The company had purchased an expensive new collaboration platform because leaders wanted people to communicate better. Within three months, the organization had somehow created more confusion.
Some employees used the platform for everything. Others still preferred email. Managers sent urgent messages through chat, while employees assumed anything truly urgent would arrive by phone. Project documents appeared in several different folders, and important decisions disappeared inside long message threads.
The technology was working exactly as designed. The people were using it in completely different ways.
That distinction is at the heart of adaptive structuration theory.
Communication scholars Gerardine DeSanctis and Marshall Scott Poole developed adaptive structuration theory to explain what happens when groups interact with advanced technologies. Their 1994 article, Capturing the Complexity in Advanced Technology Use: Adaptive Structuration Theory, argued that we cannot understand the effect of technology only by studying what the system was designed to do. We also have to study what people actually do with it.
In plain language, a tool does not determine behavior. People adopt it, bend it, ignore parts of it, create shortcuts around it, and gradually develop their own rules for how it should be used.
The tool had features. The team created habits.
When the platform was introduced, leaders held a training session. Employees learned how to send messages, create channels, assign tasks, store files, and receive notifications.
Technically, everyone knew how to use it.
Socially, nobody knew how they were supposed to use it.
Was chat replacing email or supplementing it? Should managers send assignments through the task system or direct messages? Which conversations belonged in public channels? How quickly was someone expected to respond? Was it acceptable to turn notifications off during focused work?
Those questions were never discussed.
So, It’s the team answered them through behavior.
One manager sent everything through chat. Her employees learned to monitor chat constantly. Another manager preferred email, so his team rarely checked the platform. A third team created separate channels for every project until employees had dozens of places competing for attention.
The organization purchased one system but created several different ways of using it.
That is adaptive structuration.
New tools enter an existing culture
Technology never arrives in an empty room. It enters a workplace that already has habits, expectations, authority relationships, communication styles, and unwritten rules.
A company that does not trust employees may use collaboration software to monitor them. A company with strong autonomy may use the same platform to reduce unnecessary meetings. A team that values immediate responses may turn chat into a permanent interruption machine. Another team may use the same tool asynchronously and protect long periods of focused work.
Same technology. Different social structure.
This is why new employees need to understand both the official and lived organization. A manual can explain what a tool is supposed to do, but people still have to discover how the organization actually uses it.
The unwritten rules often matter more than the software manual.
Technology can create more noise than clarity
After several months, employees began complaining that they could never keep up.
They had email, direct messages, team channels, project alerts, calendar notifications, text messages, and video meetings. Important information was everywhere, which meant employees had to look everywhere.
The company thought it had a communication problem and added another dashboard.
That made things worse.
More technology does not automatically create more clarity. Sometimes it simply creates more places for attention to go.
This connects closely with cognitive overload and the discipline of attention. When every message looks urgent and every platform demands attention, people become worse at identifying what actually matters.
The practical question should not be, “What else can this tool do?”
It should be, “What problem are we asking this tool to solve?”
Teams need communication rules, not just software
Eventually, one department decided to reset how it used the platform.
Instead of asking employees to use more features, the manager asked the team to agree on a few simple rules.
Email would be used for formal communication with outside parties. The collaboration platform would handle internal project work. Urgent matters would require a phone call. Decisions made in meetings would be documented in the project channel. Employees were not expected to answer routine messages immediately.
Suddenly, the platform became more useful.
Nothing about the software changed.
The team changed its behavior around the software.
That distinction matters because communication is not complete until meaning is shared. A team cannot assume that everyone understands what “urgent,” “available,” “respond quickly,” or even “send me an update” means in a digital environment.
Shared expectations have to be created.
Good tools still need a center
Technology also makes it easy for work to spread.
A discussion begins in a meeting. Someone continues it in chat. Another person replies by email. A document appears in cloud storage. Someone else raises a related concern in another channel.
Soon the team has five conversations about one problem.
At that point, the challenge is no longer access to information. It is finding the center.
That is why the law of focus matters in digital work just as much as it does in meetings. Tools should help attention return to the decision, problem, customer, or next action that matters.
When a platform makes everything visible but nothing clear, the team has not solved communication. It has digitized confusion.
Systems matter more than enthusiasm
Many technology rollouts begin with excitement.
There is a launch meeting. A polished demonstration. New accounts. Training videos. Leaders talk about transformation.
Then normal work returns.
People fall back into old habits because the organization changed the tool without changing the system around the tool.
That is why building systems works better than relying on one-time resolutions. Sustainable change comes from repeatable behaviors, regular review, and adjustment, not from one enthusiastic announcement.
The same principle applies to workplace technology. Decide how the tool will be used, observe what is actually happening, and adjust the rules when they stop serving the work.
A digital system should evolve with the team.
The workaround is information
One of the most useful lessons of adaptive structuration theory is to pay attention to workarounds.
If employees constantly export information from the new system into spreadsheets, ask why.
If everyone sends a text after posting an “urgent” chat message, ask why.
If employees avoid a feature they were trained to use, ask why.
If people create unofficial channels because the official ones feel too slow, ask why.
A workaround may be bad behavior. But it may also be information.
People often adapt technology because the formal process does not match the reality of the work. Instead of immediately forcing compliance, investigate what the workaround is solving.
Sometimes the employee needs better training.
Sometimes the technology needs better configuration.
Sometimes the process itself needs to change.
How to use this theory in real life
When introducing a new tool, do not stop at training people on features. Discuss norms. Decide what belongs where, what requires a response, what counts as urgent, and what employees are free to ignore until later.
Then watch actual behavior.
Do not assume people are using the system the way leaders imagined. Ask employees where the tool helps, where it slows them down, and what unofficial practices have developed.
Protect attention. Every notification should not have equal power. Reduce duplicate channels and give people permission to focus.
Finally, review the system periodically. Technology changes, teams change, and work changes. Communication rules should change with them.
Watch out for this
Adaptive structuration theory does not mean technology has no influence. Tools have real features, limitations, permissions, interfaces, and design choices that make some behaviors easier than others.
But technology does not act alone.
The same platform can produce collaboration in one team and distraction in another because people interact with its features differently. That interaction between the tool and the group is what makes the theory useful.
One thing to remember
The company thought it had purchased collaboration.
What it had actually purchased was a tool.
Collaboration still had to be created.
That is the lesson of adaptive structuration theory. Technology provides possibilities, but people turn those possibilities into habits, rules, routines, and eventually culture.
Before buying another tool to solve a communication problem, ask a harder question:
Are we missing better technology, or have we never agreed on how to use the technology we already have?
Reflection question
What technology does your team use every day without ever clearly agreeing on the rules for how it should be used?
