If you build it will they come?

I was reading a blog post by Dion Hinchcliffe that he wrote a year ago, suggesting that web 2.0 software could be a catalyst for change for hierarchically-based organisations. It’s a post in response to Tom Davenport’s skepticism of Enterprise 2.0’s ability to wreak significant cultural and hierarchical change inside organisations.

Dion’s perspective is that because social computing tools “are highly democratic and egalatarian; anyone can deploy these tools, anyone can quickly learn to use and benefit from them, and they can be used to communicate and collaborate openly with anyone else inside (and often outside) the organization, are inherently viral, they literally tear down the barriers that would normally impede their forward movement and adoption inside the organization”.

Andrew McAffee is of the same opinion. He believes they will empower employees, decentralise decisions, free up knowledge, and generally make for better places to work.

Tom suggests, though, that “the absence of participative technologies in the past is not the only reason that organizations and expertise are hierarchical. Enterprise 2.0 software and the Internet won’t make organizational hierarchy and politics go away. They won’t make the ideas of the front-line worker in corporations as influential as those of the CEO. Most of the barriers that prevent knowledge from flowing freely in organizations – power differentials, lack of trust, missing incentives, unsupportive cultures, and the general busyness of employees today – won’t be addressed or substantially changed by technology alone.”

The research into use of tools like wikis [1], for example, supports Tom’s thoughts. It suggests that these tools do not change culture. Instead, culture is reflected in their adoption and how they are used:

• Strong heirarchies tend not to create information, but do correct spelling. They reinforce position power and therefore editorial and production-line communications and information
• Risk-adverse cultures have low contribution behaviour and rely on rules, processes and authority for contribution
• Strong egalitarian cultures, with low heirarchy, do exhibit strong creation behaviour
• Strong values in supporting of individual needs reflect strong creation, add and clarify information behaviour
• Strong supporting of groups and team-based work results in strong add and clarify information behaviour

It is these factors that will assist in us understanding why social computing tools work well in some organisations, but not in others. The idea that making great tools that supports people’s social needs to communicate and collaborate is a good step in introducing software that better aligns with their needs and the way they work, but it is not a catalyst for change – it’s only people who change people’s behaviour.

So if you built it, will they come? The answer is, unfortunately, a little complex. Logic would suggest that if you introduce any sort of technology without understanding whether it aligns to the needs of the corporate culture and those individuals in it then success is simply not assured. Putting the user first in these instances by adopting a user-centred design approach, therefore, is more likely to assure the success of introducing social computing tools into an organisation.

The question, then, should be “If you understand what users want, and then build it in such a way as it aligns with their needs and those of the organisation, will they come?” The answer, of course, is yes!

M

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11.  Pfeil, U., Zaphiris, P., and Ang, C. S. (2006). Cultural differences in collaborative authoring of Wikipedia. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 12 (1), Article 5.