Organizational adoption and diffusion of electronic
meeting systems: a case study
Bjørn Erik Munkvold
Robert Anson
Agder University College/University of New South Wales
Serviceboks 422
4604 Kristiansand, Norway
47 38 14 17 72
Boise State University
1910 University Drive
Boise, ID USA 837252
1 208 426 3029
Bjorn.E.Munkvold@hia.no
Ranson@boisestate.edu
ABSTRACT
The obvious benefits for team collaboration achieved through the
use of Electronic Meeting Systems (EMS), do not appear to be so
obvious on an organizational scale. After years of trying, there are
relatively few published reports of rapid and broad adoption and
diffusion of this technology. The broader class of Group Support
System (GSS) technologies, that include highly successful
products such as Lotus Notes and NetMeeting, has fared
substantially better. This case study is of one large company that
has been relatively successful in diffusing Lotus Notes and
NetMeeting, while only slowly winning an uphill battle
implementing GroupSystems, a popular EMS.
Categories and Subject Descriptors
H.4.1 [Information Systems Applications]: Office Automation –
Groupware, H.4.2 [Information Systems Applications]: Type of
Systems – Decision support, H.4.3 [Information Systems
Applications]: Communications Applications.
General Terms
Management, Design, Human Factors.
Keywords
Group support systems, electronic meeting systems, adoption and
diffusion, case studies, success factors.
"Almost nothing is known about GSS adoption and diffusion"
[19]
1.
INTRODUCTION
The statement above is collected from an article summarizing the
experiences from more than a decade of research into group
support systems (GSS) conducted at the University of Arizona,
involving facilitation of over 4000 projects [19]. The terms GSS
and EMS (Electronic Meeting Systems) are often used
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for
personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are
not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that
copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. To copy
otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists,
requires prior specific permission and/or a fee.
Group ’01, September 30-October 3, 2001, Boulder, Colorado.
Copyright 2001 ACM 1-58113-000-0/00/0000…$5.00.
interchangeably. However, while the GSS term can be seen to
incorporate a wide range of collaboration technologies, we will
here use the term EMS for GSS technologies specifically designed
to provide structured process support for group meetings. These
systems include a combination of communication and process
support features, often referred to as "level 2" GSS [6].
While laboratory experiments have been the dominating approach
in EMS research, a recent literature review documents how the
number of case and field studies has increased over the last years
[9, 10]. Most of these studies focus on the effects of using this
technology on organizational group processes and task outcome.
That research shows that the overwhelming experience with EMS
supported meetings is positive.
Despite this success, few researchers have studied adoption and
diffusion of this technology within organizations. A likely reason
is the relatively limited proliferation of these systems in
organizations. Compared to other collaboration technologies such
as Lotus Notes, with an extensive user base and a growing body
of accumulated field research [13], EMS have yet to experience
the same uptake and focus by companies. However, the increasing
number of new web-based EMS products entering the market can
be expected to result in a more widespread diffusion of this
technology. The prospect of increased use, in combination with
the large potential for improving teamwork represented by EMS,
leads us to argue for the importance of building knowledge related
to the successful implementation of these technologies.
The research presented here takes on an exploratory, case study
approach to identify issues of importance for the adoption of
electronic meeting support technologies. The empirical basis is an
in-depth study of the organizational implementation of EMS in
Statoil, a large Norwegian oil company. Over a five-year period,
Statoil has been implementing GroupSystems fairly
successfully, although the diffusion has been slow, and often
rocky.
One important factor in this technology adoption has been the
larger collaborative technology infrastructure, in Statoil,
comprising Microsoft NetMeeting, videoconferencing and
Lotus Notes, in addition to GroupSystems1. These complement
one another to support a wide range of collaboration, including
truly "anytime/anyplace" meetings. This portfolio of collaboration
technologies, however, has also introduced various competitive
1
Trademark is implied when referring to these technologies in the
rest of the paper. Lotus Notes is sometimes abbreviated "Notes",
while Microsoft NetMeeting is referred to as just "NetMeeting".
effects. With the increasing integration of different technologies
towards so-called anytime/anyplace infrastructures it becomes
more warranted to study entire portfolios of collaborative
technologies, and how their adoption processes interrelate. This
study will highlight important inter-relationships at Statoil.
The next section reviews the literature related to field studies of
organizational implementation of EMS, followed by a
presentation of the research approach applied for this study. We
then provide a case study description, including a presentation of
the case company, and an account of the adoption trajectories for
the different collaboration technologies in Statoil. Findings from
the case study are analysed and discussed, focusing on issues of
importance for the EMS adoption and diffusion in this case. The
final section presents our conclusions and implications for
practice and further research.
2.
LITERATURE REVIEW
Most of the existing EMS research is laboratory experiments,
focusing on the impact of EMS use on group processes and
outcome [8]. Although there is a growing body of field studies,
the majority of these are also focusing more on group impacts of
the technology rather than the process related to organizational
implementation of this technology [9, 10]. Table 1 lists some
examples of studies within this category.
