Paper short abstract:

This paper contrasts managerial expectations and actual use of intranet software in the context of a company’s merger. While company management aims at installing a unified corporate culture, the intranet runs contrary these attempts and enables employees to maintain pre-merger and departmental divisions.

Paper long abstract:

Since the 1990s intranets have enjoyed popularity within organisations as tools fostering work collaboration and organisational change, for instance by increasing information transfer between employees. Drawing on interviews and observations, this paper first illustrates managerial expectations towards the intranet in the context of a company's merger. Secondly, it sheds light on how the intranet is enacted as part of distinct work practices in different departments of the company. While managerial efforts are directed towards promoting a coherent corporate culture on the intranet, as part of various work practices only specific applications are relevant to employees accomplishing their everyday work. Thereby, employees work around and overlook managerial endeavours.

With reference to insights gained in STS and theories of practices, the paper illuminates how the intranet entangles with existing logics and divisions in the company (such as hierarchies and organisational sub-cultures, specific knowledge and work routines) and thereby questions the steering managerial framework. As will become apparent, while part of various work practices, the intranet moves beyond what I call the managerial "politics of wholeness" and related efforts of creating a specific corporate culture and staff members. In doing so, the intranet does not fulfil managerial expectations but nevertheless ensures the continuance of work. Furthermore, it enables employees to escape the logic of a 'unified' company and to partly uphold extant, 'home-grown' divisions. As such, the paper contributes to understanding organisational change and resistance in relation to the sociotechnical infrastructure of the intranet.