Work Practice Diversity in Enterprise Collaboration Systems: an Analysis of Social Documents

Abstract

Enterprise collaboration systems are open to interpretive flexibility, resulting in a multitude of approaches to achieving the same task. This exploratory study provides insights into the diverse ways collaboration system professionals use collaboration technology. Data was collected about the systems, applications and type of documents they use for the typical work scenario of preparing and documenting online team meetings. The collected data was translated into visual representations of the collaborative work that happens around social documents. The results of the study reveal that there is no uniform approach and that the information involved in this process is not stored in a defined location but distributed across different systems, spaces and containers. Whilst there are observable similarities in the way employees carry out the scenario, the detailed steps are different for each case. Even within the same organisation there are fewer similarities than might be expected. The fact that the information relating to the same collaboration scenario is distributed across different storage locations reveals potential problems from an information management perspective with regards to information retrievability and accessibility.