The findings from these studies show how EMS to various
degrees improve the groups’ performance. Contrary to much of
the experimental research, field studies of EMS use substantiated
a generally high rate of success [9, 10]. However, the focus and
research context of these studies limits their ability to provide
insight into the process related to organizational adoption and
diffusion of this technology.
The unit of analysis in these studies is at the team level, with most
studies focusing on the appropriation of the technology by
permanent teams. Further, the studies often include the use of an
EMS facility supported by a third party [e.g. [24]), or the
installation of the EMS is only of a temporary nature (e.g. [5]).
Thus there is limited availability of field studies addressing the
organizational adoption and diffusion of EMS technologies, and
we have only been able to identify a few studies with this explicit
focus.
decision making in the World Bank. The implementation process
can be described as a stepwise process lasting over a period of
five years, and involving mutual learning between technologists
and organizational developers. Several features of the
implementation process are stated to have contributed to its
success:

a high level champion from the organizational behaviour
department (ORG), resulting in a focus on the technology as a
tool in organizational development

a close collaboration between the ORG department and the IT
department, resulting in an “unusual degree of sociotechnical
balance”

a real user design/implementation team comprising twelve
carefully chosen members that were to become facilitators and
technographers

a focus on learning
implementation
and
training
throughout
the
Grohowski et al. [11] describe one of the earliest major adoptions
of a GSS by an organization, IBM. Over three years,
GroupSystems spread from one single site to 33 sites, used by
over 15,000 participants through the company. By tracking the
results of a sampling of meetings they substantiated very positive
results. Based on these experiences they identified a set of success
factors for organizational implementation, examples of which are
organizational commitment, the need for an executive sponsor,
training, facilitation support, dedicated facilities, cost/benefit
analysis and meeting managerial expectations.
Finally, Post [21] reports the design and results of the evaluation
study conducted by Boeing prior to their decision to purchase
TeamFocus (the predecessor of GroupSystems). This involved the
creation of a comprehensive `evaluation infrastructure`, including
a dedicated evaluation team of ten people serving various roles,
development of extensive metrics for measuring business case
parameters, technical infrastructure development and facilitator
training. The results from the evaluation period documented
dramatic improvements in efficiency and effectiveness, and
illustrate the value of applying a business case approach to
technology evaluation for documenting the benefits from EMS
technology.
Bikson and Eveland [1] present a sociotechnical analysis of the
successful implementation of GroupSystems for supporting group
Table 1. Examples of field studies of EMS impact on teams
Author (year) [ref.]
Focus of study /research context
Research approach
Caouette and O’Connor,
(1993) [3]
Impact of EMS on the development of two teams in
a US insurance company
Quasi-experimental field study
Davison and Vogel (2000)
[5]
Use of EMS for supporting a reengineering process
in an accounting firm
Action research
DeSanctis et al. (1993) [6]
Adaptation of an EMS by three teams within the IT
department of Texaco
Interpretive analysis based on Adaptive
Structuration Theory
Tyran and Dennis (1992)
[24]
Application of EMS to support strategic
management, based on eight cases involving five
organizations using the same EMS facility
Multiple case studies
This study will extend the above research in two ways. First, it
involves a set of conditions that represents a mix of successful
and unsuccessful approaches, as identified by the prior studies.
Thus, this case adds support or questions about the importance
of some of those approaches. Second, it adds a new factor, how
EMS adoption and diffusion is affected by concurring
organizational processes related to the implementation of other
collaborative technologies. Presumably, the growing diffusion
of various collaborative systems in organizations suggests the
importance of this factor.
3.
RESEARCH METHOD
A case study approach was chosen for being able to capture indepth, contextual data related to a longitudinal process. Statoil
was chosen on the basis that it is the major user of
GroupSystems in Norway, and that the company also has
extensive experience with deploying this technology in
combination with other collaborative technologies. The first
author has also conducted prior research in this company on
their implementation and use of other collaboration technologies
[16].
Table 1 illustrates the large variety in research approaches
applied in previous EMS field studies. Overall, few exemplar
studies exist that may be applied as a basis for the design of this
exploratory research regarding theoretical foundation. Thus,
rather than seeking a particular theoretical perspective within
which to frame this study, our inquiry has been more in line with
a grounded theory approach [23] where categories emerging
from our data are being compared and contrasted with findings
from previous research in order to extend existing knowledge
related to the phenomenon under investigation.
Data was collected through five semi-structured interviews, with
employees in different roles related to the adoption and use of
GroupSystems. The informants, profiled in Table 2, were
selected for their key decision making and/or implementation
roles, in order to address the rationale behind the main decisions
and actions taken.
to-face or by telephone lasting from forty-five minutes to two
hours. All interviews were taped. The analysis of the interview
transcriptions focused on developing a historiographic
description of the organizational implementation of different
collaboration technologies in Statoil, and identifying key factors
influencing the adoption and diffusion of GroupSystems. The
case analysis was distributed to the informants for validation of
factual information and discussion of the researchers`
interpretations, leading to further modification and refinement of
the analysis.
4.
