcome. As members draw rules and resources from tasks, norms, ICTs, and other sources into the activities and interactions that constitute the social system, they are enacting and sustaining these structures and simultaneously making them part of the ongoing organization of the system, that is, reproducing them.

AST argues that the effects of an ICT on group and organizational processes and outcomes depend on the structures embodied in the technology (structural potential) and on the emergent (adaptive) structures that form as members interact with a technology over time. AST distinguishes two elements of ICT structures: spirit and features. Structural features are specific types of rules and resources, or capabilities, offered by the system that are embodied in the material ICT artifact—and spirit is the general intent with regard to values and goals underlying a given set of structural features. The spirit of an ICT is the principle of coherence that holds its ensemble of structural features together. As understood by members, the spirit of an ICT provides normative guidelines for applying the ICT, an interpretive scheme for making sense of the ICT and its outcomes, a guide for “filling in” aspects of the ICT that are not explicit, and a degree of control over how the ICT is utilized. An online project management system, for example, may be designed to promote the values of collaboration and efficient use of resources; this spirit, reflected in the overall design of the system, in training, and online help, shapes how users interpret and employ the system. Structural features are rules and resources embodied in the ICT as users encounter and work with it. For example, in the project management system, a budget-tracker tool would incorporate rules for accounting and resource allocation, while a discussion tool might have a space for idea sharing that incorporates collaboration procedures, such as brainstorming. Ideally, spirit and structural features are in alignment, but due to limitations in technology, implementation errors, and unintentional slippage, there are often inconsistencies between features and spirit. The budget-tracker tool, for instance, might display comparisons of project budgets that are meant to be informative but inadvertently create conflicts between members, reducing collaboration.

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