Impact Of Intranets On Employee Perception And Behavior: A Case Study In A UK Bank

This paper deals with the question of how intranets impact on employee perception and behavior. The study uses a five year longitudinal study following the evolution of an intranet in a UK bank to analyze how it changed the relationships between employees and between managers and employees. The discussion integrates two different research domains, the intranet literature and the organizational trust literature. Qualitative data is presented to show the impact of intranets on communication, sharing of information, collaboration, organizational bonding, feeling of empowerment, power distance and sense of closeness. The discussion uses three metaphors to convey the key findings: The Plumbing System, the Iconic Building and the Soap Opera. The main contribution of this paper is in using constructs from the organizational trust literature to better understand how intranets impact on employee perception and behavior.