There are widely recognized benefits in the use of groupware, but also unintended consequences. In this paper Shih explores groupware implementation and goes through several other studies that relate to his work. He suggests that group members are most likely to achieve high outcome quality of groupware use in cooperative work through work-flow routinization, information integration and coordination fit. In other words, groupware should offer ways to reduce repetitive activities in order to save the energy for more creative work.
While the conclusions from Shih's own research are pretty predictable, his findings from other research are interesting and provide answers to my question. These are also managerial issues: the implementation of a new groupware can be a critical move.
Table references:
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[17] J. Grudin, “Groupware and social dynamics: eight challenges for developers,” Communications of the ACM 37(1), 1994, pp. 92-105.
[22] H. Karsten, “Collaboration and collaborative information technologies: a review of the evidence,” Database for Advances in Information Systems 30(2), 1999, pp. 44-65.
[23] S. Kelly and M. Jones, “Groupware and the social infrastructure of communication,” Communications of the ACM 44(12), 2001, pp. 77-79.
[31] W.J. Orlikowski, “Learning from Notes: organizational issues in groupware implementation,” Proceedings of the Conference on computer Supported Cooperative
Work, ACM, New York, 1992a, pp. 362-369.
[38] A.M. Townsend, A.R. Hendrickson, and S.M. DeMarie, “Meeting the virtual work imperative,” Communications of the ACM 45(1), 2002, pp. 23-26.
[46] C. Yu and D.C. Yen, “Extranet and groupware,” Journal of Computer Information Systems 40(4), 2000, pp. 32-40.
