One Fortune 500 organisation uses its network to deliberately make it more time-consuming for its employees to fill out the e-forms necessary to get reimbursed. What once took 15 or 20 minutes online now takes a minimum of a half hour plus a manager's digital signature. Here's the kicker: Reimbursements over a certain amount now take 30 days instead of 14. If a department's expenses exceed an undisclosed limit, accounting has been instructed to postpone a portion of the payables to the next cycle. All those changes have been designed and implemented in concert with IT. The CIO is being a team player. He can prove his IT people are boosting the company's cash flow. Hurrah.

Yes, the company's employees are sullen. But, hey, at least they've got jobs. Then again, their desire to collaborate with IT on various projects has declined. The CIO is seen more as the CFO's enforcer rather than someone who invests in improving workplace productivity. That's not good.

If CIOs truly care about the ongoing challenges of implementing positive change in their organisations - as opposed to merely empowering the legion of cost-cutters - they had better be seen as doing far more than implementing technical tattletales. Portfolio management means striking a balance between using networks to tighten financial control and using them to expand productive employee opportunities.

So just where are those CIOs who publicly reward the best and fastest response to an enterprisewide e-mail cry for IT help and customer support? Which companies pay a bonus to the employee whose PowerPoint presentation is downloaded and used the most? Which intrapreneurs get rewarded for citing the works of others online? Which organisations are creating internal economies where knowledge sharing and personal introductions via e-mail get compensated in cold hard computational cash or credit? Are CIOs challenging their CEOs and CFOs to be a smidgen more creative about the value of their intranets?

Those aren't rhetorical questions. They reflect a corporate sensibility that is being sacrificed by too many executives in their rush to bring Orwell's 1984 into 2004. They want value-added sticks. Shame on them. They're mismanaging their IT portfolios. They're undermining the alliances that will make future implementations go more smoothly rather than face resistance.

Our intranets - our ERPs and supply chains - are way overinvested in surveillance and punishment, and woefully underinvested in incentives and rewards. That asymmetry will ultimately cost more money than it can ever save if we don't respect the reality that human beings need networks that provide both. Organisations that don't consciously seek to build a better balance are managed by "leaders" who will richly deserve the contempt they inspire. Don't be one of them. Don't let your CEO or CFO become one of them either.

Michael Schrage is codirector of the MIT Media Lab's eMarkets Initiative. He can be reached via e-mail at schrage@media.mit.edu