ABSTRACT:
This paper will address the central theme of the conference, namely the current managerial ‘crisis’ whereby on one hand organisations are expected to use (new) Information Technologies to help themselves in gaining competitive advantage, and on the other hand, are increasingly perceiving themselves to be ‘victims’ of the same technology.
The paper presents a view on organisational theory which takes from Giddens’ (1990) Structuration Theory and wholesale borrows it (Orlikowski 1992) for use as a framework to understand the complex and dynamic set of interactions which occur when an Information Technology is used within an organisation. The paper uses the empirical case of an Information Overload investigation in an international actuarial company to show how Structuration Theory might be used as an analytical tool for insight.
