Enterprise collaboration systems: addressing adoption challenges and the shaping of sociotechnical systems

Abstract

This article examines the adoption challenges organizations encounter when they introduce enterprise collaboration systems (ECS) and the measures that can be used, i.e. actions that can be taken, to address these challenges. The aim of the article is to provide an overview of the multitude of different ECS adoption challenges and measures, and based on these, to lay the theoretical and analytical basis for studying the shaping of such complex sociotechnical systems. For this purpose, a qualitative meta-analysis of the academic literature and interviews with companies were conducted, which resulted in a collection of ECS challenges and measures classified and analyzed with regard to their specific spatiotemporal aspects. Drawing on the results of this study, research imperatives, which include the call for studying ECS over multiple time frames and settings, are presented. These will be examined in greater depth as part of our wider, multidisciplinary research program that focuses on enterprise collaboration systems use in the emerging digital workplace.