Online Communication Technology and Relational Development

Key to success in negotiation is managing and enhancing relationships. This concept can be difficult to convey in short-term executive training courses where students have little time for relational development. Not to worry: the authors assert that by strategically using online communication before, during, and after such courses, students can effectively both train for, and depend on, good relations at a distance

The sharing economy ideal Implementing an organization-sponsored sharing platform as a CSR program

Purpose Bridging noted gaps in the sharing economy and corporate social responsibility (CSR) literatures, the purpose of this paper is to investigate how an organization-sponsored sharing platform – a new class of information technology (IT) and the sharing economy ideal – is given meaning as a CSR program for internal stakeholders. Design/methodology/approach The research involves phone interviews conducted with site coordinators of the Zimride by Enterprise® ridesharing platform in 25 organizations. Findings This case study reveals that two component processes of organizational sensemaking – sensegiving and sensebreaking – are underlying micromechanisms used by organizations to enact a sponsored sharing platform as a CSR program. Qualitative analyses demonstrate that every meaning given to Zimride remained open to sensebreaking during its implementation. As such, site coordinators were continuously drawn into sensemaking about Zimride’s cognitive, linguistic and conative dimensions as a CSR program and had to exert ongoing effort to stabilize its socially (re)constructed meaning within their organization. Furthermore, site coordinators’ sensegiving narrative about Zimride was often undermined by their sensebreaking communications and organizational actions, albeit unintentionally. Research limitations/implications Sponsoring a sharing platform to facilitate collaborative consumption can deliver triple bottom line benefits for both organizations and their members, but it may not. The key to accruing this potential shared value lies is how site coordinators navigate organizational sensemaking about these IT-enabled CSR programs. Originality/value This paper provides valuable insights into these sensemaking processes and develops a prescriptive framework for enacting an organization-sponsored sharing platform as a CSR program

Implementing an Organization-sponsored Sharing Platform to Build Employee Engagement

Organization-sponsored sharing platforms are a new class of IT that facilitates collaborative consumption within a private social network restricted to organizational members. As such, they leverage and integrate employees\u27 roles as consumers and providers ( prosumers ) in working environments and therefore offer a new way to build employee engagement, which is strategically important to all types of organizations. By studying organizations using the Zimride ridesharing platform, we have identified the ways in which organization-sponsored sharing platforms build prosumer engagement and provide recommendations for adopting these platforms and enhancing their impact.Click here for free presentation slides (pdf

Examining the Viability of Organization-Sponsored Sharing Platforms

Organization-sponsored sharing platforms represent the sharing economy ideal because they facilitate the peer-to-peer exchange of goods and services among members of an established community. By embedding sharing within an organization, this platform configuration infuses collaborative consumption with the moral dimension of shared values and concerns. However, the conflicting institutional logics inherent in community-based sharing create paradoxical tensions that are likely to destabilize this new organizational form. Therefore, to understand when an organization-sponsored sharing platform is viable, we conducted an empirical investigation of the Zimride by Enterprise® ridesharing platform for universities and corporations. Using qualitative and quantitative data from 25 organizations that sponsored Zimride’s ridesharing service, we found that this new organizational form is characterized by contradictions due to the market, hierarchy, and community logics of its multilevel B2B2P2P service delivery model. However, the mere presence of such paradoxical tensions did not render this sharing economy ideal infeasible. We therefore discuss when the Zimride platform was viable and how site coordinators at sponsoring organizations managed, in particular, the tension between their organizational members’ need for a heterogeneous supply of transportation options and a strong collective identity to motivate their collaborative consumption

Diversity's harvest: Interactions of diversity sources and communication technology on creative group performance

Our research is based on arguments that three different diversity sources in groups - agreeableness, openness, and ethnicity - might simultaneously possess separation properties that result in social categorization and variety properties that provide non-redundant and value-adding information resources. To help understand how these diversity sources interact with the additive and reductive features of communication technology to impact group creativity, we designed two studies involving computer mediation, nominal group technique, and face-to-face (control) communication. Our findings suggest that agreeableness, openness, and ethic diversity possess both negative separation and positive variety properties. Whereas the separation properties of all three diversity sources, as well as the variety properties of openness diversity, are evident in newly-formed groups, the variety properties of agreeableness and ethnic diversity are only manifest in mature groups. Finally, the additive and reductive features of communication technology interact with all three diversity sources to impact creative group performance in different ways.Group diversity Computer mediated communication Creativity

Platform Service Designs: A Comparative Case Analysis of Technology Features, Affordances, and Constraints for Ridesharing

Ridesharing platforms have gained a strong foothold as an alternative transportation option to vehicle ownership for consumers while being contested for causing widespread market disruption. They continue to foster business model innovation and unveil new opportunities for delivering goods and services within the broader sharing economy. However, relatively little is known about the comparative value of services provided by the numerous ridesharing platforms available today. We, therefore, analyze three exemplars within the broader sharing economy: Uber®, BlaBlaCar®, and Zimride®. We find that these ridesharing platforms are unique service systems with different designs for facilitating peer-to-peer service interactions, which are reflected in their technology features, affordances, and constraints. Our analysis offers researchers and platform owners new ways to conceptualize and understand these two-sided, digital markets with a range of participants, user goals, and service experiences. In particular, we demonstrate that platforms can be designed to cultivate entrepreneur dependency or enable prosumer communication and collaborative consumption. Given pending legislation to regulate platform-based work, platform owners should be mindful about creating an asymmetrical power imbalance with providers given assumptions about service interactions and technology features. Furthermore, researchers should account for service design differences, as well as the technology affordances and constraints, of platforms

Perceived Risk of COVID-19 and Employee Decision-Making: How Psychological Distress during the Pandemic Increases Negative Performance Outcomes among Healthcare Workers

In this research, we examined how COVID-19 impacts employee decision-making and performance, knowing that this virus has negatively affected public health, crippled economies, and transformed social and business environments across the globe. To quantitatively test our specific hypotheses regarding the effects of employees’ perceived risk of COVID-19 and psychological distress on negative performance outcomes, we surveyed 443 healthcare workers who were employed by a group of private hospitals in Zimbabwe. These essential workers were delivering day-to-day frontline services with high exposure to COVID-19 during the pandemic. We find that employees’ perceived risk of COVID-19 increases their disengagement, turnover intention, burnout, and low morale at a p < 0.05 significance level. These latter relationships are mediated by employees’ psychological distress at a p < 0.05 significance level. Our findings shed light on how the COVID-19 pandemic is affecting the cognitions and behaviors of the frontline workers who are vulnerable to this contagious disease. Turnover intentions are amplified among healthcare employees, due to their perceived risk of COVID-19 and the resulting psychological distress. Similarly, burnout becomes predominant as these workers worry about contracting the coronavirus due to the poor working conditions they face. As such, our research confirms that the pandemic has intensified the precariousness of work and challenge of managing employee performance, especially for frontline healthcare workers

Online Communication Technology and Relational Development

Key to success in negotiation is managing and enhancing relationships. This concept can be difficult to convey in short-term executive training courses where students have little time for relational development. Not to worry: the authors assert that by strategically using online communication before, during, and after such courses, students can effectively both train for, and depend on, good relations at a distance