Investigating the interplay between structure and information and communications technology in the real estate industry

Information and communication technologies (ICTs) are reshaping many industries, often by reshaping how information is shared. Informationintensive industries, by their nature, show the greatest impacts due to ICTs that enable information sharing and the bypassing of traditional information intermediaries. However, while the effects and uses of ICT are often associated with organizations (and industries), their use occurs at the individual level. In other words, it is changes to individual work related to the use of ICTs that reshape both organization and industry structures, and vice versa. To explore the relationships between individual uses of ICT and changes to organization and industry structures, we examined the residential real estate industry. Real estate is a revelatory industry for the study of ICT uses because it is information-intensive and realtors are information intermediaries between buyers and sellers. As agents, buyers and sellers increase their uses of ICT, they also change how they approach their daily work. We use structuration theory to provide an analytic perspective within this setting. Data reveal historical structures of this industry guiding the day-to-day work of agents, buyers and sellers. Many of these structures are embodied in a set of explicit contracts that reify existing structures and legitimize realtors’ actions. However, the increasing uses of ICT are simultaneously altering industry structures by subverting some of the realtors’ control over information while also reinforcing the existing contract-based structures. This structurational perspective and our findings help to explain why information intermediaries persist when technology-based perspectives would suggest their disappearance. 1 This study was supported, in part, by NSF Grant IIS 97-32799 and by a grant from the Office of the Dean at the School of Information Studies, Syracuse University. The authors thank Jeffrey Pomerantz and Marcel Allbritton for their assistance with data collection, the unnamed real estate agents and other real estate professionals for being so forthcoming with their time and insight, and three anonymous reviewers for their comments. Portions of this paper were presented at the 1999 Academy of Management conference. Structure and ICT in Real Estate 2 Information and communication technologies (ICT) are pervasive in many industries and are clearly reshaping some. Information-intensive industries by their nature show the greatest impacts due to ICT uses. However, it is too simple to note the presence of a new input (ICT) and some new output (such as an industrial-level outcome like average firm size). We are currently studying the use of ICT in the residential real estate industry in the United States to better understand how the uses of ICT both shape, and are shaped by, organizational and institutional arrangements. In pursuit of this understanding, we report on the ways that ICT uses are reshaping the roles of real estate agents. We provide evidence of how individual uses of ICT shape, and are shaped by, organizational and industrial practices in a particular industry. To do this, we draw on structuration theory as an analytic perspective to interpret data from our on-going fieldwork. This analysis provides a glimpse of one potential adaptation of organizational forms and industry structures in the presence of increased ICT use. This paper continues in four sections. In the first section we outline our conceptualization of ICT use and then set this within a structurational framework. In the second section we outline why residential real estate is an appropriate industry to study and lay out the data collection and analysis. The third section contains a discussion of the results. Lastly, we present implications for research and practice.