Proceedings of the 35th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences - 2002
Current Status of Information Technologies Used in Support of Task-Oriented Collaboration Deepinder S. Bajwa and L. Floyd Lewis College of Bus & Economics, Western Washington University
[email protected] floyd.lewis.wwu.edu Abstract Many organizations use information technology (IT) as a way to enable global networking, group negotiations, and expertise sharing amongst end-users in distributed work environments. IT can potentially play a significant role in effective and efficient negotiation and collaboration if it can enhance the quality of communication and coordination between group members asynchronously or synchronously. This paper empirically assesses the pattern of deployment of IT in task-oriented collaboration in U.S. organizations. Data collected from one hundred and nineteen organizations is analyzed to gain insights into adoption and use patterns, and the benefits of seven popular IT approaches that have the capability to support collaboration and negotiation between workgroup members. Our analyses show that email and audio teleconferencing are the most widely adopted and used technologies while Web-based tools and Electronic Meeting Systems (EMS) have the lowest level of adoption and use. Implications of these findings are discussed along with some directions for practice and research.
1. Introduction The majority of today’s organizations depend upon group work. Group members often have to deal with conflicting viewpoints in trying to accomplish tasks. As a result, negotiations and information exchange between participants become critical in task-oriented collaboration. However, the negotiation process in collaboration can be problematic, especially in distributed environments. Fortunately, the proliferation of emerging information and networking technologies may help provide a solution for group members in organizations to collaborate on tasks effectively and efficiently irrespective of time and geographical barriers. For example, intranet technologies
can enable organizational employees to share information, manage negotiations, and collaborate easily irrespective of location [1]. In fact, many organizations are viewing geographical and time differences as opportunities to work around the clock. Similarly, extranets and the Internet may facilitate inter-organizational sharing of information and support collaboration across distances. While such technologies have been available for some time, there has been little research aimed at investigating the extent to which they are being adopted and used in task-oriented group collaboration. This paper focuses on the organization context and patterns of IT adoption and use, and the perceived benefits of IT to support task-oriented collaborative work. Some of the technologies to support group work have been around for nearly two decades. Others are somewhat recent developments. There have been a few studies aimed at the adoption of some individual technologies like EMS [13] and Web Groupware [7]. However, there is a need for large scale investigations across multiple technologies to inform IT practice as well as research and development efforts.
1.1 IT support for task-oriented collaboration Task-oriented collaboration, especially across distances and time zones can be challenging due to three “distance factors”: speed [or time] for information transmission, complexity of information, and the quality of communication channels. Given these barriers, it has been suggested that the digital world can be a dependable solution for effective and efficient collaboration [14]. The role of IT in distributed group process or collaboration has also been strongly reinforced by others [18]. As a result, researchers have urged that investigations be undertaken to study distributed groups using combination of communication technologies [18]. This also parallels the perspective that alternative communication channels for group collaboration are important and required [19].
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Proceedings of the 35th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences - 2002
Several IT clusters can enhance task-oriented collaboration amongst work groups by improving communication and coordination between team members. In fact, there are “dozens of books and hundreds of research articles published in the areas of group support systems, computer support cooperative work, distributed learning, and the like that are focused on people who interact while distributed with the support of technologies” [9, pg 245]. Perhaps the most well known technology that is used to support collaboration in modern organizations is e-mail. In addition to this, teleconferencing (audio), videoconferencing, and dataconferencing can greatly enhance group collaboration by bringing the geographically dispersed participants together [11]. Use of such technologies to collaborate on tasks in a virtual environment has been well document. Other technologies that have the capability to support task-oriented collaboration include: Proprietary groupware, Web-based tools, and EMS. Lotus Notes, probably the most popular of the proprietary groupware has sold approximately 50 million units of their software worldwide [8]. Many firms are using such software for supporting collaboration where expert opinions may be required. Price Waterhouse, for example, can reach hundreds of experts and specialists via Notes [10]. Webbased tools are another emerging technology that have the capability to support collaboration relatively inexpensively using Internet access, and without requiring any additional hardware [6]. Successful use of such tools has been demonstrated for judgmental product forecasting [15]. Other firms, Cisco for example, use Web-based tools for hundreds of sessions a day focusing on initial sales and customer support activities [20]. Weyerhaeuser is using such tools to facilitate an expertise