“WE NEED TO TALK!” - PROJECT TEAMS DEALING WITH LOW CONNECTIVITY

The continuous technological development and the consistent reliance on ICT, has raised the expectations towards ubiquitous connectivity to an extent that technical failures or social disconnects are a serious threat for project teams and their performance, especially when team members are scattered around the world. We analyse hypo-connectivity, the state in which users face too few connectivity to work efficiently, and focus on its impact in project teams. By applying a mixed method approach in the context of an international consulting company, we investigate the two-sided phenomenon of hypo-connectivity and aim to identify the consequences of hypo-connectivity on communication effectiveness and efficiency, as well as the role of connectivity norms in this relationship. Our results show that hypo-connectivity has a negative influence on communication effectiveness and efficiency, which consequently leads to decreased performance, increased frustration, and conflicts. However, the establishment of connectivity norms in project teams can ease the effects of hypo-connectivity, sustain the communication flow and balance the negative impact. We conclude that people actually “need to talk” about the dos and don’ts that sustain their communication flow and develop connectivity norms that could help the team circumvent the negative effects of hypo-connectivity

Do You Plead Connected? - Understanding How Lawyers Deal With Constant Connectivity

Being available and responsive has become an imperative to accomplish the complex work of knowledge workers and to adequately satisfy today’s business needs. As a consequence, individuals are required to adopt strategies to cope with increasing connectivity levels. We conducted a Q methodological study among 34 lawyers from Switzerland and Austria to examine the adoption of different strategies for dealing with constant connectivity. Our findings reveal four ICT user types, whereof three types successfully deploy a coping strategy while one type fails. We observe that specific determinants such as the work environment, the hierarchical position, the perceived autonomy as well as personality traits have substantial influence on the adoption of a coping strategy

Innovation Contests: How to Design for Successful Idea Selection

Innovation contests provide several benefits, but many organizations struggle with managing emergent challenges that occur during the idea selection process. This paper builds on qualitative interviews, where practitioners shared their experiences with managing innovation contests. Across the 13 contest domains studied in 31 cases, we identified five frequently occurring contest goals: (1) promote entrepreneurship, (2) collect innovative ideas, (3) elevate awareness, (4) explore market opportunities, and (5) find talent that influence the design of the selection process. Moreover, for five common emergent challenges we identified how practitioners apply manual and IT-enabled coping strategies, which can be associated with three design elements, i.e., the (1) ideas for the innovation, the (2) raters of the ideas, and the (3) duration of the selection process. These findings are summarized in a guiding framework that helps practitioners design, navigate, and manage the complex process of idea selection

FROM ISOLATION TO COLLABORATION - HOW THE INCREASING DIFFUSION OF MOBILE DEVICES HAS CHANGED PRACTICES OF KNOWLEDGE SHARING IN NON-OFFICE SETTINGS

The increasing diffusion of mobile devices such as smartphones or tablets has not only revolutionized how people communicate with each other, but has also changed work practices and the way employ-ees share knowledge. Knowledge management studies have to date mainly focused on office settings but paid little attention to non-office workplace settings. However, the use of mobile devices also changes the way employees can be supported and support each other in non-office settings and thus create new application areas for knowledge management. In this research, we applied a three step qualitative inquiry with 36 experts in the construction sector to investigate how the increasing diffu-sion of mobile devices has affected existing work practices that are associated with knowledge sharing in non-office settings. We found that the use of mobile devices helped to transform isolated work prac-tices into collaborative work practices, thereby reducing the spatial, temporal, contextual, and social barriers to knowledge sharing. As such, an increase in connectivity can be seen as an indicator for potential development of increased collaboration across work sites. We conclude the paper with a dis-cussion of implications for organizations concerning the support of knowledge sharing in such settings and an outlook on future work