Using IM to Improve E-Collaboration in Organizations

IntroductIon Broadly defined as electronic technologies that enable collaboration among individuals engaged in a common task (Kock, 2005b), electronic collaboration (e-collaboration) is now viewed as a new strategic weapon for organizations to fundamentally improve the traditional business relationships and quality of business processes. Since the emergence of innovative information technologies including e-mail, teleconfer-encing, videoconferencing, and most recently, instant messaging (IM), the importance of e-collaboration has risen as organizations have made the shift from personal computing to interpersonal or collaborative computing that may more effectively and efficiently leverage their business resources for decision-making. Prior literature suggests that the utilization of e-collaboration technologies can avail organizations of facilitating business-to-business interactions and thereby more quickly and easily solving business problems that are in need of integrative operations and smooth information distribution and sharing amid different inter and intra As globalization continues to increase organizational connectivity for expanded organizational life, managers have increasingly recognized the strategic value of IM, which can be leveraged to significantly improve e-collaboration among various organizational constituents beyond restricted geographical boundaries. In the past decade, the advent and wide implementation of Internet-based technologies has made it more flexible and less costly for organizations to establish intra and inter business relationships. IM, which has become ubiquitous among teenagers and recreational users (Grinter & Palen, 2002), is being widely adopted by businesses and implemented IM presents a revolution in enterprise communication. This near-synchronous computer-based interactive communication media not only supports informal communication in the workplace where e-mail, phone, and fax are already widely utilized, but also facilitates some of the processes that make have identified such key features of IM as: presence awareness, immediate closed loop communication, multi-party collaboration, anytime, anywhere access, opportunistic interaction, broadcasting of information or questions, negotiation of availability for interaction, within-medium polychromic communication, " pop-up " recipient notification, silent interactivity, and ephemeral transcripts. These unique characteristics make IM " a powerful new tool for business communication " (DeSouza, 2004) by means of revamping employee productivity and efficiency in workplace. As a result, the use of IM has significantly risen. A report from Pew Internet & American Life (2004) reveals that more than four in ten online Americans instant message and, on a typical day, 29% of these send instant messages and one in five IM users send instant messages at work. While few researches have related IM to business communications and e-collaboration in general, this article attempts to …