exchange amongst their employees world-wide to enhance teamwork [2]. Finally, many articles have been published in the literature demonstrating EMS use for task-oriented collaboration in lab environments and organizational settings [16]. While there is little doubt about the capabilities of all the above technologies to support task-oriented collaboration, media richness theory suggests that each approach is associated with varying degree of richness. In other words, communication media selected in collaborative tasks vary in the capacity to process rich information. Information richness is the “ability of information to change understanding within a time interval” [4, 1986, pg. 560]. Thus, there is no single preferred IT that should be selected to support taskoriented collaboration. A combination of several IT clusters might be appropriate in many circumstances, especially for important or complicated exchange of information. In general, the choice of such technologies may depend upon the amount of information required, the time requirement for information (how fast is it required),
effectiveness of communication required, and efficiency of communication required [3]. In this paper, we explore the organization context and the adoption and use of IT clusters to support taskoriented collaboration, and the perceived benefits of these IT clusters in supporting collaboration. Given the scarcity of empirical research exploring the adoption and use of IT-enabled task-oriented collaboration, a large-scale study was undertaken to specifically address the following research questions. • To what extent is task-oriented collaboration being promoted in U.S. organizations? • What is the level of access and availability (adoption) of various IT approaches used to support task-oriented collaborative work in U.S. organizations? • What is the relationship between organization size, IT function size and level of adoption of IT to support task-oriented work in U.S. organizations? • What is the level of use of IT to support taskoriented collaborative work in U.S. organizations? • What is the relationship between organization size, IT function size and level of use of IT to support task-oriented work in U.S. organizations? • What are perceived benefits of IT in supporting task-oriented collaboration? The next section explains the study methodology. IT clusters and the variables included in the study are identified, along with the appropriate measures. The data collection process is outlined. This is followed by the response profile and analyses of data.
2. Study methodology Based upon the past literature, seven different information technologies that have the capability to support collaboration amongst work groups were identified. Examples of specific products for each of the seven technologies were also identified to guide responses. The collaborative technologies surveyed are identified in table 1. The study variables included: promotion of collaboration, level of access (adoption) of IT clusters supporting task-oriented collaboration, level of use of IT clusters supporting collaboration, organization size, IT function size of the organization, and benefits of using IT in supporting collaboration. An instrument was developed to operationalize these variables. Appropriate steps were followed to ensure valid and reliable measures. A review of the literature was conducted to identify items.
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Proceedings of the 35th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences - 2002
Table 1. Collaboration technologies surveyed Collaborative Technologies E-mail
Examples Pegasus mail, Microsoft Outlook, Hotmail, etc.
Teleconferencing (two-way audio)
NetMeeting, CU-SeeMe, etc.
Videoconferencing (two-way audio & video)
NetMeeting, CU-SeeMe, etc.
Dataconferencing (whiteboards, application sharing, data presentations)
NetMeeting, Evoke, WebEx, etc.
Web-based Collaborative Tools (Intranets, Listservs, Newsgroups, chat, message boards)
EGroups, Yahoo Groups, Open Topics, etc.
Proprietary Groupware Tools (with or without web browser interface)
Lotus Notes, IBM Workgroup, TeamWARE Office, Novell Groupwise, The Groove, etc.
Electronic Meeting Systems
GroupSystems, Meeting Works, TeamFocus, VisionQuest, Facilitate.com, etc
Where possible, previously validated item-measures were adopted. The formulated item-measures were then reviewed by researchers that have been active in conducting research on workgroup collaboration for over two decades. The final instrument was a result of several discussion sessions between these researchers. The discussions lasted for over two months, meeting at least once a week for over an hour. The final instrument was then pilot tested by soliciting comments from an executive director of a major information management society and a past CIO of a Fortune 500 organization. Both the participants were asked to comment on the clarity of the item-measures and appropriateness of the IT clusters to support task-oriented collaboration. Based upon their feedback, modifications were made to the survey instrument. Promotion of Collaboration was measured by four items. Two of these items focused on top management effort to promote intra-organization and inter-organization collaboration, the third item measured use of virtual teams for collaboration, and the fourth item focused on designated responsibility to manage and promote overall collaboration efforts in the organization. A five-point scale (strongly disagree, disagree, neutral, agree, strongly agree) was used for each of the four items. Level of Access (adoption) status for each IT cluster was measured by a single item that required respondents to indicate whether the specific IT cluster was accessible and available to end-users in their organization. A fivepoint scale anchored mid-way (1=no one in the organization, 2, 3=some persons in the organization, 4, and 5=everyone in the organization) was used for each of the seven IT clusters.
