Social Collaboration in Project Work: An Exploratory Empirical Analysis of Benefits and Technologies

16 Pages Posted: 1 Apr 2014 Last revised: 2 Jul 2014

See all articles by Henner Gimpel

Henner Gimpel

University of Augsburg

Philipp Floesser

Karlsruhe Institute of Technology

Simon Caton

Karlsruhe Institute of Technology

Jennifer Schaefer

Campana & Schott

Date Written: March 31, 2014

Abstract

Traditional social collaboration information systems like shared workspaces have been used for more than 20 years. More recently tools like wikis, blogs and online social networks have gained prominence and expanded the scope of collaboration technologies. In this paper, we study the relevance of seven social collaboration technologies empirically in the context of project work. Using semi-structured expert interviews and a quantitative survey, we investigate the perception of more than 200 experienced users (about half of them being project managers) with regard to benefits in project work and different social collaboration technologies. It turns out, that traditional shared workspaces perform surprisingly well along most benefits compared to more recent technologies. For specific benefits, however, other technologies are deemed superior. The physical proximity of project team members has substantial impact on the relevance of different benefits and performance of social collaboration technologies. We observed – contrary to the current hype and our expectations – that modern social media platforms are not yet well received by practitioners. Our results are relevant for practitioners pondering which systems to use in their organization or how to design new social collaboration technologies. Based on our exploratory work, researchers may further conceptualize theory and follow-up with more confirmatory empirical work.

Keywords: Social software, Social computing, Computer-supported cooperative work, Quantitative survey

Suggested Citation

Gimpel, Henner and Floesser, Philipp and Caton, Simon and Schaefer, Jennifer, Social Collaboration in Project Work: An Exploratory Empirical Analysis of Benefits and Technologies (March 31, 2014). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2418447 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2418447

Henner Gimpel (Contact Author)

University of Augsburg ( email )

Augsburg
Germany

HOME PAGE: http://gimpel.fim-rc.de

Philipp Floesser

Karlsruhe Institute of Technology ( email )

Kaiserstraße 12
Karlsruhe, Baden Württemberg 76131
Germany

Simon Caton

Karlsruhe Institute of Technology ( email )

Kaiserstraße 12
Karlsruhe, Baden Württemberg 76131
Germany

Jennifer Schaefer

Campana & Schott ( email )

Gräfstraße 99
Frankfurt am Main, 60487
Germany

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