Online communities are increasingly important to organizations and the general public, but there is little theoretically based research on what makes some online communities more successful than others. In this article, we apply theory from the field of social psychology to understand how online communities develop member attachment, an important dimension of community success. We implemented and empirically tested two sets of community features for building member attachment by strengthening either group identity or interpersonal bonds. To increase identity-based attachment, we gave members information about group activities and intergroup competition, and tools for group-level communication. To increase bond-based attachment, we gave members information about the activities of individual members and interpersonal similarity, and tools for interpersonal communication. Results from a six-month field experiment show that participants' visit frequency and self-reported attachment increased in both conditions. Community features intended to foster identity-based attachment had stronger effects than features intended to foster bond-based attachment. Participants in the identity condition with access to group profiles and repeated exposure to their group's activities visited their community twice as frequently as participants in other conditions. The new features also had stronger effects on newcomers than on old-timers. This research illustrates how theory from the social science literature can be applied to gain a more systematic understanding of online communities and how theory-inspired features can improve their success.
Collaboration in complex and dynamic environments such as hospitals, airlines, and disaster response teams is challenging. High performance requires smooth coordination across multiple groups whose incentives, cultures, and routines can conflict. In this paper, we present an in-depth case study of a hospital's operating room practices to understand challenges associated with multiple group coordination and how information technology may help. We use the concept of trajectory to focus our observations and interviews on workflow across groups and critical events when coordination breaks down. A careful examination of the sources, coping mechanisms, and consequences of coordination breakdowns suggests three factors whose absence may impede effective responses to unexpected interruptions: (1) trajectory awareness of what is going on beyond a person's immediate workspace, (2) information systems integration, and (3) information pooling and learning at the organizational level. We conclude with technological recommendations to promote trajectory awareness and to automate information gathering and monitoring, so as to facilitate multiple group coordination in complex and dynamic task environments.
Is the Internet a superhighway to information or a high-tech extension of the home telephone? We address this question by operationalizing information acquisition and entertainment as the use of the World Wide Web and interpersonal communication as the use of electronic mail (e-mail), and examine how 229 members of 110 households used these services during their first year on the Internet. The results show that e-mail drives people's use of the Internet. Participants used e-mail in more Internet sessions and more consistently than they used the World Wide Web, and they used e-mail first in sessions where they used both. Participants used the Internet more after they had used e-mail heavily, but they used the Internet less after they had used the Web heavily. While participants' use of both e-mail and the Web declined with time, the decline in Web use was steeper. Those who used e-mail more than they used the Web were also more likely to continue using the Internet over the course of a year. Our findings have implications for engineering and policies for the Internet and, more generally, for studies of the social impact of new technology.
As technology for information access improves, people have more opportunities to share information. A theory of information sharing is advanced and we report the results of three experiments on attitudes about sharing technical work and expertise in organizations. Based on research on sensitive topics difficult to study in the field, we derived vignette-based measures of attitudes. Subjects read a description of an employee's encounter with a previously unhelpful coworker who subsequently requested help—in the form of a computer program or computer advice. The influence of prosocial attitudes and organizational norms is inferred from subjects' support of sharing despite the previous unhelpful behavior of the coworker. Experiments 1 and 3 demonstrated that greater self interest reduces support of sharing, but that a belief in organizational ownership of work encourages and mediates attitudes favoring sharing. Work experience and business schooling contribute to these attitudes. The theory asserts that information as expertise belongs to a special category of information that is part of people's identity and is self-expressive. Experiments 2 and 3 demonstrated that subjects felt computer expertise belonged more to its possessor than the computer program did but would share it more than the program. Hence, attitudes about information sharing depend on the form of the information. Sharing tangible information work may depend on prosocial attitudes and norms of organizational ownership; sharing expertise may depend on people's own self-expressive needs.