The Amplification-Reduction Structure of Technology: The Example of the Intranet

Information technology has long been recognised as a cause of social change. Recent developments in information technologies (IT), such as internet, intranet, and extranet, have stimulated considerable interest in how they will impact business organizations. Studies have largely examined the role that IT plays in improving information efficiency and synergies, in promoting collaboration and information sharing both inside and across organizations and in facilitating the transition to new forms of organizing. Most such studies take a technology-centric or human-centric approach. Whereas the former view reifies technology, assuming that its effects are predictable, stable, and performing as intended and designed across time, the latter minimizes IT to the point it becomes infinitely and flexibly interpreted. However, IT media are only significant to the extent that they do not only involve changes in and novel ways of communicating, but most importantly they change the meaning of what it is to communicate and the social and cultural frame that situates communication in unpredictable ways. Taking a communicational approach to organization, the present paper uses Jakobson’s 1960 semiotic model and ideas from Ihde (1990) to show how the implementation of intranets and email systems has amplifying and reducing effects on the interactions among members of a community. Finally, some implications for the theory of implementation of new technologies are drawn out.