Hospitality and Mood

Abstract

Existing theories of Information Systems (IS) adoption and innovation often provide rationalistic explanations of user behaviour that abstract away from the realities of everyday life. Ciborra's hospitality metaphor is a useful theoretical lens to use in the study of IS adoption and innovation as it allows for the messy, emotive, real-world influences that shape users' reactions to the introduction of new technologies. The hospitality metaphor allows for ambiguous and contradictory reactions to new technologies which are conceptualised as 'ambiguous strangers', both enabling and constraining users. However, this paper argues that the metaphor needs to be extended to more explicitly incorporate 'mood' and the users' expectations of the technology prior to receipt in order to be more holistically applicable to the IS adoption and innovation context. This paper contributes to the literature by synthesising Ciborra's works on 'hospitality' and 'mood', and expanding the reach of his hospitality metaphor to incorporate initial and pre-receipt hostility as a user response.