I rediscovered a report I wrote for Microsoft a gazillion years ago, about the unintended consequences of email use in business.
Sproull and Kiesler wrote a masterly analysis of the impact of email on business in Connections, and pointed out that the intended impacts that drive early adoption of communication media, such as cost reductions or organizational efficiencies, are often of less import ultimately than expected. These first-level effects may be the primary rationale for adoption, such as deploying email based on reduced interoffice mail expenses, but they seldom turn out to be the impacts of greatest consequence. In Connections, Sproull and Kiesler surfaced four central points in thinking about the potential consequences of new communication technology, and these have strongly guided our investigations into the application of IM:
“The full possibilities of a new [communication] technology are hard to foresee. Therefore inventors and early adopters are likely to emphasize the planned uses and underemphasize second-level effects.“First, the full possibilities of a new [communication] technology are hard to foresee. Therefore inventors and early adopters are likely to emphasize the planned uses and underemphasize second-level effects.
Second, unanticipated consequences usually have less to do with efficiency and more to do with changing interpersonal interactions, ideas about what is important, work procedures, and social organization.
Third, these second-level effects often emerge somewhat slowly as people renegotiate changed patterns of behavior and thinking.
Fourth, second-level effects are not caused by technologies operating autonomously on a passive organization or a society. Instead they are constructed as technology interacts with, and is shaped by the social and policy environment.”
This will be one of the themes I will explore this week in London, where I am speaking at the Change Management Institute conference.
from Stowe Boyd http://stoweboyd.com/2015/11/08/sproull-and-kiesler-on-the-impact-of-email-on-business/