CASE DESCRIPTION
4.1 Presentation of case company
Statoil is a Norwegian state-owned oil company with 17,000
employees and a 2000 operating revenue of over US $ 21,7
billions. The organization comprises 40-50 different sites,
including offshore platforms and operations in more than 20
countries. Statoil IT is the organization's central IT unit,
responsible for delivering IT services to internal customers in
the company. The unit has about 450 employees and is
represented at all major Statoil sites.
The geographic distribution makes Statoil’s operations
coordination-intensive. As shown in Table 3, the company is an
advanced user of different IT applications for supporting
communication and collaboration. With a full company license,
Statoil is one of the world's largest users of Lotus Notes. Statoil
is also currently expanding its collaborative solutions to include
web-based employee workspaces, virtual collaboration rooms
and data conferencing with external parties [17].
Table 3. Statoil Portfolio of Collaboration Technologies
Tool
Collaborative Features
Lotus Notes
E-mail, Document management, Workflow,
Electronic archive, Group calendar, News and
bulletin boards, Discussion databases
NetMeeting
Application sharing, presentations
GroupSystems
Supporting structured electronic meeting
interactions (co-located and distributed)
Meeting
Rooms
Audio and videoconferencing,
meetings, presentations
Table 2. Informant profiles
Informant
Role related to adoption of GroupSystems
Project
leader/
facilitator
Project champion in GroupSystems
implementation. Also project leader for
implementation of Lotus Notes and Microsoft
NetMeeting.
Facilitator
Statoil IT employee with extensive facilitation
experience, for IT and non-IT groups, since the
initial introduction of the tool.
Facilitator/
product
manager
Statoil IT employee with extensive facilitation
experience. Product manager for the area termed
"Facilitation of IT-supported collaboration".
User/
facilitator
Employee outside of Statoil IT who has used the
tool extensively, as well as facilitated groups.
User/manager
Member of the IT management team.
Responsible for approval of the GroupSystems
acquisition.
The interviews focused on the informants` role in the
implementation of GroupSystems and other collaboration
technologies in Statoil, their experiences from this
implementation including factors inhibiting or supporting
adoption, and their reflection about further diffusion of these
technologies in Statoil. Interviews were conducted either face-
electronic
The company started to use IT for supporting meetings when
GroupSystems was first installed in 1996. Statoil IT has now
established three permanent electronic meeting rooms at the
major office locations in Stavanger, Bergen and Trondheim.
Each room has a capacity of 12-15 participants, and is equipped
with laptop PCs as workstations, audio- and video-conferencing
equipment, and public screen projection. Statoil has a pool of
around 10 GroupSystems facilitators, largely comprising
employees in Statoil IT. The company runs internal courses in
facilitation with GroupSystems, based on the vendor's training
methodology. Statoil IT rents the electronic meeting rooms and
facilitators to other units in the company on an hourly basis.
In 1999, GroupSystems was made available over the company
network, enabling distributed meetings involving two or more
linked meeting rooms as well as participants using
GroupSystems from their office. These distributed meetings are
usually also supported by audio, video and Microsoft
NetMeeting in different combinations, thus providing Statoil’s
employees with an 'anytime/anyplace' meeting infrastructure.
4.2.1
In the following, the implementation trajectories for these
different technologies are summarized, illustrating how these
have been interrelated in several ways.
Installation
and training
1992-1997
Deployment
support
1996-97
Prestudy
of EMS
tools
Implementation of
web-publishing tool
Trial lease
st
1 meeting
room establ.
Live demo at
"I-days `96"
Facilitation courses.
nd
2 meeting room
established
Purchase of
company
license
Implementation of webproduction tool for external
collaboration
Sarepta team
established
Team for IT
supp. meetings
established
NM integrated
in two meeting
rooms
NM made available
1995
1996
1997
1998
The implementation of Lotus Notes
The basis for the adoption of GroupSystems can be traced back
to Statoil’s experience from the adoption and use of Lotus
Notes. Notes was first introduced in Statoil in 1992, after an
initiative from a unit responsible for PC support. The initial
diffusion of Notes can best be described as a bottom up process,
without any clear overall strategy or coordination. First in 1994,
a formalized implementation project was launched, involving
the four major units in Statoil. Statoil IT then developed a
package of seven standard Notes tools (listed in table 3) and
marketed these to the different units in Statoil. Notes spread
quickly throughout the organization, with the number of users
increasing from approximately 1,000 in 1994 to more than
18,000 in 1997 [15], implying full coverage among Statoil’s
employees. However, the actual adoption of the different tools
Full integration
of audio & video
rd
conf. and GS. 3
meeting room
established
Lotus Notes/
Domino
Integrated team for
e-collaboration
established
GroupSystems
(GS)
Integrated team for
e-collaboration
established
Microsoft
NetMeeting (NM)
NM campaign
1999
2000
2001
Figure 1. Time line indicating major events in the implementation of collaboration technologies in Statoil
4.2 Implementation trajectories
Similar to other cases of organizational implementation of
collaboration technology (e.g. [1, 20]), the adoption and
diffusion of EMS in Statoil has been a lengthy, evolutionary
process, comprising a number of incremental steps. Further, the
assimilation of this technology can be seen as closely
interrelated to the implementation of other collaboration
technologies in Statoil. Figure 1 illustrates this by presenting a
time line indicating the major events in the implementation of
three major technologies in Statoil: Lotus Notes, GroupSystems
and Microsoft NetMeeting.
showed different patterns. While the support tools enabling oneto-many communication (e-mail, group calendar and news
databases) were used extensively, the applications requiring
input from each user in shared databases were slower in
adoption.
