Management Information Systems, 13TH ED.
MANAGING THE DIGITAL FIRM
Kenneth C. Laudon ● Jane P. Laudon
Learning Track 2: Collaboration and Teamwork
Outline
Introduction: It’s a Collaborative World
1.0 Why Are Collaboration and Teamwork So Important Today?
2.0 What Are the Business Benefits of Collaboration?
3.0 What Makes a Good Team Member And Collaborator?
4.0 What Makes a Good Team Leader?
6.0 Building a Collaborative Organizational Culture
8.0 Choosing Collaboration Tools: Management To-Do List
RECOMMENDED VIDEOS:
◆ “Teamwork and Collaboration at Cisco.” Cisco CEO John Chambers explains how abandon-
ing command-and-control leadership has enabled the company to innovate more quickly, using
collaboration and teamwork.
◆ See the Video Case Package for this book.
Introduction: It’s a Collaborative World
It’s a collaborative world that depends on teams of people working together across time zones and
continents. It’s a world of high bandwidth and “rich” communications, and “interaction” jobs where
the value added by the employee is the ability to talk, write, present, persuade, sell and empathize
with others. Over 40% of the labor force now has these kinds of jobs.
So what is collaboration, and what’s the difference between cooperation, collaboration, and team
work (project teams)? Figure 1–1 illustrates the differences and their relationship.
Chapter 2: Global E-business and Collaboration
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dishes. You cooperate with complete strangers on the street by passing on the right, and you always
go through revolving doors in the “right” way. Cooperation is general, broad, and the foundation
of any organized social life. It occurs most often without anyone saying anything to one another.
Without it, we would not have villages, towns, cities or countries. Or business firms. Now let’s take
it up a step.
Collaboration is cooperation that’s more focused on task or mission accomplishment and usually
takes place in a business, or other organization, and between businesses. It is explicit: we generally
do talk about, plan and manage collaboration with one another.
You collaborate with a colleague in Tokyo looking for expertise on a topic you know nothing about.
FIGURE 1-1 Cooperation, Collaboration, and Team work
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Team s take all this one step further. Teams are part of the organization’s business structure for
getting things done. Teams and project groups are interchangeable terms. Teams have a specific
mission that someone in the business assigned to them. ey have a job to complete. e members
1.0 Why Are Collaboration and Teamwork So Important
Today?
Collaboration and team work are more important today than ever for a variety of reasons.
◆ Changing nature of work. e nature of work has changed from factory manufacturing and
pre-computer oce work where each stage in the production process occurred independently
of one another, and was coordinated by supervisors. Worked was organized into silos. Within
a silo, work passed from one machine tool station to another, from one desktop to another,
until the finished product was completed. Today the kinds of jobs we have require much closer
◆ Growth of professional work. In the last 50 years, the professional nature of work has greatly
expanded. Professional jobs require substantial education, and the sharing of information and
opinions to get work done. Each actor on the job brings specialized expertise to the problem,
and all the actors need to take one another into account in order to accomplish the job.
◆ Changing organization of the firm. For most of the industrial age managers organized work
in a hierarchical fashion. Orders came down the hierarchy, and responses moved back up the
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◆ Changing scope of the firm. e organization of the firm has changed from work at a single
location, to work taking place in oces or factories throughout a region, a nation, or even
around the globe. For instance, Henry Ford developed the first mass production automobile
plant at a single Dearborn, Michigan factory. In 2012, Ford produced 6.5 million automobiles
◆ Emphasis on innovation. While we tend to think of innovations in business and science as
coming from great individuals, but more common is that these great individuals are working
with a team of brilliant colleagues, and all have been preceded by a long line of earlier inno-
vators and innovations. ink of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs (founders of Microsoft and Apple)
◆ Changing culture of work and business. ere is growing support for the proposition that
collaboration and team work produce better results, faster, than a similar number of people
2.0 What are the Business Benefits of Collaboration?
ere are many articles and books that have been written about collaboration, some of them by
business executives and consultants, and a great many by academic researchers in a variety of busi–
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be. Nearly all writers agree that collaboration is now more required within and between firms than
was true in the past (for reasons outlined above).
Table 1–1 summarizes some of the benefits of collaboration identified by previous writers and
scholars.