Level of Use of each cluster to support task-oriented collaboration was also measured by a single item. As in the case of adoption, a five-point scale anchored mid-way (1=never, 2, 3=occasionally, 4, 5=always) was deployed for each of the seven IT clusters. Organization Size (number of employees) and IT Function Size (total number of IT employees in the organization) were measured using categories (six in each case). Such approaches to measure organization and IT function size are common in the IT and innovation studies so that respondents don’t encounter problems in gathering accurate factual data. Moreover, categories to determine organization and IT function size are likely to boost responses resulting in fewer missing values. Benefits of using IT to support task-oriented collaboration were identified by reviewing the past summarized literature [9][17]. Five key benefits were identified. These included: “increased effectiveness” of collaboration, “increased efficiency” of collaboration, ability to work with “larger groups”, increased “user satisfaction” with collaboration, and “equality of participation” in collaboration. Respondents were requested to indicate if each of these were perceived as benefits of each of the IT clusters currently being used or used in the past to support task-oriented collaboration. Data was collected electronically from members of a well-known professional society. An e-mail message with an appropriate URL address was disseminated to the members, explaining the purpose of the survey and requesting their cooperation for participation. A follow-up email message was delivered after seven days. A total of one hundred and twenty-five responses were received from the electronic mailing. Of these, 119 represented
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responses from business organizations in the U.S. Next, we focus on the response profile and analyses.
collaboration. While table 2 shows the descriptive statistics, 82% of our respondents either “agreed” or “strongly agreed” that intra-organization collaboration is promoted and 68% “agreed” or “strongly agreed” that inter-organization collaboration is promoted by top management. Agreement percentages were slightly less for the item measuring use of virtual teams for collaboration. Only 59% of the respondents either “agreed” or “strongly agreed” that virtual teams were used for collaboration. Despite the promotion of collaborative efforts, only 20% of the respondents “agreed” or “strongly agreed” that there was a designated organizational position for managing and promoting collaboration in their organization. This is apparent in the low mean value of 2.38 in Table 2 for collaboration responsibility. Table 3 shows the adoption status of the responding firms along with the descriptive statistics. Adoption figures indicate that e-mail has been adopted by almost all of the organizations, followed by teleconferencing, videoconferencing, dataconferencing, proprietary
2.1 Response profile Almost all of the respondents indicated their position or title. Based upon their responses, they were grouped under top, middle, and lower/other tier. The top tier consisted mainly of responses from the President, CEO, CIO, and, Vice Presidents (VP), and Executive VPs. Responses from IS/IT Directors, IS Senior Managers, IS/IT Managers, and other Functional Managers were grouped in the second tier, while the remaining were categorized in the third tier. Almost all our respondents belonged to the top (48%) and middle tier (50%). Organizations and IT functions of all sizes responded to the survey.