A follow up project initiated in 1996 focused on development of
routines for effective use of Notes, though with modest success.
In 1998, the tools for document management, workflow and
electronic archive were merged into a common solution called
Sarepta, offering an "electronic project room". As part of this a
dedicated Sarepta team was also formed with responsibility for
installation of the Sarepta tools and related support. With the
functionality for web integration offered by the Lotus Domino
server, there has also been increasing emphasis on using Notes
as the platform for developing web-applications for internal and
external collaboration.
struggle continually challenged the EMS implementation. As
expressed by one of the facilitators:
Statoil IT soon found that Notes was not able to support the
collaborative group processes taking place in meetings. As
expressed by the project leader for the Notes introduction:
"We have had a 'competitor' in Statoil’s Research Centre that
worked with partly the same areas, but had more of an
exploratory approach, exploring the technology areas. But they
also sold to customers in Statoil, so they were like a half
competitor on some sub areas. And they did not see any benefit
from this [GroupSystems]."
"When working with Notes I realized the possibilities and
limitations of this tool for collaboration. There were several
aspects and processes of coordination and collaboration that
were not supported by the standard tools in Notes. This
especially relates to meetings, which is the dominating form of
collaboration in Statoil. It occurred to us that meeting support
tools would be the next step if we were to come further".
4.2.2
The implementation of GroupSystems
In 1995, the Notes introduction project leader got the IT
department to approve a pre-study of potential meeting support
technologies. This person is referred to here as the ’project
champion’ [22], due to his major role in the implementation of
GroupSystems in Statoil. In January 1996, a consulting
company marketing GroupSystems introduced Statoil IT
representatives to another Norwegian customer already using the
technology. A demo for the managers in Statoil IT was held at
the location of this company, creating an "overwhelmingly
positive attitude" towards the tool. This was followed up with a
live demo at the annual IT seminar in Statoil (the "I-days ’96"),
with a large stand and a demo room set up with 15 participant
work stations and a LiveBoard. This demo was also described as
a success, exposing the product to a lot of people and also
enrolling new allies such as the person responsible for new
product development in this area in Statoil IT. Despite this,
however, the initial proposal to purchase GroupSystems was
rejected by the Product Council in the IT department, allegedly
due to the costs.
The project champion continued working with the proposal and
later that year gained approval for entering a half-year lease
arrangement with GroupSystems, as a trial period. Soon after
this the first meeting room was established at the Statoil
headquarters in Stavanger, and the project champion started
working full time as a facilitator. He also took on the
responsibility for conducting internal marketing of the services,
running demonstrations and making a presentation brochure and
posters. However, the marketing was only local to this specific
site, as this was more than enough demand for one facilitator
working full time. The project champion designed an evaluation
scheme in the form of a questionnaire to be completed by the
participants after each meeting. The results from this evaluation
were very good, and were used as the basis for a proposal to
purchase the technology at the end of the test period. This was
approved, and in March 1997 Statoil purchased a full company
licence of GroupSystems. During summer 1997 several
facilitation courses were run by an external consultant. At the
same time, the second meeting room in Trondheim was
established, and a second facilitator was employed so that there
was one at each meeting room.
Despite this progress in establishing an EMS infrastructure, the
activity dropped somewhat in the following period for three
main reasons. First, the project champion explained that
exhaustion from the work with obtaining the approval was a
factor. Another was that internal competition and political
However, in general this competitive relationship was also
stated to have a positive effect in driving further the
establishment of new collaborative solutions within Statoil.
A third reason that GroupSystems activity slowed was that
Microsoft NetMeeting was launched as a potential new product
for Statoil, and the project champion was asked to take on the
role of project leader for the development of this product.
4.2.3
Implementation of NetMeeting
Although not particularly excited by this technology, the project
champion agreed to this assignment. He saw this as an
opportunity to influence the further development of meeting
technologies in Statoil, and secure the integration of these:
"There was very much focus on this [NetMeeting], as this was
cost reducing - I did not think this was very exciting, though.
And it isn't, it is a very trivial tool that does not influence
collaboration at all, but enables us to share information, and
share single user tools. Anyway, I was politically allocated to
this, it was necessary, it could not be avoided, so it was better to
take the initiative and get control over it. I could have just
continued to work with GroupSystems, but then we would not
have been able to do the merging of the technologies".
The role of product manager for NetMeeting temporarily shifted
the project champion's focus away from GroupSystems, as most
of 1998 went with planning the implementation of NetMeeting.