TABLE 1-1 Business Benefits of Collaboration and Their Rationale
Benefit Rationale
Productivity People working together can complete a complex task
faster than the same number of people working in
isolation from one another; there will be fewer errors.
Quality People who work collaboratively can communicate
One of the diculties of obtaining solid empirical evidence of these contributions involves the
diculties in measuring “extent of collaboration.” One empirical study sponsored by Verizon
Business and Microsoft created a collaboration index to measure the impact of communications
culture, and deployment of collaborative technologies. at study concluded that “collaboration is a
key driver of overall performance of companies around the world. Its impact is twice as significant
as a company’s aggressiveness in pursuing new market opportunities (strategic orientation) and five
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was signficicant: for every word seen by an employee in emails from others, $70 of additional
revenue was generated (Aral, Brynjolfsson, and Van Alstyne, 2007).
Figure 1–2 depicts the model which the researchers came up with to explain their findings.
FIGURE 1-2 A Model of Collaboration
While there is scant empirical information to back up these statements, there is a wealth of anec-
dotal accounts which supports this general framework. While there are many presumed benefits to
3.0 What Makes a Good Collaborator a Good Team
Member?
So what does it take to be a good collaborator, a so-called “team player?” ink about some of the
teams and groups you’ve been a member of, and consider the kinds of qualities of participants
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TABLE 1-2 Eleven Important Individual Characteristics for Collaboration
Characteristic Description
Adaptable Ability to learn; creative; works with a variety of others;
mitigates problems; finds solutions.
Believe in collaboration See teammates as collaborators; focused on team not
self; selfless
e characteristics of a good collaborator may seem a little abstract, but think of a basketball, foot–
ball, or soccer team that you might have played on. Are these the characteristics you would want of
your teammates? Are these characteristics they would want of you? Teams in business are not that
different from teams in sports.
But this list is an “ideal” list. It’s not what really happens in the real world of business (or sports
teams). In fact, it would be a rare individual indeed who ranked number 1 on all these character–
istics. Most of us might be passable on some, pretty good on others, and a star on a few. However,
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also management consequences discussed later. With a diverse group of talented people, it’s possi–
ble for the output of a team to be much larger than the output of all the individuals in a group. In
this case, the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.
TEAM BUILDING EXERCISE
With a team of 3-5 students, ask each member working alone to rank
order the list in Table 1–1 in terms of importance to collaboration based
4.0 Leadership: What Makes a Good Team Leader?
All teams require some kind of leadership, some person or persons who take charge, to get things
done and accomplish the mission. When we think of sports teams, from basketball to hockey, they
all have leaders, people who call the plays and issue directions. Leaders are very important for
collaboration on any team: they keep the team focused, support team work, and provide direction.
What makes for a good team leader? ousands of books and an even larger number of articles
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TABLE 1-3 Qualities of Leaders
Adaptable
Believe in collaboration
Committed
For instance, if you ask real world managers how they choose leaders for the teams needed by
their business, they will tend to emphasize competence (does this person have the skills to get the
job done), and communications capability (can this person talk and/or write, present, and listen).
e other qualities are either assumed to be true, or as derived from superior competence and
communications ability.
