To celebrate 50 years since the founding of SDA Bocconi, this space hosts a selection of ideas generated by our Faculty that have made their mark in the landscape of management research. Relevant and concrete, conducted with scientific rigor and impactful for our society: these are the four pillars underpinning the pathway we propose. The SDA Insight initiative falls under the broader umbrella project, “50 Years of Ideas.”
In the aftermath of Covid-19, in the near future hybrid working is predicted to become the norm for 65% of employees, thanks to the potentialities of collaboration platforms (such as Teams).
Actually, this trend was underway, at least in part, even before the pandemic hit. In fact, companies had already started shoring up their investments in collaboration technologies with an eye to tapping the intellectual resources of their employees, who could fully leverage the potentialities of these platforms. But how can organizations promote this kind of behavior when individuals are embedded in group settings, where the actions of group members are interdependent?
Little research has been done to find the answer this question. So together with Likoebe M. Maruping, we investigated how organizations can fully exploit the potential of collaboration technologies through team empowerment. The resulting study, entitled Motivating Employees to Explore Collaboration Technology in Team Contexts, was published in 2015 in MIS Quarterly.
The 12-month field study we ran involved 212 individuals who belonged to 48 different teams. Our findings show that by fostering empowerment (giving team members the freedom to act, cultivating faith in their abilities, and openly acknowledging the impact of each individual), teams are likely to make more effective use of technology to achieve group objectives. In fact, the real advantages of collaboration platforms materialize when users explore and incorporate system features in their work practices. Our study shows that organizations can activate this process by leveraging team empowerment. More specifically, the different dimensions of empowerment shape individual motivation for exploration, and help people become more aware of their ability to tur their motivation into concrete action.
The basis for empowerment is a shared positive attitude that spurs team members to be proactive experimenters, despite the obstacles that might emerge in the environment.
Our study highlights that beyond investments in technologies, organizations should work on crucial managerial levers to encourage people to take advantage of new technology. These aspects are particularly salient in light of new work methods and an escalation in remote interaction. In fact, it’s not enough to implement collaboration technologies, as our findings reveal. Instead organizations and managers have to pay particular attention to building a group environment that can facilitate the effective use of these technologies.
