Journal Review 3: Designing E-Collaboration Technologies to Facilitate Compensatory Adaptation.

Kock, Ned. "Designing E-Collaboration Technologies to Facilitate Compensatory Adaptation." Information Systems Management 25.1 (Winter2008 2008): 14-19. Business Source Complete. EBSCO. [Library name], [City], [State abbreviation]. 24 July 2008 .

The author of this journal was interested in how to better design e-collaborating technology to better facilitate with the many compensatory problem faced by not using high level media, such as face to face, in a group work setting. In particular, the researcher was studying how the different levels of media, high (face to face) to low (written mail), had an impact on how co-workers communicated with each other, and how new e-collaborating tools can compensate for these impacts. The researcher studied different companies, and their employees who did group work, or communicated through lower forms of communications, such as e-mail, during group work. The researcher used scientific reasoning, most notably the theory of evolution, to try and create theories to prove how certain forms of communications were better than other and the advantages to higher media communications.

During the research, the author found out a few important things. First, while lower level media such as e-mail was harder to understand or read, and was slower in comparison to speech, it did increase cognitive thinking, and often increased knowledge sharing between group members. Their research showed the member would think more before sending out e-mails with information, and would say stuff that they might of have not been comfortable saying in person. However, this increase in cognitive thinking sometimes had a negative effect on effective communications which seems to contradict the previous claim.

The improper use of technology for communication was also another important finding. Many e-collaborating tools have features in them to try to add more face to face type feelings to their communications, however people do not use them properly, or the feature is not available on every system. One example they used was of the emoticon system in e-mails. Many e-mail services do not have emoticons installed in their system, and even then, many people find the use of emoticons annoying. Even when used, they do not give a real human expression, such as a smile, in a proper way and can be misinterpreted. A smile in real life while giving constructive criticism is good to show a person that they are on the right track, and that you are not looking down on their idea, but trying to help them. However, a smile in a construct criticism e-mail might be taken differently as if you were trying to mock them.

This paper was interesting how the author tied evolution into computer science and business. He used a lot of science term to back, and how the two main forms of communication, face to face and verbal, were used by pre-ancestor humans as a way of communication. He continues to say that as time goes on we will evolve to adapt to reading thing better. I myself am not fully a believer of evolution, and was wondering also what merit evolution really had for improving e-communication. I also wonder if it is not just the e-collaboration tools fault for the communication barriers problem, but also management fault for not training their employees to properly use the tools.

This paper seemed to have a lot of interdisciplinary research done. It was evident that theories of biology through the evolution theory were used to try to create a theory to apply to a business operation management problem. It also had some aspect of human resource management, and computer science as it looked at how technology can be better made, and how employees are affected by technology.

This paper was very helpful for my research. I felt that this gave me a lot of information to take into consideration when creating my proposed specification for my proposed software. I need more specific on how a certain feature works, so that it will not be used improperly. I also need to try to think of way to not only enhance communication to be more face to face like, but also find a way to help make it easier to understand and comprehend lower media form of communications. Overall this paper help me gain a better idea of how to create the e-collaborating part of my proposed software, and also give a better understanding of how to implement it as well.