Chapter 13 - Supporting IT Collaboration Flashcards
What did Peter Drucker say about large businesses in 2008?
- Fewer than half the levels of management
- No more than a third of the # of managers
Also
- info based
- less like mfg, more like orchestra
- more team based
Textbook
- specialists direct performance through feedback from others
- 3 factors driving this
1 - knowledge workers dominating, resist command & control
2 - all companies need to find a way to become entrepreunurial
3 - IT shifting to handling info rather than data
What is collaboration?
Two or more people working together to make something or to achieve a goal
What is the future of workplace collaboration
A collective of online communities - accelerating due to covid
What is the CIO’s role in online collaboration?
Foster online communities and collaboration
- provide tech to support
What is a group?
Several individuals who come together to achieve the goals of an organization
- act as the foundation to the org
What are the characteristics of a group?
1) Open vs. Closed Membership
2) Loosely Coupled vs Tightly Coupled Interactions
3) Hierarchy - Chain Hierarchy vs ????
4) Location - face2face, telphone, writing
5) Time (duration and time intensity)
What are the types of groups?
1) Authority Groups (closed, tight, full-time, location irrelavent)
2) Intradepartmental Groups (closed, seniority exists, tight or loose, location usually close, use networks to collaborate)
3) Project Teams (Closed, tight, hierarchy, limited duration)
4) Interdepartmental groups
5) Committees & Task Forces (fulltime / one issue, loose)
6) Bus Relationship Groups (relationships with customers, closed, loose, no hierarchy,
7) Peer Groups (open or closed, loose, no hierarchy, dispersed members)
8) Networks
9) E-Groups (open, no hierarchy, loose, widely dispersed)
10) Communities of practice (open)
11) Network Armies (grassroots movements, massive voluntary collaboration)
What is the most naturally occuring/common group in an org?
Communities of practice - people who interact with each other to pursue common practice
Informal groups that form around passion or expertise in something. Goal: share experiences, expertise, problems
- have a profound effect on business’ strat, new lines of bus, best prac, solving problems, retaining ppl
- w/o support, difficult to organize and sustain
- usually resist being managed cuz informal
How can orgs support communities of practice?
- identify pottential cops
- provide infrastructure to cops
- measure cops contributions
What are the two categories of activites of groups?
1) Communication and interaction
2) Decision making and problem solving
What are the axis on the time/place communication framework?
Same Place / Different Place
Same Time / Different Time
- it displays different ways technology can be used to support anytime/anyplace communication
What are the four quadrants of the matrix?
Same Place/Same Time - Fact to face meetings (ecopyboards, e decision support, team building tools)
- 800hrs/year! 240hrs wasted! 30% working hours, eliminate or improve efficiency
Same Place/Different Time - teams in place (team room tools)
Different Place/Same Time - Cross-distance meetings (phones, video conferencing, screensharing)
Different Place/Different TIme - Ongoing collabortion (Voice mail, email, pm sw, group editing sw)
Platforms -
What are virtual teams?
Different location teams
- formed for a certain project, may never meet face-to-face, may operate in 3 cells of the time/place framework
What is workflow?
Collaborative process that coordinates a team to complete a task.
Can enhance the efficiency of transaction or mission critical tasks
How can IT be used in workflow?
Workflow mgmt systems can provide a mechanism for planning and controlling how teams work
- support a highly distributed working env
What are the factors the influence the levels of percieved crisis?
1) Percieved value of possible loss
2) perc prob of loss
3) perc time pressure
influenced by cultural, economic, tech and social factors
What is a crisis mgmt support system?
Helps users prepare, analyze and resolve conflict
- IT can help parties access and fiulter online db to avoid info overload
- Exper systems can help learn from past crises, use DSS to improve quality and enhance org readiness
How can companies identify potential cops?
- provide a cop consultant, so employees have someone to talk to about cops
How/why should bus provide infrastructure to cops?
- provides them with resources
- contributions to cops and people who organize them
- compensation for cops
- budgets for IT systems that support cops
- exec sponsors
- corporate universities
How should you assess cops?
- listen to stories and anecdotes
What is a network army?
- a set of individuals and communities aligned by a cause
- moral and intellectual influencers instead of leaders
- may include major differences among opinions
- united by common agenda and cohesive value system
- communicate through open forums
What three developments have made network armies appear with a lot of power?
1) high speed info flows due to common language
2) geometrically expanding power of networks
3) intl visibility
How can IT help with bad meetings?
1) Eliminate meetings - email, voice, IM allows info about attendees spread quickly, elim not attend
2) Better Prep - Computer conferencing allows members to give feedback and info at convencience
3) Improve effectiveness - more effective when people contribute
What are 7 hypothesized adv and disadv with group support system software for presentation-discussion?
- more opportunities for discussion
- more equal participation
- permanent record of discussion
- improved feedback (more time to give)
- improved learning (not thinking about what youre going to say as much)
- remote asynchronous participation
Negatives
- distractions
- anonymity prevents community
How does work coordination in different time zones work with different place collaboration?
- round the clock teams pass work off to different time zones
Same time/Same Place - meet initially to develop basic plans and objectives
Diff time/Diff Place - Comm via email to do research/anal separately
Same time/Diff place - a/v meetings to discuss
What is negotiation?
- motivated process where antagonists with initial conflict seek to find an agreeable solution to make all better off
- cooperation to create value
- conflict to claim it
What are the three types of conflict in negotiation?
Goal - parties seek divergent, incompatible outcomes. Chances of common solution are diminished due to distrivute bias
Judgement - may share a goal, differ in how to accomplish. May have info other does not have. Wrong conclusion anyways.
Solution - based on percieved fairness
What is a negotiation support system?
Computer assisstance for negotiation
What are the key foci to neg sup systems?
Group Decision/Conflict Res Models - the use of software agents or other models to find the most efficient outcomes
Rich Comm Media - aggregating and modifying data to be sent. includes photos, videos to imrpove decision making on all ends
Interatvive info elicitation - transparent and structured manner is key. Better communicates problems to other party.
Continuity - internet based connectivitity prevents waning motivation and forgetting problems/key points or urgency for consensus
What are three factors that influence extent on percived crisis?
- percieved value of loss
- percieved prob of loss
- percieved time pressure
What are some things team members may experience during crisis?
- reduced attention span
- loss of memory
- diminished tolerance for ambiguity
- deterioration of verb comm and hand eye
- regresseion to primitive modes of response
- increased stress
- increased rate of error
How can IT be used during crisis response?
- filter data to cope with info overload or data reliability
- use DSS to learn from past crisis
- use NSS to resolve problems
How can you manage open source?
Managed membership - generally there are well-defined leaders. project authority could be managed by core team or contributions may require being voted it.
Rules and Institutions - License enforces how sw can be used. Members and leaders chosen. Communication, calls for votes
Social Pressures - used to keep people in line and following rules. Since reputation is important, usually works.
