Deepinder S. Bajwa

The adoption and use of collaboration information technologies: international comparisons

Information technology (IT) applications to support group decision processes have been of considerable interest over the years. With the emergence of virtual team arrangements and the advent of emerging information and networking technologies, an increasing amount of attention is now being aimed at understanding collaboration among group members, as they make decisions to accomplish tasks. Effective and efficient collaboration is critical from a decision quality and decision timeliness standpoint. Commonly known as collaborative information technologies (CITs), many technology solutions have the capability to enhance collaboration and facilitate group decisions in task accomplishment by enabling better communication, sharing of information, ideas, expertise, and evaluating alternatives, irrespective of time and distance barriers. Many studies have investigated such individual CIT solutions in different regional settings. However, despite the fact that no single medium can support collaboration in different types of tasks, there is a scarcity of research investigating the adoption and use of multiple CIT options across regions. This paper builds upon innovation diffusion theory and tests a research model to validate five antecedents of collective adoption and use of seven CITs in the US, Australia, and Hong Kong. Sub-sample analyses of data collected from 344 organizations in these three regions suggest that not only do adoption and use patterns of some CIT solutions vary across regions but so do the antecedents that explain their proliferation. Implications of our findings are discussed for practitioners and researchers.

Factors in the Global Assimilation of Collaborative Information Technologies: An Exploratory Investigation in Five Regions

The diffusion of innovation theory is deployed to investigate the global assimilation of collaborative information technologies (CITs). Based on the concepts of IT acquisition and utilization, an assimilation framework is presented to highlight four states (limited, focused, lagging, and pervasive) that capture the assimilation of conferencing and groupware CITs. Data collected from 538 organizations in the United States, Australia, Hong Kong, Norway, and Switzerland are aggregated and analyzed to explore assimilation patterns and the influence of decision-making pattern, functional integration, promotion of collaboration, organization size, and IT function size on the assimilation of CITs. Although most of these factors influence assimilation of CITs from nonadoption to a state of limited assimilation, and from limited assimilation to a state of pervasive assimilation, they may not be critical when assimilation of CITs deviates from the expected path. The implications of our findings are discussed for practice and research on assimilation of CITs.

Adoption of collaboration information technologies in Australian and US organizations: a comparative study

Collaboration to accomplish tasks has taken on a new meaning over the past few years. The majority of organizations are viewing information technology (IT) as a key enabler to transcend time and distance barriers to collaborate efficiently and effectively. Despite this, we know very little about the macro level adoption of IT to support collaboration. This paper assesses the pattern of adoption of seven IT clusters to support task-oriented collaboration in US and Australian organizations. Data collected from one hundred and forty Australian organizations and one hundred and nineteen US organizations is analyzed to compare adoption patterns. Our results suggest that stand-alone e-mail systems, audio teleconferencing systems, and videoconferencing are the most widely adopted technologies to support collaboration in both countries while Web-based tools and electronic meeting systems are the least commonly adopted. A further analysis of data suggests that promotion of collaboration, mode of collaboration, and the adoption of some IT clusters are affected by region. Implications of these findings are discussed along with some directions for practice and research.

A study of the adoption and utilization of seven collaboration technologies in large organizations in Australia and New Zealand

Abstract This paper empirically assesses the patterns of adoption and utilization of seven CIT clusters in supporting task-oriented collaboration in organizations in Australia and New Zealand. Analysis of data collected from one hundred and fifty-six organizations indicates that these patterns vary considerable among different CITs. Furthermore, an investigation into the antecedents of adoption and utilization of CITs indicates that promotion of collaboration, decision making pattern, and IT function size are significant predictors of aggregate adoption status of CITs. While promotion of collaboration and decision making patterns also influence aggregate adoption levels of CITs, only promotion of collaboration was found to be a significant predictor of aggregate utilization level of CITs. Organizations size did not influence any aspects of CIT adoption and utilization.

Organizational Assimilation of Collaborative Information Technologies: Global Comparisons

This paper reports on a global initiative to investigate the assimilation of collaborative information technologies (CITs) in task-oriented collaboration. The two classes of CITs explored include conferencing and groupware technologies. Based upon the level of technology access/availability and utilization, four assimilation states are identified. Data collected from 538 organizations in the US, Australia, Hong Kong, Norway, and Switzerland is mapped in the four CIT assimilation states. The results indicate that the assimilation patterns of conferencing and groupware technologies vary across the study regions. Overall analyses of the organizational antecedents of CIT assimilation indicate that function integration and promotion of collaboration are significantly associated with the assimilation of conferencing and groupware technologies. Organization size and information technology (IT) function size, on the other hand, were found to be significantly associated only with the assimilation of conferencing technologies. Implications of our findings are discussed for practice and research

Current status of information technologies used in support of task-oriented collaboration

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. The paper empirically assesses the pattern of deployment of IT in task-oriented collaboration in US 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 e-mail 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.

