SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY

Social constructivist theories of communication technology in organizations propose that interactions with social agents influence technology-related cognitions and behaviors. Empirical evidence of such influences was found for a sample of 65 research and development personnel. Each individual's communication partners were identified using communication network measures. In an analysis using individuals' cognitions of their combined network partners' attitudes and behaviors in using electronic mail predicted the individuals' own attitudes and behaviors. Implications of these findings for social constructivist and media richness theories of communication technology are discussed.

According to social constructivist theories of communication technology in organizations, work group members share identifiable patterns of meaning and action concerning communication technology. Empirical evidence of these patterns was found in a study of electronic mail use among a group of scientists and engineers. Social influences on technology related attitudes and behavior were consistently stronger when individuals were highly attracted to their work groups. For individuals with low attraction, the specific patterns of influence were consistent with predictions from conformity research for compliance effects only; for those with high attraction, both compliance and internalization effects emerged.

 The use of sophisticated communication technologies in the conduct of work is a commonplace in organizational life. Organizational researchers have developed theories of the social construction of such technologies. These theories propose that interactions with social agents control the technologies and their effects and those attitudes toward and uses of technologies converge in social systems. Knowledge can increase not only of communication technology, but also of underlying organizational social processes.

Social constructivist thinking about technologies has penetrated the organizational context. Technology emerges from relations among a heterogeneous set of elements. Conceptualization of the sense making of communication technology as "equivoque" captures a core assumption underlying this new trend in communication technology studies: technologies are equivocal because they can be interpreted in multiple and perhaps conflicting ways. Technologies provide unusual problems in sense making because their processes are often poorly understood and because they are continuously redesigned and reinterpreted in the process of implementation and accommodation to specific social and organizational contexts.

Communication technologies in particular link disparate entities in a seamless web that engages joint sense making in the process of mediated interaction. If communication technologies are indeed equivocal, what is the essential character of this equivocality, how does it arise, and how is it resolved, if at all, in the process of utilization?  Technology users create rich meanings in mediated communication through their choices of media with specific symbolic features. In McLuhan's (1964) terms, the medium is the message. For example, the use of a formal, written medium symbolizes authority and can represent a dominance move on the part of the sender. Yet symbolic features need not be fixed attributes of a medium. The symbolic meanings may well arise, be sustained, and evolve through ongoing processes of joint sense making within social systems.  From their perspective, a constantly evolving set of social structures and technological manifestations arises as groups selectively appropriate features of both a technology and the broader social structure in which the group is embedded

By PROTAS LEVINA

BAPRM 42657