2.2 Data analyses A majority of the respondents indicated that top management promoted intra and inter-organization
Table 2. Promotion of collaboration in responding firms Collaboration Promotion Items
N
Range
Mean
SD
Intra-organization collaboration
116
1-5
4.07
0.83
Inter-organization collaboration
117
1-5
3.74
0.90
Collaboration using virtual teams
117
1-5
3.43
1.12
Collaboration responsibility
117
1-5
2.38
1.22
Table 3: Adoption status of information technologies Collaboration IT Cluster
N
Adopters
Non-Adopters
Range
Mean
SD
E-mail
113
111 [98.2%]
002 [1.8%]
0-4
3.58
0.84
Teleconferencing
113
105 [92.9%]
008 [7.1%]
0-4
2.48
1.30
Proprietary Groupware
111
073 [65.8%]
038 [34.2%]
0-4
1.79
1.59
Dataconferencing
108
080 [74.1%]
028 [25.9%]
0-4
1.65
1.37
Videoconferencing
113
086 [76.1%]
027 [23.9%]
0-4
1.64
1.32
Web-based Tools
109
061 [56%]
048 [44%]
0-4
1.19
1.34
Electronic Meeting Sys
108
042 [39.9%]
066 [61.1%]
0-4
0.62
0.95
All IT Clusters
113
113 [100%]
000 [0.0%]
0-28
12.78
5.17
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Proceedings of the 35th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences - 2002
groupware, Web-based tools, and finally EMS. Looking at the extremes, the responses indicate that 98.2% of the firms had adopted e-mail while only 39.9% indicated they had EMS access and availability. To determine adoption levels of IT clusters for supporting collaboration, the responses were recoded so that non-adopters (i.e. firms where no one in the organization had “access and availability” to the technology) were assigned a score of “zero”. Thus varying adoption levels were represented by a scores of “one” through “four”, the highest level representing IT access and availability to everyone in the organization. The descriptive statistics in table 3 indicate once again that e-mail has by far the highest level of adoption, achieving a mean score over one point higher than the next closest technology, teleconferencing. Proprietary groupware, dataconferencing, and videoconferencing had mean scores indicating moderate levels of adoption, with Web-based tools and EMS having quite low mean levels of adoption, suggesting they are available to the fewest users in organizations. In order to gain insights into relationship between sizerelated contextual variables, three logical groupings of organization size (number of employees) and IT function size (total number of IT employees in the organization) were created. An organization was considered to be “small” if number of employees were less than 500, “medium” if number of employees were between and
inclusive of 500 and 4,999, and “large” if the number of employees exceeded 4,999. The three logical groupings of “small”, “medium”, and “large” IT functions were based upon the fact that number of IT employees in the organization were less than 50, between and inclusive of 50 and 499, and over 499 respectively. A one-way ANOVA was used to test for any differences in mean adoption levels of the seven IT clusters between the three organization size and IT function size groupings. Tables 4a and 4b show the summarized results. There were significant differences in mean adoption levels of four IT clusters between the three organization size groups and six IT clusters between the three IT function size groupings. The level of adoption means in the three groups (small, medium, and large firms) display some interesting trends. While for most IT clusters, smaller firms have lower adoption levels than larger firms, e-mail and teleconferencing adoption patterns are somewhat different. Small firms reported higher adoption levels for these two IT clusters than medium-sized firms. However, overall adoption of combined IT indicates that larger firms are likely to have higher adoption levels overall than their smaller counterparts. This may be because larger firms are more likely to require support of distributed teams, or because larger firms have greater resources to devote to the acquisition of these technologies.
Table 4a. Firm size and IT adoption level Collaboration IT
Sig.
Firm Size Small
Medium
Level
Large
N
Mean
SD
N
Mean
SD
N
Mean
SD
E-mail
29
3.90
0.41
46
3.52
0.84
38
3.42
1.03
0.06*
Teleconferencing
29
2.66
1.50
46
2.22
1.30
38
2.66
1.10
0.21
Proprietary Groupware
28
1.00
1.59
46
1.96
1.56
37
2.19
1.45
0.01**
Dataconferencing
28
1.43
1.55
42
1.45
1.33
38
2.03
1.22
0.11
Videoconferencing
29
1.21
1.40
46
1.63
1.36
38
1.97
1.15
0.06*
Web-based Tools
27
1.37
1.64
44
1.14
1.23
38
1.13
1.23
0.73
Electronic Meeting Sys
27
0.15
0.36
44
0.66
1.03
37
0.92
1.04
0.01**
All IT Clusters
29
11.52
5.10
46
12.37
5.61
38
14.24
4.39
0.08*
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Proceedings of the 35th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences - 2002
Table 4b. IT function size and IT adoption level Collaboration IT
IT Function Size Small
Medium
Sig.
