Perceived Utilization of ICT for Communication, Interaction and Collaboration

In this context, the interviewees described different applications and systems they use for their daily business. Most prominent tool mentioned is the email system, closely followed by instant messengers, the Intranet with integrated post and comment functions, enterprise content and document management systems, wikis and micro-blogs provided by the organization.

The interviewed employees explained communication in context with ICT as a conversation that happens on different kinds of unidirectional and bidirectional communication channels. Some apply ICT mainly for direct or asynchronous person-to-person communication or for a dialog conveyed asynchronously. For instance, by utilizing different media such as instant messengers or the email, Intranet comments, or a wiki equivalent application. The organization equips all employees with different media they may choose from to communicate and collaborate. This circumstance is reflected by the variety of forms of utilization in daily business processes. The following statements of the interviewees illustrate how they apply ICT in different ways:

In our organization, the Intranet is the primary source for our internal communication. The intranet offers different services such as news channels. Many employees use these services and learn to appreciate them.

I use tools provided by the organization. These are Skype for Business, email, phone, smartphone and solutions such as Confluence, a web based solution that allows editing documents in parallel with other editors.

In our organization, number one communication tool is of course email, this is clear, but what I use since I am more social is instant messaging and our wiki platform. I follow our developer communities and use Twitter quite a lot.

I am using Skype to connect to screens of other users. This is for me the main advantage. If someone has a problem, we can share the screen and this is for me the most important benefit. I also use Skype for conferences, for example, I provided an introduction about SharePoint administration with hundred participants. I did a survey at the end and the feedback was very positive, because nobody had to move to a classroom and could follow the course by the way.

The possibility to interact became an important feature when using ICT for communication and collaboration. According to the interviewees, ICT in the past only allowed unidirectional or less dedicated communication using email

and publications on the Intranet. Virtual conferences, online communities, instant conversations, comments, interaction and joint collaboration on documents did not exist or only limited and disconnected from the business processes. The interviewees perceived it as a necessary evolutionary step of the tools used in the past as a product manager characterized it:

The interaction becomes more and more important. This is a part where we invest a lot of money. Within the next two years, we will implement a new employee portal with lots of interaction possibilities. Today information is mainly consumed such as news channels but we implemented recently a comment function to comment for example news articles and since a couple of month we have a like-button comparable to Facebook „I like this page“. There are always minor parts of people, who are using it and the majority does not because it is new.

Besides communication, the interviewees explained how and in what areas they use ICT to collaborate. For some of them ICT has become an important element that supports their daily work with others. Active information exchange platforms and equivalents to wiki applications help them to improve the flow of knowledge and the efficiency. Most of the interviewees, independent if manager or employee explained that they are quite open to the new technologies and perceived them as an advantage. A communication manager and a software developer described their view on it as follows:

For me our eSpaces Community plays an important role. This is an online collaboration platform. This is something I use quite often and I take care my team is using it as well. The reason is simple; we have many advantages if we use this tool. Especially to share our knowledge and to improve the information flow. I use Confluence to collaborate, which is similar to a wiki. We use it to work on concepts or to work on project content. This is a lot of unstructured information, which will be either transferred into a classic document or stays there if it is about to change its content. We also use it for our architecture board. We see what we need to do, what are the objectives and share the opinions of the different business areas involved.

The organization utilized mobile computer technology to reach out to all employees independent of their geographical location. Many employees are continuously traveling and the challenge was to keep them informed, enable them to provide feedback or involve them in topics that need attention. Therefore, the organization launched a companywide program to equip the employees with smart phones or tablet computers to improve the information flow and to connect employees as a project manager and a communication expert explained:

We made a huge step last year. All employees have been equipped with a smart phone or a tablet with access to the Intranet, to news apps and allows retrieving information. We aimed to inform the employees fast and easy.

The employees could choose, according to the nature of work which appliance they want. We did this to improve the communication among the employees. Also for the manager, this is a huge improvement. They are able to write directly a message. With telephone, this was not always the case. The objective is to utilize the appliance and support the business processes away from paper towards electronic communication, which is faster and with less sources of failure.

4.2.5 Perceived individual and collective organisational Decision-