Making sense of visual management through affordance theory
本文提出一种基于可供性理论的新操作理论，解释可视化管理中物质和视觉设备如何通过一阶和二阶可供性连接表达、沟通和协调三个行动域，并通过医疗、服装制造和软件生产三个案例加以验证。
Visual management is much used within operations management practice, particularly in association with process improvement initiatives in diverse areas such as production and healthcare. The practitioner literature abounds with suggested best practice. However, there is little attempt to theorise about why the design and use of ‘visual’ devices for such process improvement works in practice. Within this paper we describe a novel theory of operation which highlights the role that material and visual artefacts proposed by visual management practitioners play within particular ways of organising work. We develop an innovative way of employing the theory of affordances to explain how first- and second-order affordances, situated around the visual devices at the heart of visual management, connect three domains of action, which we refer to as articulation, communication and coordination. Our analysis of three cases from healthcare, clothing manufacturing and software production help ground the theorisation discussed.