**7.7 Challenges and limitations of ANT**

As with all other approaches to social-technical theory, in attempting to answer the question of how social orders are created and maintained, ANT faces epistemological, ontological and methodological challenges. Indeed, ANT's applicability has resulted that it does not seem to be a theory, because the approach is so descriptive and unable to offer any details of the way actors should be seen and how their

### *Perspective Chapter: Actor-Network Theory as an Organising Structure for Blockchain Adoption… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.106751*

actions should be interpreted. However, it is important to take into account the classic concept of theory to more scout this issue. A theory should answer the questions 'how and why' things take place by scouting their connections. ANT can offer a straightforward illustration of how things take place, but it is hard to use ANT to describe why things take place. More challenges meeting ANT such as hard to be used to examine empirical evidence because it is so wide and then hard to refute. It can, therefore, assist in illustration and offer an interpretation vocabulary [73]. To some extent, researchers are affecting the way that actors choose which is important to be considered, as it is expected that researchers who are using this approach are likely to use this sort of question. Therefore, researchers in the land registration field most probably will be part of the actors' network. They will affect this network and affected by the network according to the relations during research, particularly if the study includes a qualitative approach. Researchers should have enough knowledge of the way decisions are made [73].

Another weakness of ANT is describing it as a 'flat ontology'. It seems that no previous layers existed, instead only 'a single plane of endlessly entangled translations'. ANT's black boxes show a group of stable-for- now interconnections that may vary at any time – with no more theorisation [53].

One more defect is ANT's proposition of 'symmetry' between humans and things. ANT's reduction of humans as compared with technologies puts human impulse, wishes and morals out of the analytic scope and avoids ethical questions.

ANT application in developing countries is not necessarily a challenge, particularly the practical part, but it is important to work on the methodological constraints and the analytical challenge. ANT, therefore, presents an alternative view about the main blockchain operations that must be considered, and the way that networks can be composed. ANT enables the effective role of technology in digital government operations while at the same time aligning the interests and identities of different actors [67].