Early 1999 he was central in a big marketing campaign for
NetMeeting, aimed at reducing travel costs for the company. As
a result of this campaign, the project champion received the "I
prize ’99" for the best IT application in Statoil during the "I days
’99", on behalf of the team responsible for the implementation
of NetMeeting. The project champion comments the following
about receiving this award: "I thought, now we have succeeded
in this, now we can return to work on what's more important".
4.2.4
Integration of meeting support technologies
GroupSystems, in its early implementation, was regarded as a
competing product by the groups responsible for other
collaboration technologies. This is illustrated by the fact that
during the "I days ’96" the team responsible for audio and video
conferences had a separate stand next to the GroupSystems
stand, without any collaboration between these two.
In line with his integration strategy, the project champion took
the initiative to form a dedicated team for IT supported
meetings. "It took a year to establish collaboration and break
down barriers between these environments. This finally
culminated with a team that included representatives from both
camps". This team was established in 1998, with him as the
leader, and comprising both technical personnel responsible for
maintaining and running the solutions, and those delivering
facilitation (12 people in all). According to the project
champion, the composition of this team was just right:
“It was a very good team because we got good synergy from
having both technological and method/tool competence in the
same team. It was a combined management and delivery team,
and that was fully needed in this stage.”
In 1999, a third electronic meeting room was established at
Statoil’s offices in Bergen. All three meeting rooms were also
upgraded to include full integration of audio and
videoconferencing, NetMeeting and GroupSystems.
4.2.5
Current level of adoption and diffusion
In the time period since then, GroupSystems has been used
regularly at the company headquarters in Stavanger. The other
two meeting rooms are not used to the same extent, due to the
limited access to facilitators. A fourth meeting room, in Oslo,
was dismantled after only a short time for the same reason.
Recruiting facilitators has been and still is a major bottleneck.
Despite extensive internal training of facilitators, involving more
than 100 participants, only a handful of these continue to
practice as facilitators. According to those responsible for the
courses, the recruitment difficulty has much to do with the
selection of participants for these courses. Treating this course
as ’any other’ internal course, the selection of attendees has
often been quite random, without these having any special
motivation for learning these skills. Besides motivation,
becoming a facilitator may also be seen to require a special
blend of personal characteristics. As expressed by one of the
instructors:
"It requires a form of ’call’. You must have strong interests in
this, and you need to have some specific personal
characteristics. It is a big threshold. It is challenging in all
ways: you both need to understand the tool use, you need to
understand collaboration, you must be able to lead a group, it’s
a very challenge role to enter into, especially when you both
need to master the technology, a rather advanced, universal tool
with infinite possibilities that is quite hard to learn – you both
need to know about methods for problem solving and
collaboration. People have been scared off, I think."
In general, GroupSystems is mostly used internally in the IT
department, and the diffusion to other units in Statoil has been
slow. The marketing has also been limited, due to the limited
access to facilitators and meeting rooms. As the capacity for
facilitation services has been fully deployed, there has not been
a need for selling the technology to new customers. However,
one of the informants thinks the internal marketing of the
technology could have been better: "I think we would have more
requests for facilitation services if we had been better at selling
and telling about the benefits from using it [GroupSystems]. We
have not been explicit enough about what we deliver". He
characterizes the marketing so far as "we`ve got this great tool,
do you have any problems for us?" rather than focusing more on
organizational needs and then introducing GroupSystems as a
potential tool for solving these.
In their attempt to diffuse the technology outside Statoil IT,
Statoil IT has made several initiatives to build alliances with
other units that stand out as natural users of this technology. For
example, there is a unit in Statoil called "Change support" that
facilitates processes for management, e.g. related to strategy
development. However, this influential unit has not been very
receptive to the technology, holding on to their traditional,
manual facilitation techniques and thus partly acting as a
competitor to the services provided by the IT department.
In general, several of the managers have also been reluctant to
use GroupSystems. One of the facilitators reflects about this in
the following way: "I have used the term `holy cow` about
meetings, in the sense that some regard this as an arena that
should not be `infected` with technology. Because this is a `free
zone`, where you can come to a meeting and drink coffee with
the expectations from meeting participants often being very
diffuse. This is my claim. And when you start to mess with
technology and start talking about making the meetings more
effective, then you get someone against you."
Despite these problems, the work in Statoil for integrating their
collaboration technologies into a portfolio continues at full
strength. In 2000, the team for IT supported meetings was
merged with the Sarepta team responsible for the standard Notes
applications, forming a new team for "e-collaboration". This
team now maintains the full responsibility for consultation,
implementation, utilization and facilitation related to the
collaboration technologies in Statoil. A recent organizational
restructuring also brought this team under the same management
as the “manual” facilitation unit described above, thus possibly
leading to better integration of these services.
5.
ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION
In this section we discuss the key issues having emerged from
our data analysis, comparing and contrasting these with findings
from previous studies on EMS implementation.
5.1 Management support
Organizational commitment and the need for an executive
sponsor were among the key success factors identified in the
study of EMS implementation in IBM [11]. In Statoil, the lack
of a sufficiently high-level business sponsor is a major factor in
the limited adoption. GroupSystems has not yet gained sufficient
interest and backing from either top or lower level management
to enable widespread diffusion. Being introduced by Statoil IT,
this implementation has not been driven by perceived business
needs in the rest of the company. In contrast, the NetMeeting
implementation was based on a very clear and identifiable need
for reducing travel costs. Thus this technology has received
much greater focus than GroupSystems.
