Chapter 5 Notes
Feb 4th, 2014
MIS 5:30 Weds
The Need for Communication and Collaboration

Virtual Teams
o What is a vertical team
 Non Co-located groups of individuals which can be assembled ad
hoc to resolve business problems

o
Why do we need them?
 The increasing scope of the org allows for global distribution of
the work force
 This way the best IT person in Europe can work with the
Best in US to solve a problem
 Asynchronous
 Email
 Synchronous
 Phone Call


Web 1.0
 Content goes from web to the person
Web 2.0
 Content moves back and forth from users to other users,
changes from being just a consumer, to a consumer and
creator of information.



Ex: Wikipedia


These changes are not trivial for the organization
Discussion on virtual team
o Evolving workplace
 How does this effect firm operations?
 A generation of social media users
 Different workplaces expectations
 Portfolio careers not cradle to grave
 State of the art tech valued
 55% us Instant MSG as a work tool
Web 2.0 Tech changes how people interact with social media
o Online info at finger tips
o Personal expression available 24/7
Allows business to take advantage of this

Enterprise 2.0
o The use of social media with and across the org’s boundaries.
o Using Web 2.0 to help the firm
 Ex Google lunch time betting, manager can use this to see if a
project will get finished
 Ideas can be peer produced and crowd sourced within or outside
the firm
 Booz Allen makes employees blog about their knowledge
 Means that if an employee leaves the firm, they don’t take
all their skills and knowledge with them. The blog can be
reviewed, and the skills that employee used to solve tasks
can be passed onto the next employee
o
o
How to motivate adoption of Enterprise 2.0, manage capabilities, data
Other issues
 Trust, Suffocating the voices of experts, threat of terrorism
o
Web 2.0 is not about the technology, its about how its used to connect
 Objectives: What business problems? What’s the goal??
 People: Target Population, tools they use, etc
 Strategize: Listen talk energize, supporting, managing
 RECALL Carr
o
Technologies
 Valacich has Three

Groupware
 Platform Technology,
 Allows communication between various
individuals
 Reduces communication costs
 Example: Drop Box
 Benefits
 See Valacich List
 Reduce Costs!
 Increase availability of Info!

Video Conferencing

Intranet and Employee Portals
 Benefits
 As firm goes global, there is so much
information, so a portal allows real time
access to the info
Think of TUPortal, but for a company,
it’s a place where you can login and
find whatever you need. Because of
globalization and the added info that
comes with that, portals are super
important
Enterprise Search
Collaboration
Employee Portals
 Employee Benefits self-service
 Allows you to search at a firm
level to find which employee
has the skills you need.
Executives can see what
resources are available and
strategize accordingly.





Social Media Affords us 4 opportunities in the enterprise
o
o
o
o
Enhanced Communication
Enhanced Cooperation
Enhanced Collaboration
Enhanced Connection
o
Communication Methods


Examples
 Emails, Shared Calendars, Blogging, Instant MSG, Second
Life
Blogs
 The Definition of Web 2.0, user is creating the content
 Wikipedia- Kind of a Huge conglomeration of blogs with
lots of access
 The creation of the product (wiki) is free and crowd
sourced
 Same with Facebook, the content is all created by
the users

Micro Blogging
 Started as blast tech- one way
 Allows for dissemination of info

Instant Messaging
 Allows for feed back because of synchronous
 Disadvantage- Not good for discussion with many users

o
Virtual Worlds
 Look up youtube video
 Example Second Life
Cooperation
 Necessary to make these things work

Media sharing
 Flicker, instagram, youtube, rss feeds
 Creates mutual beneficial situations for both users and
firms
 Content Provider free advertising
 Content Sharer-Social returns, prestige, voice etc
 Social BookMarking
 You are providing more data about the data that is posted
 Tagging
 Think Facebook, and marking your pictures with the
names of those in them
 This extra data benefits you, and it benefits
the firm as now Facebook can use that info to
extend those photos to the people in it
 Creates meta-data—data about data
 Tagging/Social Bookmarking are very similar
o
Collaboration
 The tools that facilitate communication and cooperation
 Google Apps
 Allows real time use for Docs
 Allows everyone to be on the same Calendar
 Peer Production
 When users work, collaboratively
 Crowdsourcing
 Taking a job that would normally be done by designated
agent and outsourcing it to an undefined generally large
group of the form of an open call.
 Goldcorp Example
 Bring in a bunch of people to find gold
 Expertise of the crowd
 A crowd will guess how many jelly beans are in the
jar more accurately than an expert would
o
Building Connection
o
Viral Marketing
o
o
See the slides for more info
It spreads its stuff around Contagious- steps, triggers, emotional
currency, viral marketing want to be the first to see it,
o
There are some keys to making this work
LOOK AT THE SLIDES FOR NOTES PAST HERE

What does Valacich identify as the key concerns






Pitfalls of We 2.0
 Online Product reviews
 Microblogging
 Easy to cross the line and offend
 Social Network
 Fine line between maintaining and control and not
offending
o Bad vibes going viral
 Negative publicity can spread quickly
o United Breaks Guitars
Lessons
o News Travels Fast
o

Organizational Culture
Organizational Context
Organizational Hierarchies
Network effects and critical mass
Generational Gaps
Tech Gaps