When Does Technology Use Enable Network Change in Organizations? A Comparative Study of Feature Use and Shared Affordances
Authors: Leonardi, Paul M.
Journal: MIS Quarterly (1955)
DOI: 10.25300/misq/2013/37.3.04
The goal of this study is to augment explanations of how newly implemented technologies enable network change within organizations with an understanding of when such change is likely to happen. Drawing on the emerging literature on technology affordances, the paper suggests that informal network change within interdependent organizational groups is unlikely to occur until users converge on a shared appropriation of the new technology’s features such that the affordances the technology enables are jointly realized. In making the argument for the importance of shared affordances, this paper suggests that group-level network change has its most profound implications at the organization level when individuals use the same subset of a new information technology’s features. To explore this tentative theory, we turn to a comparative, multimethod, longitudinal study of computer-based simulation technology use in automotive engineering. The findings of this explanatory case study show that engineers used the new technology for more than three months, during which time neither group experienced changes to their advice networks. Initially, divergent uses of the technology’s features by engin…