The Effect of System-embedded Visual Restrictiveness on Experience Sharing

Abstract

Interactive visual representations of knowledge can be used as catalyst of organizational discourse. One under-investigated property of visual representations embedded into collaborative systems (CS) is their restrictiveness, i.e., the constraints which they impose on collaborative discussion, meaning construction and intellectual exchange. This study investigates the effects of visual restrictiveness on the process and outcome of CS-supported experience sharing in small groups. Through a lab experiment with 186 acting managers, followed by a field experiment in two organizations, we test the impact of a medium and a high level of visual restrictiveness compared to a non-restrictive control condition within a collaborative system. The results indicate support for the hypothesized positive impact of a medium level of visual restrictiveness on experience sharing effectiveness and efficiency. The impact is mediated by the perceived faithfulness of appropriation of the interactive graphical template. The implications of this study include augmenting the benefits and managerial applications of visual representations to support experience sharing in organizations, extending adaptive structuration theory to the visual context, and the development (and testing) of the concept of visual restrictiveness.