Large
Level
N
Mean
SD
N
Mean
SD
N
Mean
SD
E-mail
36
3.67
0.63
45
3.33
1.1
32
3.84
0.45
0.02**
Teleconferencing
36
2.42
1.38
45
2.20
1.38
32
2.94
0.95
0.04**
Proprietary Groupware
36
1.28
1.65
45
1.78
1.55
30
2.43
1.38
0.01**
Dataconferencing
35
1.14
1.31
41
1.56
1.23
32
2.31
1.38
0.00**
Videoconferencing
36
1.03
1.32
45
1.47
1.22
32
2.56
0.95
0.00**
Web-based Tools
33
1.15
1.46
45
1.22
1.24
31
1.19
1.38
0.97
Electronic Meeting Sys
35
0.26
0.78
43
0.77
0.92
30
0.83
1.09
0.01**
All IT Clusters
36
10.80
5.05
45
12.16
5.04
32
15.88
4.11
0.00**
When considering the relationship of adoption of IT to IT function size, the general trend also suggests that organizations with larger IT functions are likely to exhibit higher levels of adoption of IT supporting collaboration than organizations that have smaller IT functions. This is understandable, since many of these technologies are fairly complex and may require significant technical support for successful adoption. It is not enough to know if these systems are available to users in organizations. It is also important to know to what extent they are actually being used. To analyze the level of use of the seven IT clusters, the responses were recoded using a similar approach as in the case of adoption level. Thus non-users (i.e. IT never used) were assigned a score of “zero”. All others with varying use
levels were represented by a scores of “one” through “four”, the highest level representing a scenario where the specific IT is always used for collaboration. Table 5a shows the utilization status of IT for collaboration along with the descriptive statistics. Level of use figures parallel the adoption results. E-mail is being used by almost all of the organizations (95.5%), followed by teleconferencing, videoconferencing, dataconferencing, proprietary groupware, Web-based tools, and finally EMS (36.9%). In Table 5b the level of use has been grouped into High (3 or 4), Low (1 or 2), and Non-Users (0). The dominance of e-mail can be clearly seen once again by the very large percentage of respondents that indicated that email is used with a high level of frequency.
Table 5a. Level of use of information technologies Collaboration IT
N
Users
Non-Users
Range
Mean Use
SD
E-mail
111
106 [95.5%]
005 [4.5%]
0-4
3.49
0.98
Teleconferencing
110
100 [90.9%]
010 [9.1%]
0-4
2.15
1.14
Proprietary Groupware
106
070 [66%]
036 [34%]
0-4
1.61
1.52
Dataconferencing
103
078 [75.7%]
025 [24.3%]
0-4
1.34
1.01
Videoconferencing
107
079 [73.8%]
028 [26.2%]
0-4
1.31
1.05
Web-based Tools
106
059 [55.7%]
047 [44.3%]
0-4
0.92
1.06
Electronic Meeting Sys
103
038 [36.9%]
065 [63.1%]
0-4
0.57
0.87
All IT Combined
113
113 [100%]
000 [0%]
0-28
10.89
4.25
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Proceedings of the 35th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences - 2002
Table 5b. Level of use of information technologies Collaboration IT
N
High Use Low Use Non-Users
Email
112
89.3%
6.3%
4.5%
Teleconferencing
111
36.9%
54.1%
9.0%
Proprietary Groupware
107
28.0%
38.3%
33.6%
Dataconferencing
104
11.5%
63.5%
25.0%
Videoconferencing
108
15.7%
58.3%
25.9%
Web-base Tools
107
10.3%
46.7%
43.0%
Electronic Meeting Systems
104
2.9%
33.7%
63.5%
Only a moderate number indicated that teleconferencing and proprietary groupware are use with high frequency. Very few reported that any of the other technologies were used with high frequency. Dataconferencing, videoconferencing, and Web-based tools are used much less frequently, followed by EMS with the lowest level of use overall. Thus, it appears that even when the technology is available in the enterprise, several of these tools are seldom used in most firms at this point. In order to gain insights into the relationships between size-related contextual variables, organization size and IT function size were again broken into three logical levels. A one-way ANOVA was then deployed to test for any differences in mean utilization levels of the seven IT clusters between small, medium, and large firms and IT functions. Tables 6a and 6b show the summarized results. There were significant differences in mean utilization levels of four IT clusters between the three organization size groups and six IT clusters between the three IT
function size groupings. The means for level of utilization in the three groups (small, medium, and large firms) display some interesting patterns. While for most IT clusters, small firms have lower adoption levels than large firms, for e-mail small firms indicate higher utilization levels than medium or large firms. In addition, the reported level of use of dataconferencing and Web-based tools is about the same for large, medium, and small firms. When looking at overall utilization combining all IT clusters, there is an indication that larger firms are likely to have higher overall utilization levels than their small counterparts. For the IT function size, the general trend suggests that organizations with small IT functions are likely to exhibit lower levels of utilization of IT supporting collaboration than organizations that have large IT functions. The only exception to this pattern seems to be a lower use level reported for email in firms with medium-sized IT departments.
