One of the most complex characteristics of contemporary life has been held to be the simultaneous progress of trends to greater bureaucratisation and rationalisation in some areas, with equally pervasive trends towards greater fragmentation and uncertainty in others (Turner 1996, p. 15). The ISBL is clearly a rationalising concept, and is primarily relevant to those areas of social and business activity already subject to some degree of routinisation. The second trend Turner identifies helps, however, to disguise the potential for the exercise of power based on ISBL implementations for two reasons. The first is that the undoubted convenience of ISBL-based business arrangements is a boon for people under pressure elsewhere in their lives, and second because the volatility evident in other areas of consumption tends to create a sense of drama and excitement likely to counteract any feelings of powerlessness elsewhere.

It has been argued in this paper that the ISBL concept is much more than a ‘mere’ metaphor, and that it provides an analytically powerful perspective from which to see that the spread of autonomous IS represents some potentially troubling developments in power relations. Autonomous systems and people do, in this formulation, talk to each other, and the way they converse can lead to the creation of a new class of outsiders, as well as possibilities for consumers and organisations to be coerced into arrangements they find undesirable. In a sense, the ISBL represents almost the apotheosis of business rationalisation. It eliminates people as organisational representatives in a range of business dealings, and imposes a linguistic structure that ensures that the vast majority of basic transactions proceed according to a strict formula. Despite the improvements in efficiency this can generate, and despite the convenience it provides to many consumers, not all the implications are positive.

The theoretical propositions listed earlier in the paper could be used as the foundation for a program of empirical research designed to explore these issues. As an outcome of systems integration trends, the ISBL is already in existence, albeit in a limited form. It is the argument in this paper that the impacts of its further development and more widespread adoption are issues that warrant concentrated attention.