Explicit management backing and support for this technology is
clearly crucial to its success. To gain and keep that support,
however, beneficial results from improved collaboration need to
be translated into tangible net benefits.
5.2 Role of the project champion
Similar to the role of top management support, the important
role of the project champion is well acknowledged in the
diffusion of innovation literature [22] and EMS adoption studies
[1, 11]. Likewise in the Statoil case, the role enacted by the
project champion has been crucial. Without his continued belief
in this technology, the implementation process would have
never survived the many pitfalls of organizational restructuring
and internal competition for resources occurring in this process.
When the GroupSystems champion was pulled away to
champion the NetMeeting project, the rapid initial diffusion was
placed on hold and lost ground.
On the other hand, the level of the project champion was also a
constraining factor. Although having a senior position in the IT
unit, the project champion lacked the managerial mandate to
allocate resources to the implementation himself. Thus the
champion in this case played more of an 'operating sponsor' role
[11]. Having a member of the leadership team in Statoil IT, or
from Statoil overall, as a continuous executive sponsor would
probably have resulted in more focus on this implementation
project.
5.3 Formal vs. ad hoc implementation
projects
Compared to implementing Notes and NetMeeting in Statoil, the
GroupSystems implementation has been far more ad hoc. A
formal GroupSystems implementation project has never been
defined. Without the formal allocations through a project, the
implementation was left far more vulnerable, at times being
solely dependent on the capacity and energy of the project
champion. The relative success of the diffusion of Notes and
NetMeeting compared to GroupSystems, illustrates the
importance of a formalised and planned implementation project,
with related resources allocations and schedules. More directly,
many of the same resources—including the project champion—
were reallocated to the NetMeeting project without such formal
protection.
The studies of EMS implementation in IBM and Boeing
document how these organizations established extensive,
dedicated operations for handling the complex tasks related to
the creation of a meeting infrastructure, training of facilitators,
customer acquisition and evaluation of business benefits [11,
21]. If Statoil IT had been able to mobilize a similar operation
for the GroupSystems implementation, it is likely that this would
have resulted in a faster diffusion of the technology.
5.4 Establishing an electronic meeting
infrastructure
develop trust in the ability of facilitators to understand their
business operations and issues.
Fjermestad and Hiltz [9] also discuss the availability of
facilitators as a barrier to the institutionalization of EMS in
organizations. To aid in this problem they argue that future EMS
software needs to be constructed so that "an internal group
leader or leaders can very quickly (eg. in less than half and hour)
learn how to use the software to carry out support functions for
the group" (p. 6). Based on our findings from the Statoil case,
we will argue that this suggestion represents a too simplistic
view on the role of the facilitator. Being an effective group
facilitator requires far more than mastering the technology. As
expressed by one Statoil facilitator:
"to facilitate meetings is heavy, it is mentally tiresome, you often
sit in a six or seven hour meeting a whole day and are mentally
burnt out afterwards. And then the post session work starts. And
then it requires that you are good at handling relations and
processes, and are able to take things ad hoc in the meetings as
they occur, you need to be interested in getting a meeting to
function. It definitely is not left hand work".
This is also illustrated by the small percentage of Statoil
employees that actually continue with facilitation after having
gone through the training.
Although it may be possible to design future EMS with
functionality that supports the facilitator role to a larger extent,
there is no way that all of the skills referred to above can be
"built into" the system. We thus agree with Nunamaker [18] in
his argument for maintaining a centre of competence in EMS,
involving a system of apprentice facilitators in training. This
strategy was also implemented in Boeing [21].
5.5 Integration of services vs. internal
competition
The Statoil case also illustrates the challenging demands of
establishing an infrastructure for electronic meetings. In addition
to the necessary software and hardware for running this, it also
requires dedicated meeting rooms and facilitator services.
Additional tools are needed if this infrastructure is also to enable
distributed meetings.
The initial implementation of GroupSystems was characterized
by internal competition and positioning among various groups
promoting "their" technology. This clearly was not an effective
utilization of the competence and resources within Statoil IT.
Only after the team for IT supported meetings formed, was there
an integrated and coordinated effort to deploy the various
collaboration technologies for supporting effective meetings in
Statoil.
The costs related to software were relatively insignificant
relative to the investments in new meeting room facilities and
hardware, including audio and video conferencing equipment.
Even finding a room was a challenge, as the different meeting
rooms in Statoil were partly owned by co-located work units.
However, the project champion also sees the internal
competition as having had a positive effect on the further
development of services and methods in the Statoil IT. Without
this competition, Statoil IT would have continued to exist in a
protected, "monopoly" situation.