Table 6a. Firm size and level of IT use Small Collaboration IT
Medium
Sig.
Large
Level
N
Mean
SD
N
Mean
SD
N
Mean
SD
E-mail
30
3.83
0.38
44
3.32
1.05
37
3.41
1.17
0.07*
Teleconferencing
29
1.90
1.23
43
2.09
1.13
38
2.42
1.06
0.16
Proprietary Groupware
26
0.92
1.47
43
1.67
1.46
37
2.03
1.48
0.02**
Dataconferencing
26
1.15
1.08
40
1.20
0.99
37
0.88
1.24
0.10
Videoconferencing
28
0.89
1.07
41
1.34
1.11
38
1.58
0.89
0.03**
Web-based Tools
26
0.88
1.24
43
1.00
1.02
37
0.86
0.98
0.83
Electronic Meeting Sys
26
0.12
0.33
41
0.61
0.95
36
0.86
0.93
0.00**
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Table 6b. IT function size and IT use Small Collaboration IT
N
Mean
E-mail
37
Teleconferencing
Medium
Sig.
Large SD
Level
3.84
0.98
0.02**
32
2.56
0.95
0.06*
1.47
30
2.17
1.37
0.03**
1.22
0.94
31
1.81
0.95
0.01**
41
1.22
0.96
32
1.94
0.67
0.00**
1.04
43
0.95
1.05
30
1.00
1.11
0.77
0.33
41
0.78
0.96
29
0.79
0.98
0.00**
SD
N
Mean
SD
N
Mean
3.54
0.80
43
3.19
1.28
31
35
2.00
1.19
43
1.98
1.19
Proprietary Groupware
33
1.18
1.59
43
1.56
Dataconferencing
31
1.03
1.02
41
Videoconferencing
34
0.82
1.17
Web-based Tools
33
0.82
EMS
33
0.12
To understand the patterns of adoption and use of IT systems to support collaboration, it is important to identify the perceived benefits adopters expect from the use of such systems. A set of potential benefits was chosen based on earlier work by other researchers [9][17]. Respondents were then asked to indicate which, if any, of these benefits were provided to their organizations by the seven types of technologies. Table 7 summarizes the responses. Perceived benefits overall were highest for email and teleconferencing systems. A majority of users expected four of the five potential benefits in both of these cases. Next, for videoconferencing, Web-based groupware, and proprietary groupware, there were two benefits that a majority of respondents expected. Finally, for EMS and
dataconferencing there was only a single benefit expected by a majority of respondents. One can further confirm this pattern by examining the mean scores for technologies across the benefit types. The most commonly perceived benefit across all technologies was “increased efficiency” of the collaboration, followed by the ability to work with “larger groups” and “increased effectiveness.” Significantly fewer perceived that these technologies enabled “equality of participation” and the fewest perceived that the technologies increased “user satisfaction.” It is surprising that such a low number of respondents perceived that user satisfaction is increased by the use of these technologies. This appears to be an area ripe for further investigation.
Table 7. Perceived benefits of information technology clusters Key Benefit Collaboration IT
# of
Increased
Users Effectiveness
Increased
Larger
Efficiency
Groups
Increased
Equality of
Satisfaction Participation Mean
Standalone E-mail
107
66
[ 62%]
69
[ 64%] 76
[ 71%] 43
[ 40%] 67
[ 63%]
[60%]
Teleconferencing
101
61
[ 60%]
85
[ 84%] 58
[ 57%] 50
[ 50%] 45
[ 45%]
[59%]
Proprietary Groupware
71
31
[ 44%]
37
[ 52%] 42
[ 59%] 25
[ 35%] 28
[ 39%]
[46%]
Dataconferencing
78
33
[ 42%]
39
[ 50%] 33
[ 42%] 24
[ 31%] 22
[ 28%]
[39%]
Videoconferencing
80
45
[ 56%]
52
[ 65%] 31
[ 39%] 36
[ 45%] 29
[ 36%]
[48%]
Web-based Groupware
61
33
[ 54%]
27
[ 44%] 40
[ 66%] 22
[ 36%] 28
[ 46%]
[49%]
Electronic Meeting Sys.
