31. Social Bookmarking on a Company’s Intranet: A Study of Technology Adoption and Diffusion

Until recent developments in digital-based innovation, companies were defined by how they made use of resources which were tangible things such as equipment, land, raw materials and human talent for the purpose of supplying goods and services to the economy [37]. Such companies had a clearly defined central management structure which was responsible for the general policies under which the company’s hierarchy operated with well delineated reporting relationships and job responsibilities [47]. Within this rigid hierarchical organizational structure, decision making was bureaucratic and an anti-innovation bias was prevalent [55]. Even with the development of electronic communications and computing systems, innovation was relegated to the purview of professional R&D departments [22] within a highly structured corporate environment [51]. Indeed, in 1992, when managers were surveyed about the structure of their companies, most answered that their companies were still structured in a very traditional way, that is, with standardized jobs, procedures and policies and a hierarchical organization which emphasized a top-down chain of command [6].