LEADERSHIP EXERCISE
With a team of 3-5 students, ask each member working alone to rank order
the list in Table 1-3 in terms of the qualities of leadership they would use
Studies of teams and other social networks show that leaders-both formal and informal-are at the
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FIGURE 1-3 Social Networks in Crisis: E-mail Analysis
Following the missed deadline of an
important project, a social network
analysis company developed the
above map of e-mail communications
in the firm. One goal of the study was
Examining Figure 1–3, you can see some interesting patterns. e groups blue, red, and green each
have real “centers” where a small number of people receive and send a great deal of communica-
tions. ese people are “leaders” of their teams because they are near the center of communica-
5.0 How to Build and Manage a Collaborative Team
As a manager you will find that your success in large part will depend on the success of the teams
1. Identify the mission and teams. As a manager you have some overarching objectives such
as increasing sales to a new market, reducing costs in one part of the firm, or implementing
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a new information system. Your job is to break this larger mission down into sub-objectives
that smaller teams can be responsible for. Your next job is for the life of the project to inte-
grate (coordinate) the work of all the teams until you achieve the larger mission. For instance,
FIGURE 1-4 Missions and Teams
2. Identify the skills required for each team. Once you have identified the sub-objectives, and
the teams, you will need to identify the skills needed for each team. Not all teams have the
same requirements. e systems analysis and implementation teams interface directly with
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3. Choose people who have the right qualities. In all the teams you will need diversity of
talent. In choosing people, you can rely on your own past experience with individuals, the
4. Oversight. Your job as a manager is to hold the team leaders and their teams accountable for
meeting their objectives on schedule, and on budget. Call regular meetings with each team
leader individually, and with all team leaders meeting as a group to review progress, identify
6.0 Building a Collaborative Organizational Culture
Collaboration won’t take place spontaneously in a business firm, especially if there is no support–
ive culture. If people are afraid to speak up, there might not even be cooperation, let along working
together collaboratively. Business firms, especially large firms, had in the past a reputation for
being “command and control” organizations where the top leaders thought up all the really impor–
To some extent this is a caricature of how firms used to behave in the 1950s to1990s, but carica-
tures often have some truth. Command and control firms required lower level employees to carry
out orders without asking too many questions, with no responsibility to improve processes, and
A collaborative business culture is very different. Senior managers are responsible for achieving
results, but rely on teams of employees to achieve and implement the results. Teams have some
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for their performance, and individuals are rewarded for their performance in a team. You might be
a brilliant star on a failed team and receive only half the rewards. e function of middle managers
You can tell if you work in a collaborative culture by answering six questions:
1. Is it easy to talk with just about anyone in your firm (ease of cooperation) regardless of their
position?
2. Does your unit cooperate regularly with other units at work? (frequency of cooperation). You
3. Are people in other departments easy to access and communicate with?
4. Does your firm reward individuals only, or does it reward teams and individuals?
7.0 Information Technology and Systems to Enable
Collaboration and Team Work
Building a collaborative, team oriented culture will do little good if you don’t have the information
systems in place to enable that collaboration. is would be like having a house without the plumb-
ing and electrical infrastructure.
Today with the Internet, it is possible for nearly the entire labor force of firms to be online and
to collaborate with their respective fellow employees, customers, and suppliers. Research on the
various ways in which information technology supports collaboration has been going on since the
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customers, suppliers and managers. For instance, one company enlisted the talents of over 100
TABLE 1-4 Fifteen Categories of Collaborative Software Tools
Collaborative writing
Collaborative reviewing
Event scheduling
Instant messaging
VoIP audio conferencing
e entire map of over 150 collaboration tools is too large to reproduce here, but it is available at
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TABLE 1-5 Google Apps / Google Sites Features
Google apps/sites Description
Google Calendar Private and shared calendars; multiple calendars (family schedules, business schedules).
Socialtext, a widely used enterprise collaboration environmennt, takes adifferent approach from
Google. Instead of shared applications, Socialtext provides a set of capabilities that support social
networking. Socialtext’s agship product, Socialtext Workspace, is the first enterprise wiki and the
TABLE 1-6 Other Popular Online Collaboration Tools
Tool Description
Socialtext A server-based collaboration environment which provides social networking, Twitter-like micro-
blogging , wiki workspaces, with integrated weblogs, distributed spreadsheets, and a personal home
page for every user. Connectors to Microsoft SharePoint and Lotus Connections are also available.
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Several of these online services have excellent video introductions to their products. ese videos
can give you a keen sense of what is available on the Internet for a very low cost or no cost. For a
Microsoft SharePoint is a collection of products and technologies that provide an enterprise-level
environment for Web-based collaboration. SharePoint can be used to host Web sites that organize
and store information in one central location to enable teams to coordinate work activities, collab-
orate on and publish documents, maintain task lists, implement workows, and share information
via wikis and blogs. Sharepoint has a Web-based interface and close integration with everyday tools
such as Microsoft Oce desktop software products. Site content is accessible from both a Web
browser and client-supported Web services. Because SharePoint stores and organizes information
in one place, users can find relevant information quickly and eciently while working together
closely on tasks, projects, and documents.
