In this article the author propose a Study of the organizational implications of new communication technologies as a highly
complex endeavour for three reasons: First of all, a wide and constantly enlarging range of different applications (like Email,
teleconferencing, electronic bulletin boards, Internet/Intranet access, Internet relay chats, and group decision support systems) has to be considered. Secondly, similar technologies have very divergent impacts because they are applied in very different roles, departments and functional areas. Thus, they encompass the sphere of production where robotics and numerically controlled machinery has been implemented, as well as the office sector where commercial and administrative processes have been basically transformed (Kling 1996). And finally, contrasting with traditional machineries that are often determining social interactions and structures in highly, specific, predictable ways, computer-based technologies have rather to be considered as factors of indetermination: e. g. by loosening temporal and spatial restrictions and thus widening the range of possible forms of human cooperation.