The informants emphasized, however, that the principle
bottleneck was finding and keeping facilitators. As is common
in groupware implementations, the challenges are more related
to people, than technology [4]. In the extreme, the lack of
available facilitators resulted in dismantling the fourth meeting
room in Oslo. Also, currently two facilities are operating at less
than full capacity due to facilitator availability. Diffusion was
also affected significantly by the composition of the facilitation
pool. Most of the facilitators come from Statoil IT, which is also
the largest user of the electronic meeting system. The IT
affiliation may create an obstacle for other areas of Statoil to
With the new team for "e-collaboration" a common organization
is established for all collaboration services within Statoil.
However, being formed through the merger of the two existing
teams for IT supported meetings and Notes solutions (the
Sarepta team), the composition of this new team internalises
some of the competing focus of the former teams. So far, the
team activities and focus have been somewhat biased towards
the asynchronous, Sarepta tools, thus resulting in less emphasis
and development of the services related to synchronous
collaboration (including meeting support).
5.6 Building alliances with influence groups
The implementation of meeting technologies in Statoil has
clearly been a political process, involving a lot of lobbying and
positioning by the various interest groups. According to actor
network theory, the enrolment of influential alliance partners is
of key importance for gaining momentum in a technological
implementation [14]. Despite several attempts, Statoil IT has not
yet succeeded in building alliances with other units in the
company. In comparison, other "opponents" in this process have
been found to operate more effectively on the political arena in
Statoil.
5.7 Customer acquisition
The former studies in IBM and Boeing illustrate the importance
of (internal) customer acquisition for building organizational
commitment to the EMS implementation [11, 21]. In Statoil, the
Notes and NetMeeting technologies gained relatively rapid
diffusion and user acceptance. The Notes implementation was
characterized as “the system selling itself”. The support tools
offered (e-mail, document management and archiving, etc.) had
a direct impact on the administrative production processes in
Statoil, with easily identified benefits. Still, as reflected by the
project champion and also observed in other studies [13, 25],
this usage of Notes does not necessarily result in an increased
level of collaboration among the employees, Similarly,
NetMeeting was introduced with the single aim of reducing
travel costs, by supporting data conferencing and application
sharing, and not for changing any of the existing collaborative
procedures. In both cases, the intended benefits were easily
identified and clearly connected to bottom line production
processes. The clear and simple messages attracted focus and
momentum in the diffusion of the technologies.
Statoil IT experienced the process of customer acquisition as
more challenging for GroupSystems than any other
collaboration technology. EMS like GroupSystems may have a
significantly greater impact on the dynamics and nature of the
collaboration among group members. Yet, these benefits are
more difficult to identify or link directly to productivity
measures. Also, to fully realize these benefits one has to
experience the technology 'in action'. Furthermore, since few
people outside of Statoil IT developed facilitation expertise,
there was not a communications means to spell out the benefits
in the terminology of non-IT user groups. In comparison, the
customer acquisition in Boeing was conducted by the
established operation of process facilitators, based on their
existing network of customer relations [21].

Three permanent meeting rooms established, with one
being used regularly

The establishment of a permanent team for delivering
services related to IT supported meetings

An increased number of facilitators (although still limited)

A broadened spectrum of customers
Thus, it is only when measured against the more widespread
adoption and diffusion of other collaboration technologies in
Statoil that the implementation of GroupSystems so far can be
characterized as less successful.
6. CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS
This case study illustrates how different collaboration
technologies may follow different implementation trajectories
within the same organization. Compared to the implementation
of Lotus Notes and NetMeeting, adoption and diffusion of
GroupSystems in Statoil has been an uphill battle. The findings
from our study also indicate how the process of establishing a
portfolio of collaboration technologies may comprise political
struggle and internal competition for resources. The relatively
intangible nature of the EMS benefits resulted in less
organizational commitment and allocation of resources to the
GroupSystems implementation compared to other technologies.
This made the role of the project champion even more crucial in
the GroupSystems implementation.
The recent integration of the services related to collaboration
technologies in Statoil is an important step towards achieving a
coordinated focus on effective utilization and further
development of the technologies, and thus eliminating the basis
for competition and resource rivalry. This illustrates the
importance of establishing a coordinating body with the
responsibility for maintaining an overall view on the potential
application of various collaboration technologies within an
organization, and the interrelatedness among these. The new
team for e-collaboration in Statoil was formed with this purpose.
However, the composition of this team still has inherent some of
the old "rivalry" regarding technology focus, and a further
balancing and reconciliation of this will be needed to fully take
advantage of this new organizational unit.
Further research needs to continue to explore the conditions
under which successful adoption and diffusion of collaboration
technologies may unfold. In this it is vital to take on an
integrated perspective on how organizations may deploy a
portfolio of collaboration technologies rather than focusing on
single technologies in isolation.
5.8 Success or failure?
Several have pointed to the complexity involved in evaluating
groupware systems in an organizational context [2, 11]. The
many problems outlined in this paper may give the impression
that the implementation of GroupSystems in Statoil has been a
failure. However, there are several indicators of successful
adoption and diffusion of GroupSystems in this case as well.
They have achieved good results with the tool, getting good
evaluations from the meeting participants. Further, having
experienced the benefits from the technology, the majority of
meeting owners return to the meeting rooms for new projects.
