ELECTRONIC MAIL AS A COALITION-BUILDING INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

One of the most intriguing lines of research within the literature on diffusion of information technologies (IT) is the study of the power a nd politics of this process. The major objective of this article is to build on the work of Kling and Markus on power and IT, by extending t heir perspective to email. To demonstrate how email can be used for po litical purposes within an organizational context, a case study is pre sented. The case study describes a series of events which took place i n a university. In the case, email was used by a group of employees to stage a rebellion against the university president. The discussion de monstrates that email features make it amenable to a range of politica l uses. The article is concluded with a discussion of the implications from this case to email research and practice.