A Workspace Typology for Enterprise Collaboration Systems

Abstract

The global COVID-19 pandemic and the need for organisations to provide digital support for work-from-anywhere has put collaboration software into the centre of attention for IT managers. In this paper we examine (self-managed) workspaces in (integrated) Enterprise Collaboration Systems (ECS) that provide the environment for asynchronous communication and exchange of information. Our aim is to better understand how employees use the ECS to support their work. Based on a structured literature review and an in-depth case study of an ECS user company we developed a generic typology of workspaces containing three main categories (community, team and non-work-related) and 5 different types of workspaces. The types are characterised by their purpose, characteristics and possible metrics for their identification. The findings contribute to our understanding of collaborative user activity in enterprise collaboration environments and provide the basis for Social Collaboration Analytics.