USER PERCEPTIONS OF SEARCH ENHANCEMENTS IN WEB SEARCH

Commercial web search engines are increasingly supplementing ordered lists of text results with various search enhancements. These enhancements include query suggestions, local business results, news results, related searches, and spelling suggestions. This study explores the relationships between enhancement utilization, perceptions of search effectiveness, and task complexity. Analysis of 976 search tasks conducted by 122 study participants finds that perceptions of search effectiveness are negatively associated with task complexity. We also found that perceptions of search effectiveness increased when enhancements were utilized. However, perceptions of search effectiveness decreased when more than one enhancement was used in complex search tasks. These findings have important implications for practice and research.

An Exploratory Investigation of the Organizational Impacts of Collaborative Information Technology Utilization in Australian Organizations

In this paper, we extend the existing literature by exploring the organizational-level impacts of Collaborative Information Technology (CIT). We consider CIT as any information technology (IT) that supports collaboration tasks. Data was collected from 73 organizations in Australia to access organizational impacts of CITs. Our results indicate that CIT use for primary collaborative tasks (information and knowledge sharing, decision-making, report writing/information pooling), secondary collaborative tasks (communications, scheduling, and monitoring progress), and tertiary collaborative tasks (issue resolution and discussion and brainstorming) is positively and significantly associated with strategic, efficiency-oriented, and effectiveness-oriented organizational level impacts. Implications of our findings are discussed for practice and research.

Exploring the emerging research topics on information technology-enabled collaboration for development

Exploring the emerging research topics on information technology-enabled collaboration for development Xusen Cheng, Xiangbin Yan and Deepinder S. Bajwa School of IT and Management, University of International Business and Economics, Beijing, People’s Republic of China; Donlinks School of Economics and Management, University of Science & Technology Beijing, Beijing, People’s Republic of China; College of Business and Economics, Western Washington University, Bellingham, WA, USA

Introduction to IT Enabled Collaboration in Developing Countries Minitrack

Collaboration theories and technologies, such as collaboration engineering, collaboration support system have been applied in many countries and regions for various kinds of collaboration. In the application stages of the collaboration system and technologies, Western European and North American countries have led a first step and achieved successful outcomes. However, as the world economy develops rapidly, besides the developed countries, the Developing Countries (DC), where many of the East European, Asian, African, South American countries involved, such as China, India, Brazil, and South Africa have raised a lot of attention in the use of collaboration technologies and acted more and more important roles in the intra-country and international collaboration recently. Technology enhanced collaboration such as synchronous and asynchronous computer supported collaboration, virtual teams, ICT, mobile collaboration, social media, have been used more and more in the collaboration research and application in the developing countries. This year is the first year that we are running this minitrack “IT enabled collaboration in developing countries”. After peer review, we have finally accepted three papers for inclusion in the HICSS conference proceedings. The first paper is “Designing a Mobile Collaboration Application for Student Collaborative Group Work: Evidence from China” by Xusen Cheng and Jianhua Yu. Recently, collaboration tools and techniques have been developed and implemented quickly in developing countries. However, there is a lack of research on mobile collaboration tools which are easily to be carried and preformed. In their study, they have presented the design of a simple Process Support System (PSS) by designing and developing an Android meeting application (APP) based on Collaboration Engineering (CE) methods to support college students’ collaborative study. They have carried out an experiment among 75 students from 6 Chinese universities and evaluated the capabilities of the application with a survey and interviews. Their research findings suggest that this mobile application can improve the effectiveness and efficiency of students’ group collaboration. They have also validated that CE methods are useful for mobile collaboration systems. The second paper is “Scientific Collaborator Recommendation in Heterogeneous Bibliographic Networks” by Chen Yang, Jianshan Sun, Jian Ma, Shanshan Zhang, Gang Wang, Zhongsheng Hua. Recommendation system is important for scientific collaboration. In their study, they have focused on scientific collaborator recommendation system in heterogeneous bibliographic networks. In their study, they have proposed an approach based on the multiple heterogeneous network features, which has produced good results in their experiments based on a dataset of more than 30,000 ISI papers. Their method generates high quality expert’s profiles via integrating research expertise, co-author network characteristics and researchers’ institutional connectivity (local and global) through a SVM-Rank based information merging mechanism to perform intelligent matching. For sure, this could enhance the recommendation system and lead to better collaboration. Their proposed method has been implemented in ScholarMate research network (www.scholarmate.com) which has been used by National Science Natural Foundation of China. The third paper is “The Influence of Social Capital in an Online Community on Online Review Quality in China” by Qiuju Li, Jinhong Cui, Yun Gao. Online community is also an important environment for collaboration. In their research, they have presented how social capital of reviewer affects the quality of online review. They have also considered reviewer’s social network, indegree and outdegree, experience, activity and have built a theoretical model about review quality. In their data collection, they have used 1764 reviews in an online community in China to examine their hypotheses through the Tobit regression method. In their findings, they have found that the results not only make theoretical contributions for online review quality, but also help business to manage and apply online reviews effectively. Finally, we thank the submissions from all the authors and also the help of the reviewers for this minitrack. In the future, we would like to attract more and more collaboration research papers from those in the world who are interested for the research and application for developing countries. 2015 48th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences