In the past few years we have witnessed extraordinary pronouncements concerning the ways in which new technologies will transform the ways we work together. In both the popular press and in academic debate, an interest principally focused on extensions to existing computer networks, new forms of telecommunications and the potential of faster and cheaper systems, all have suggested that we are soon to be faced with a very different workplace. Workers will be more mobile when all the technological support they need can be provided wherever they are located and it may even be no longer necessary for individuals to travel to a particular site when they can work from home. The actual ‘organisation’ for which they work will become fragmented, geographically dispersed and possibly ‘virtual’, being transformed into a business with no physical location and little organisational structure.

Such pronouncements may seem curiously reminiscent to those familiar with the predictions associated with the microchip in the 1970s, or the motor car in the 1940s, or even earlier with the potential afforded in the nineteenth century by the telegraph, telephone and electricity (cf. Evans, 1979; Hall, 1988; Marvin, 1988). It is certainly the case that in the last few years the personal computer (PC) and electronic mail (email) have greatly transformed the way that work is accomplished in a large number of organisations. However, despite the grand intentions of proponents of novel technologies it is frequently the case that their impact is more modest. Indeed, it is not unusual for new systems once they have been introduced to be ignored, used to only a small degree of their capabilities or worse to be the cause of some great disaster.