38
17
[ 45%]
16
[ 42%] 20
[ 53%] 13
[ 34%] 12
[ 32%]
[41%]
[60%]
[56%]
[39%]
[43%]
Mean
[53%]
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Proceedings of the 35th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-35’02) 0-7695-1435-9/02 $17.00 © 2002 IEEE
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Proceedings of the 35th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences - 2002
3. Discussion There was wide-spread agreement that both intra and inter-organizational collaboration is being promoted in a large proportion of firms. This would seem to confirm the commonly reported perception that collaboration is an increasingly important activity in modern organizations. The use of virtual teams seems to be growing in the majority of respondents’ organizations. This would seem to imply a growing need to support such virtual teams, which should be an opportunity for the use of appropriate IT systems. Despite the promotion of collaboration and the growing use of virtual teams, few firms are creating positions with the formal responsibility to manage and promote collaboration. This is somewhat puzzling, perhaps indicating that firms believe that acquiring technology alone will improve collaboration. If this is the case, it may explain why some benefits are not being fully realized. E-mail and teleconferencing are the most heavily adopted IT clusters for supporting collaboration, with over 90% reporting that these technologies are available to at least some members of their organizations. While substantial majorities of respondents indicated that proprietary groupware, dataconferencing, and videoconferencing were available in their organizations, significantly fewer reported adoption of Web-based tools, and less than 40% reported the availability of EMS. Amongst adopters, e-mail is the only IT that was reported as available to nearly everyone in the participating organizations. However, teleconferencing is available to many users, while proprietary groupware, dataconferencing, and videoconferencing are available to far fewer. Apparently, Web-based tools and EMS are not available to very many users at all in today’s organizations. In general, it appears that larger firms, and firms with larger IT departments are more likely to adopt these IT clusters and make them available to users. This may be due to the resource and support requirements for these technologies. Smaller firms may not be able to afford some of these. In terms of level or frequency of use, e-mail once again dominates, followed by teleconferencing. E-mail is the only technology that was commonly reported as being used frequently supporting collaboration, while teleconferencing is used less frequently, but more often than any of the other technologies. The use of the other IT clusters was reported by most firms as relatively infrequent, with EMS use significantly lower than the other technologies. While there appears to be a general pattern of larger firms and firms with larger IT departments reporting higher usage levels for the seven IT clusters, there were a
few exceptions to this pattern. Small firms reported the higest use levels for e-mail, and large firms reported the same use levels for dataconferencing and Web-based tools as smaller firms. The higher use of e-mail by small firms may related to the fact that these systems are now inexpensive and don’t require great amounts of technical support. When considering all IT clusters combined, there was a clear pattern of larger firms and larger IT departments being associated with higher levels of use of the technologies in support of collaboration. The greatest perceived benefits were reported for email and teleconferencing, with fewer benefits seen for proprietary groupware, videoconferencing, and Webbased groupware. The fewest perceived benefits were reported for EMS and dataconferencing. It may be that the relatively low use of most of these technologies is attributable to the common perception that relatively few benefits are likely to result. The most commonly perceived benefit from the use of these IT clusters overall was “increased efficiency” of collaboration. The ability to work with “larger groups” and “increased effectiveness” were benefits also reported by a majority of respondents. A surprisingly small number of respondents perceived increased “user satisfaction” as a benefit from the use of these technologies. This may be another key reason for the low adoption and use discussed above.
