Enhancing online working-together relations

Abstract

From the very early days of mankind, people have worked together to achieve greater outcomes to meet both short- and long-term needs and goals. We work together to solve problems, to achieve better results, and to achieve quicker results. We also learn from others and share new ideas. Moreover, organisations innovate by collaborating with other organisations. In recent decades, advances in mobile and other digital technologies have enabled the creation of many online applications to support groups to work together. The number of people and organisations currently adopting working-together applications are rapidly increasing. Not all of these applications have succeeded; after a while, users tend to stop using applications that do not help them to develop collaborative practices with their team members. Often "collaboration" is used to indicate "working-together activities"; but there are many types of "working-together relations". To better understand the essential characteristics of a successful online application that effectively supports people to work together, I first undertook an inductive analysis of related literature. By combining the findings from the literature, I was able to clearly articulate the characteristics associated with four identified categories of working-together relations: networking, coordination, cooperation and collaboration. I also identified the essential activities that are performed in each working-together category, and the factors that enable successful working-together relations: trust, risk and rewards. These insights will assist in the design of successful online applications to support different categories of working-together relations. The first contribution of this research is to propose a new framework that can be used to clarify how effectively an existing application assists working-together relations. This framework is based on the analysis of the characteristics and processes identified in the working-together categories. The research's second contribution is to establish the mechanisms that enhance working-together relations in each category. These mechanisms can be used to enhance existing or new online working-together tools. My research shows that user behaviour (or how the application is used) depends on how the mechanisms of trust, risk, and reward are implemented within the application. Understanding the mechanisms in place within the applications can lead to an understanding of how working-together relations evolve and how organisations can move from one working-together category to another.

Date of Award	2019
Original language	English