Authority-based and Bottem-up Diffusion of Collaboration Information Technologies: Constraints an Enablements

This Thesis contributes by reporting on the current state of diffusion of collaboration information technology (CIT). The investigation concludes, with a high degree of certainty, that today we have a ‘satisfactory’ diffusion level of some communicative CITs (mostly e-Mail, distantly followed by Audio Conferencing), and a ‘dissatisfactory’ diffusion level of instrumental and discursive CITs (i.e. those requiring significant collaboration and cooperation among users, like Meeting Support Systems, Group Decision Support Systems, etc.). The potential benefits of the latter seem to be far from fully realised due to lack of user acceptance. This conclusion has gradually developed along the research cycle, as follows:Initially, the assertion was based on my own experience and on testimonies of people from my professional surroundings.Then, this assertion was supported by the Expert Talks (Empirical Study 1).Confidence was added, as to the validity of this assertion, through the Critical Meta-Analysis of Case-Study Reports (Empirical Study II). Here, I have reviewed the observational experience from decades of collaboration-technology developments and adoption trials. Based on this experience, I have identified some persistent problems and reported persistent barriers to the adoption of, especially discursive, collaboration technologies.Additional confidence was added through the Content Analysis of CIT Literature (Empirical Study 3). Here my secondary (summative) finding is that all studies to date which have tackled issues of CIT diffusion, have unanimously supported the view that discursive and instrumental CITs have not yet reached mass uptake and high utilisation levels within organisations. Meanwhile, there are also no existing reports on rapid diffusion of discursive and instrumental collaborative solutions. In practice, this means that if we walk into any organisation today, there is a great probability that we will observe the following, typical pattern of collaborative systems use: a few types of communicative CITs in active use (by far most important being e-Mail, fairly distantly followed by Audio Conferencing). It is highly unlikely (i.e. exceptional) that we see any other types of CITs in active use. The usage patterns we are likely to observe are ‘technological shunning’, ‘scepticism’, ‘substitution’, or ‘exploration’. We will also observe that least available and least frequently used are tools like Group Decision Support Systems, Meeting Support Systems, Issue Based Information Systems, and Discussion Moderation Tools (the so called ‘discursive’ collaboration technologies). The latter suggests formidable barriers to their adoption and use. An additional, unplanned and rather interesting, finding from this study has been the recognition of large [mostly business] reporting on numerous Web 2.0 user-community produced collaboration technologies (most of them belonging to the category of ‘social software’) and their metamorphosis from autonomous, ‘bottom-up’ solutions into enterprise-supported infrastructures. Some examples include the following reported practices of: employees blogging ‘at work about work’, employees using self-selected Wikis or Mashups for project management purposes without informing management about it, building organisational ‘folksonomies’ through social tagging, affiliating with others of similar interests (forming their own peer group), or employees using even Multiplayer Online Games to coordinate their activities and to manage their virtual collaborative work. Since 2006, there has been abundant business reporting on such practices, and these practices actually violate every traditional percept of corporate communication. The latter is true because: 1) instead of being organisation-mandated, these collaborative solutions are adopted by individual employees autonomously, through self-initiative, and they are self-selected; 2) instead of being an intended part of the organisational IT infrastructure, and the result of targeted investment, these solutions are emergent, ‘de facto’ collaboration systems. In this sense, such collaborative solutions resemble what has been discussed by the IS community as ‘shadow IT’ (i.e. a set of IT tools used for performing IT functions but not part of the mainstream IT organisation). Another contribution of this Thesis – again suggested by Empirical Study I, and tested through Empirical Studies II and III – pertains to the ‘process structure’ of CIT diffusion. It was planned, ab initio, that the primary focus of this research would be on diffusion of innovation, but the identification of two distinct diffusion paths offered both the motivation and opportunity to restructure my diffusion research. I had found that collaboration technology has historically diffused following two distinct (interdependent but orthogonal) diffusion paths – top-down (authority-based) and bottom-up. The authority-based diffusion path seems to be characterised by efforts aimed at ‘imposing’ technologies on employees, the primary concern being to make sure that technology seamlessly and easily integrates into the organisational IT infrastructure. Experiences have shown that organisations may well be able to impose transactional systems on their employees. But in the case of supporting creative collective work through CIT, the authority-based adoption strategies have proven to be of limited success. The typical result is either ‘adoption but no deployment’ (only the organisation adopts the collaboration technology, but not the employees), or sceptical use. On the other hand, the bottom-up diffusion trail seems to be successful. This Thesis contributes to our understanding of why CIT diffusion is structured as it is, i.e. with two orthogonal research communities, each associated with a distinct research/ development process conceptualisation and diffusion path. In seeking answers to the question ‘why’, I systematically outline a multitude of factors (contextual, adaptation, or intervening), and evolve a grounded hypothesis of how these factors may determine CIT adoption and diffusion. The research methodology applied in this exploration is qualitative-interpretive, and one deliverable is a historical review of how the CIT research community has conceptualised both CIT field itself and CIT adoption and diffusion over the last decade. The contribution of this investigation may be summarised as threefold:This investigation consolidates most of the findings to date, pertaining to CIT adoption and diffusion, which have been produced by the CIT research community. Thus, it tells a coherent story of the dynamics of the community focus and the collective wisdom gathered over a period of (at least) one decade.This work offers a meaningful framework within which to analyse existing knowledge – and indeed extends that knowledge base by identifying persistent problems of collaboration technology acceptance, adoption and diffusion. These problems have been repeatedly observed in practice, though the pattern does not seem to have been recognised and internalised by the community. Many of these problems have been observed in cases of CIT use one decade ago, five years ago, three years ago, and continue to be observed today in structurally the same form despite what is unarguably ‘rapid technological development’. This gives me reason to believe that, at least some of the persistent problems of CIT diffusion can be hypothesised as ‘determining factors’. My contribution here is to identify these factors, discuss them in detail, and thus tackle the theme of CIT diffusion through a structured historical narrative.Through my contribution (2) above, I characterise a ‘knowledge-action gap’ in the field of CIT and illuminate a potential path through which the research community might hope to bridge this gap. The knowledge-action gap I see as one fundamental weakness of the traditional approach to issues of collaboration technology diffusion. The gap may be operationalised as cognitive distance between CIT ‘knowledge’ and CIT ‘action’. My historical review has revealed an almost missing practice of ‘learning’:from decades of CIT developments and adoption trials;from Theory (there is very scarce use of theory in CIT, no consensus on what CIT theory is and whether it is needed etc.). Therefore, there seems to be a lack of incremental building on our CIT knowledge to help us in our CIT actions, e.g. the design of collaboration technologies as well as our organisational IS strategies (for stimulating adoption etc.). My personal research journey through the history of research in the field of CIT has convinced me that a certain amount of humility is desirable in proceeding toward the goals of: a) designing truly useful and highly acceptable collaboration technology, and b) enacting truly successful organisational CIT strategies. In particular, the historical record suggests that there are unrealistic expectations to which software designers and IS strategists are commonly vulnerable: software designers tend to overestimate their ability to predict all the ways in which people will (or, perhaps more arrogantly: should) want to use collaborative systems. Analogously, IS strategists tend to overestimate their ability to predict all the ways in which people will (or should) want to follow and execute their technology-adoption plans. In this research, I am applying a certain amount of ‘humility’ by learning from and incrementally building on the wisdom of two decades of CIT research – and by recommending a refocus on questions pertaining to the adoption and diffusion of multiple CIT solutions in a variety of organisational contexts based on the lessons learned from various CIT developments and adoption trials. By identifying those factors which appear persistently determinant of CIT diffusion, I am contributing toward the long-term goals of designing highly acceptable collaboration technologies and enacting successful CIT organisational strategies. In this Thesis I have tried to look more deeply (than do strict constructionists) into the fundamental constraints on how collaboration occurs today: the kinds of collaboration structures that have emerged and why some computer-based technologies are providing adequate support for those structures and others are not. In doing this through an interpretive and primarily qualitative lens, I recognise that I have generated ‘grounded hypotheses’ rather than definitive statements – and that, in future work, these hypotheses must be tested. Through my comparison of the two distinct diffusion paths – authority-based and bottom-up – by contrasting persistent problems in these cases – I have attempted to make my resulting hypotheses more persuasive and, thus, to increase the motivation of the community to ‘care about’ and test them. In addition to the analytic histories of the CIT diffusion paths which form contributions of this Thesis, then, the final contribution is a Conceptual Framework, serving as illustration of the two diffusion paths and their determinants. I view collaboration technology diffusion as a process of intellectual transactions between the private and professional ‘social worlds’. Thereby, I consider possible and pay adequate tribute to various permutations of contingent adoption decisions – mandatory, consensus-based or voluntary. By choosing ‘social worlds’ as the unit of analysis for my CIT investigation, I am aligning with the stream of research which advocates the need for CIT to extend its boundaries and move beyond its current and almost exclusive focus on the traditional workplace. Most importantly, I hope to have contributed toward strengthening the conceptual-theoretical apparatus for the field of CIT as such.