4. Conclusions This study confirms that collaboration is an important issue for firms in the United States, and that many firms are promoting collaboration and increasing their use of virtual teams. There does seem to be a perception that IT can be useful in supporting collaboration, with virtually all firms reporting the adoption and use of some form of IT for collaboration support. All the IT approaches studied in this project have been adopted to at least a minimal extent by a majority of the firms participating, except for EMS which have a low adoption rate of about 40%. Higher adoption rates appear related to larger firm size and larger size of the IT department. However, when we look below the surface of initial adoption, the picture is somewhat different. Only e-mail is used by most firms with high frequency. Teleconferencing and proprietary groupware (most likely primarily Lotus Notes) is used with high frequency by a smaller, but significant number of firms. All the other technologies are used with low frequency or not at all. There may be many reasons for this, but one certainly must be related to the benefits firms expect from the use of IT to support collaboration. The number of benefits the respondents expected from the use of these technologies seemed generally quite low except for e-mail and teleconferencing, even when considering only at
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Proceedings of the 35th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences - 2002
those firms that had already adopted the technologies. One would assume that non-adopters would be even less likely to expect significant benefits. Why is it that many of these IT systems are used with such low frequency and with so few benefits expected? Are the systems poorly designed? Are they a poor fit to organizational needs? Is it difficult to convince users to try these technologies? Are developers doing a poor job of demonstrating the benefits? Does the success of these systems depend on an internal champion and collaboration manager? This project did investigate such issues for one technology, EMS, and the results have been reported elsewhere [12]. However, the current study does not answer these important questions for the remaining technologies, but proposes them for future research. In addition, this study presents only a snapshot of IT use for collaboration at one point in time. We are not able to discuss how these patterns of adoption and use are changing over time. A longitudinal approach will help shed light on these trends, and the researchers intend to pursue this method in coming years.
5. References [1] Adhikari, R. (1999). InformationWeek, 606 75-80.
A new twist on groupware.
[2] Anderson, J & Kincaid-Yoshikawa, C. (1999). Case study: The evolution of electronic collaboration at Weyerhaeuser. http://www.collaborate.com/publications/ August 16. [3] Cheng, E.W., Li, H., Love, P.E., & Irani, Z. (2000). Network communication in the construction industry, Corporate Communications: An International Journal, 6(2), 61-70. [4] Daft, R. L. & Lengel, R. H. (1986). Organization information requirements, media richness, and structural design, Management Science, 32(5), 554-571. [5] Debra, D. L. & Snyder, N. T. (1999). Mastering Virtual Teams. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass Publishers. [6] Dennis, A. (1996). Groupware on the web. Proceedings of the Tools and Methods for Business Engineering Conference, Washington DC, 573-581.
[10] Kirkpatrick, D. (1993). Groupware goes boom, Fortune, December 27, 99-106. [11] Laudon, Kenneth & Laudon, Jane. (2001). Essentials of Management Information Systems. 4th Edition. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice Hall. [12] Lewis, L. F., & Bajwa, D. S. (June 2001). “Adoption and use of information technology to support task-oriented collaboration.” Proceedings of the Group Decision & Negotiation Conference, 2001. University of La Rochelle, La Rochelle, France. [13] Lewis, L.F., Garcia, J.E., & Keleman, K. (2000). Continuing obstacles and new opportunities for organizational adoption of GSS, Presented at Group Decision and Negotiation Conference, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, Scotland, July 3-7, 2000. [14] Line, L. (1997). Virtual engineering teams: strategy and implementation, Electronic Journal of Information Technology in Construction, 2, 1-16. [15] Ozer, M. (1999). The use of Internet-based groupware in new product forecasting. International Journal of Market Research, 41 (4), 425-435. [16] Pervan, G.P. (1998), A review of research in group support systems: Leaders, approaches and directions. Decision Support Systems, 23 149-159. [17] Pervan, G. (1994). “The measurement of GSS effectiveness: A meta-analysis of the literature and recommendations for future GSS research.” In J. Nunamaker & R. Sprague (Eds.) Proceedings of the Twenty-Seventh Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Science, Vol. 4, 562-571. [18] Tung, L. & Turban, E. (1998). A proposed research framework for distributed group support systems. Decision Support Systems, 23, 175-188. [19] Turoff, M., Hiltz, S.R., Bahgat, A.N., & Rana, A.R. (1993). Distributed group support systems. MIS Quarterly, 17, 399-417. [20] Ward, L. (1999). Collaborative commerce at Cisco. http://www.collaborate.com/publications/ August 16.
[7] Dennis, A.R., Pootheri, S.K., & Natarajan, V.L. (1998). Lessons from the early adopters of web groupware. Journal of Management Information Systems, 14, 65-86. [8] Jessup, L. (2000). Mastering virtual teams: Strategies, tools, and techniques that success. Book review in Small Group Research, 31, 245-248. [9] Jessup, L., & Valacich, J. (Eds.) (1993). Group Support Systems: New Perspectives. New York: Macmillan Publishing Company.
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