Other success indicators are:
7.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We are grateful to the Statoil employees interviewed for sharing
their time and experience with us. Bjørn Tvedte and the
anonymous reviewers provided useful comments for improving
the manuscript.
8.
REFERENCES
[1]. Bikson, T.K. and Eveland, J.D. Groupware
Implementation: Reinvention in the Sociotechnical Frame.
In Proceedings of CSCW ’96 (Cambridge MA, November
1996), ACM Press, 428-437.
[2]. Blythin, S., Hughes, J.A., Kristoffersen, S., Rodden, T. and
Rouncefield, M. Recognising 'success' and 'failure':
evaluating groupware in a commercial context. In
Proceedings of Group '97 (Phoenix AZ, September 1997),
ACM Press, 39-46.
[3]. Caouette, M.J., and O’Connor, B.N. The Impact of Group
Support Systems on Corporate Teams’ Stages of
Development. Journal of Organizational Computing and
Electronic Commerce 8, 1, 1998, 57-81.
[4]. Coleman, D. Groupware Technology and Applications: An
Overview of Groupware, in D. Coleman and R. Khanna
(eds.), Groupware Technology and Applications. PrenticeHall, 1995.
[5]. Davison, R., and Vogel, D. Group support systems in Hong
Kong: an action research project. Information Systems
Journal 10, 2000, 3-20.
[6]. DeSanctis, G., and Gallupe, R.B. A foundation for the
study of group decision support systems. Management
Science 33, 5, 1987, 589-609.
[7]. DeSanctis, G., Poole, M.S., Dickson, G.W. and Jackson,
B.M. Interpretive analysis of team use of group
technologies. Journal of Organizational Computing 3, 1,
1993, 1-29.
[8]. Fjermestad, J., and Hiltz, S.R. An Assessment of Group
Support Systems Experimental Research: Methodology and
Results. Journal of Management Information Systems 15, 3
1999, 7-149.
[9]. Fjermestad, J., and Hiltz, S.R. Case and Field Studies of
Group Support Systems: An Empirical Assessment. In
Proceedings of HICSS 2000 (Hawaii, January 2000), IEEE,
1-10.
[10]. Fjermestad, J. and Hiltz, S.R. Group Support Systems: A
Descriptive Evaluation of Case and Field Studies. Journal
of Management Information Systems 17, 3, 2001, 115-159.
[11]. Grohowski, R., McGoff, C., Vogel, D., Martz, B. and
Nunamaker, J. Implementing Electronic Meeting Systems
at IBM: Lessons Learned and Success Factors. MIS
Quarterly 14, 4, 1990, 369-82.
[12]. Grudin, J. Why CSCW applications fail: problems in the
design and evaluation of organizational interfaces. In
Proceedings of CSCW '88 (Portland OR, September 1988),
ACM Press, 85-93.
[13]. Karsten, H. Collaboration and Collaborative Information
Technologies: A Review of the Evidence Database for
Advances in Information Systems 30, 2, 1999, 44-65.
[14]. Latour, B. Science in Action. Harvard University Press,
Cambridge, MA, 1987.
[15]. Monteiro, E., and Hepsø, V. Infrastructure strategy
formation: seize the day at Statoil. In: C. Ciborra (ed.),
From control to drift. The dynamics of corporate
information infrastructure. Oxford University Press, 2000,
148 - 171.
[16]. Munkvold, B.E. Challenges of IT implementation for
supporting collaboration in distributed organizations.
European Journal of Information Systems 8, 1999, 260272.
[17]. Munkvold, B.E. and Tvedte, B. Implementing a portfolio
of collaboration technologies in Statoil. In B.E. Munkvold,
Implementing collaboration technologies in industry: case
examples and lessons learned. Springer Verlag, London,
Forthcoming.
[18]. Nunamaker, J.F. Future research in group support systems:
needs, some questions and possible directions.
International Journal of Human-Computer Studies 47,
1997, 357-385.
[19]. Nunamaker, J.F., and Briggs, R.O. Lessons From a Dozen
Years of Group Support Systems Research: A Discussion
of Lab and Field Findings. Journal of Management
Information Systems 13, 3, 1997, 163-205.
[20]. Orlikowski, W.J. Improvising Organizational
Transformation over Time: A Situated Change Perspective.
Information Systems Research 7, 1, 1996, 63-92.
[21]. Post, B.Q. Building the Business Case for Group Support
Technology. In Proceedings of HICSS 1992 (Hawaii,
January 1992), 34-45.
[22]. Rogers, E.M. Diffusion of Innovations. Fourth Edition. The
Free Press, New York, 1995.
[23]. Strauss, A., and Corbin, J. Basics of Qualitative Research.
Grounded Theory Procedures and Techniques. Sage,
Newbury Park, CA.
[24]. Tyran, C.K., and Dennis, A.R. The Application of
Electronic Meeting Technology to Support Strategic
Management. MIS Quarterly 16, 3, 1992, 313-353.
[25]. Vandenbosch, B., and Gintzberg, M. Lotus Notes and
collaboration: Plus ca change…Journal of Management
Information Systems 13, 3, 1997, 65-81.