Abstract
This chapter develops an organizational view of the roles and impacts of e-collaboration. Drawing on the dynamic capabilities perspective, e-collaboration is conceptualized as a change-oriented capability that enables a firm to identify, integrate, and apply its knowledge assets to meet competitive demands. Therefore, e-collaboration potentially has three organizational roles - coordination, learning, and innovation - that are associated with either efficiency impacts or competitive impacts. Drawing on contingency theory, the main argument developed in this chapter is that firms in less dynamic business environments need e-collaboration for operational purposes, emphasizing the coordination role, whereas firms in highvelocity business environments need e-collaboration for strategic purposes, emphasizing the learning and innovation roles. An analysis of the way in which business environment characteristics interact with media characteristics serves to demonstrate the importance of strategic characteristics - in addition to media and task characteristics - in determining the organizational effectiveness of e-collaboration.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Title of host publication | Virtual Team Leadership and Collaborative Engineering Advancements |
| Subtitle of host publication | Contemporary Issues and Implications |
| Publisher | IGI Global |
| Pages | 13-27 |
| Number of pages | 15 |
| ISBN (Print) | 9781605661100 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - 1 Dec 2009 |