Exploring and Understanding Organisational Outcomes from the adoption of Digital Collaboration Platforms

Abstract

The COVID-19 global pandemic initiated transformational changes to knowledge work, enforcing remote working and giving rise to increasingly prevalent hybrid work modes. The purpose of this empirical longitudinal study is to explore the impact of mandatory adoption of digital collaboration platforms (DCPs), such as Microsoft Teams, on organisational practices and cultures within this evolving landscape. An exploratory, inductive inquiry based on a qualitative methodology was conducted, involving three rounds of semi-structured interviews with the same group of 28 knowledge workers of diverse ages and seniority levels from two UK-based organisations. In total, 65 interviews, comprising 58 individual and 7 group interviews, were conducted between 2020 and 2023, following participants in a comparative case study as they navigated the dramatic changes brought about firstly by enforced homeworking and later by hybrid working. Digital artefacts, e.g. organisational announcements, survey results and recorded virtual presentations, were also collected throughout the four-year study and analysed along with interview transcripts, using a thematic analysis. Digital artefacts, e.g. organisational announcements, survey results and recorded virtual presentations, were also collected throughout the four-year study and analysed along with interview transcripts, using a thematic analysis. The findings reveal positive outcomes of mandatory DCP adoption, highlighting a ‘level playing field’ effect, where mandatory adoption reduces the impact of computer self-efficacy differences, helping to bridge digital divides among diversely aged employees. Enforced adoption also amplifies the network effects of collaborative technology, providing hands-on evidence of collaboration technology's potential. Empirical findings reveal three additional sociomaterial practices - collaborative messaging, composition, and leadership communications - emerging alongside videoconferencing. These practices highlight both challenges and opportunities in hybrid working, including hybrid meeting engagement and the need for inclusive digital practices. The study also casts doubt on knowledge workers' understanding of collaborative composition, suggesting room for improvement in adapting to this practice. The study finds that collaboration practices are variously adapted or repurposed as a result of liminal tensions arising from the disruption of remote and hybrid working and extends liminal innovation concepts, by introducing competitive tension, which arises on the ground when legacy or rival applications remain in place, reducing the utility of unified organisational collaboration networks. The development of an extended liminal innovation framework that also incorporates individual and organisational factors provides a novel tool for understanding practice reconfigurations in times of crisis. While the adoption of DCPs displaced cultural assumptions which privileged face-to-face collaboration, creating existential tension, they also engendered trust in remote working, challenging norms of presenteeism and underscoring the importance of building a digitally skilled workforce. Although DCP adoption can deliver additional organisational capabilities, such as enhanced intra and inter organisational collaboration and extended customer reach, organisational challenges remain, including maintaining cultural integrity in hybrid working models. Findings from this study significantly extend the body of knowledge on workplace digital collaboration in remote and hybrid working, making theoretical contributions by challenging negative perceptions of mandatory technology adoption, demonstrating that, in the context of DCPs, an approach where all employees adopt together, can yield positive organisational outcomes. The study also sheds considerable light on the sociomaterial dynamics of digital collaboration in the workplace in remote and hybrid working and their impact on organisational cultures, offering key insights into how crisis-driven technology adoption reshapes organisational practices and cultures in the longer term. Extending the liminal innovation framework to include the concept of competitive tension and the individual and organisational influences that reshape practices and culture, offers further theoretical contributions. This study makes important contributions to practice, by revealing that utilising an adoption approach in which interested early adopters go first, could inadvertently result in widening workplace digital divides that result from differing levels of self-efficacy. Instead, the research advocates for a mass, unified adoption approach for DCPs, to overcome resistance, foster collective learning and maximise network effects, together with the phasing out of legacy systems. The research also emphasises the importance of inclusive digital practices, ongoing training to extend DCP use beyond videoconferencing, and maintaining organisational culture through regular face-to-face interactions and trust-based productivity measures.