Here is a list of SharePoint’s major capabilities:
◆ Provides a single workspace for teams to coordinate schedules, organize documents, and
participate in discussions, within the organization or over an extranet.
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For very large firms (Fortune 1000 and Russell 2000 firms) the most widely used collaboration tool
is IBM’s Lotus Notes. IBM’s strategy is to take advantage of the fact that it dominates the Fortune
1000 data processing and networking environment. IBM’s approach to collaboration is therefore
to start from the top down through implementation of an enterprise-wide Lotus server solution by
Lotus Notes is a client-server, collaborative application developed and sold by IBM Software Group.
IBM defines the software as an “integrated desktop client option for accessing business e-mail,
calendars and applications on an IBM Lotus Domino server.” e Notes client is mainly used as
an email client, but also acts as an instant messaging client (for Lotus Sametime), browser, note-
book, and calendar/resource reservation client, as well as a platform for interacting with collabor–
ative applications. Today Notes also provides blogs, wikis, RSS aggregators, CRM and Help Desk
systems.
ousands of employees at hundreds of large firms use IBM Lotus Notes as their primary collab-
oration and team work tools. Firmwide installations of Lotus Notes can cost millions of dollars
a year for a large Fortune 1000 firm, whereas Google Apps/Google Sites comes in a limited free
MAKING SENSE OUT OF COLLABORATION TOOLS
We have avoided trying to formally define contemporary collaboration and team work software
tools. Instead we have gathered lists of many popular software tools (both online as a service
and as installed client-server applications), and described their capabilities. We have pointed at
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examples. While these lists help you understand the broad range of tools that are available in the
marketplace, how do you choose the right tool for your firm? Are these software tools just solutions
looking for a problem to solve? What problems do they solve?
FIGURE 1-5 The Time/Space Groupware Matrix
Place (location) is also a problem that inhibits collaboration in large global or even national and
regional firms. Getting people together for a physical meeting is made dicult by the physical
dispersion of distributed firms (firms with more than one location), the cost of travel, and the time
limitations of managers.
One way to think about software collaboration tools is to see them as ways of overcoming the limi-
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TABLE 1-7 Collaboration Challenges and Generic Solutions
Scenario Solution Types
Same time/same place Face to face meetings; decision rooms; whiteboards; telepresence
You can use this classification scheme to categorize the different collaboration and team work soft–
ware applications.
8.0 Choosing Collaboration Tools: Management To-Do
List
Now let’s apply these frameworks. You can use these classification tools to start thinking about
how to choose collaboration and team work tools for your firm. As a manager, you will want
to purchase and use the tools that solve the issues your firm is facing. Here’s a To-Do list to get
started:
1. What are the collaboration challenges facing the firm in terms of time and space? Locate
2. Within each cell of the matrix where your firm faces challenges, exactly what kinds of solutions
are available? Make a list of vendor products.
3. Analyze each of the products in terms of their cost and benefits to your firm. Be sure to include
4. Identify the risks to security and vulnerability involved with each of the products. Is your firm
willing to put proprietary information into the hands of external service providers over the
Internet? Is your firm willing to risk its important operations to systems controlled by other
firms? What are the financial risks facing your vendors? Will they be here in three to five years?
What would be the cost of making a switch to another vendor in the event the vendor firm
fails?
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5. Seek out the help of potential users to identify implementation and training issues. Some of
these tools are easier to use than others;
6. Make your selection of candidate tools, and invite the vendors to make presentations.
If you follow these six steps, you should be led to investing in the correct software for your firm at a
price you can afford, and within your risk tolerance.
REFERENCES: Aral, Sinan; Erik Brynjolfsson; and Marshall Van Alstyne, “Productivity Efiects of Information
Difiusion in Networks,” MIT Center for Digital Business, July 2007. Baecker, R.M., et. al. Readings in human-comput-
er interaction: toward the year 2000. Morgan Kaufmann Publishers. (1995). Beyerlein, Michael M.; Susan Freedman;
Craig McGee; and Linda Moran. Beyond Teams: Building the Collaborative Organization. John Wiley: New York,
2003. Boddy, David; Douglas Macbeth; and Beverly Wagner. “Implementing Collaboration Between Organizations: An