Management, Organizational and Sociomateriality Issues in The Social Intranet Adoption at Pirelli

The increasing adoption of Social Intranets and other social technologies in organizations are transforming how people work together, share knowledge and learn. This, however, does not come without challenges since the impacts can be heterogeneous: employees’ use behavior tend to be motivated by various aspects of factors such as organizational (e.g. leaders’ sponsorship and support, organizational climate and culture); technological (e.g. relative advantage, ease of use, perceived security); social (e.g. perceived critical mass and subjective norms) and individual (e.g. reputation and personal attitudes). Also employees’ underutilization has become one of the perennial issues. For this reason, several studies have been dedicated to social software adoption and implementation strategies. In this paper, the Social Intranet adoption in Pirelli is analyzed focusing on the co-constitutive entanglement between materiality and social action. This, examining topics like the role of corporate culture; path- dependence versus by design approach; learning capability; level of cross-functional interaction, and the organization’s attitude towards the business proposition of Corporate Social Technology and how it can transcends the dualism between the symbolic and the material.