Firms are increasing their investments in collaboration technologies in order to leverage the intellectual resources embedded in their employees. Research on post-adoption use of technology suggests that the true gains from such investments are realized when users explore various system features and attempt to incorporate them into their work practices. However, the literature has been silent about how to promote such behavior when individuals are embedded in team settings, where members’ actions are interdependent. This research develops a multilevel model that theorizes the cross-level influence of team empowerment on individual exploration of collaboration technology. Further, it identifies two cognitions—intention to continue exploring and expectation to continue exploring—that are oriented toward exploring ways to incorporate implemented technology into daily work routines over time. A 12-month field study of 212 employees in 48 organizational work teams was conducted to test the multilevel research model. The results provide support for the hypotheses, with team empowerment having a positive cross-level influence on intention to continue exploring and expectation to continue exploring and these, in turn, mediating the cross-level influence of team empowerment on individual exploration of collaboration technology.
Given the pervasive use of teams in organizations coupled with high levels of investment in collaboration technology, there is increasing interest in identifying factors that affect the exploration and use of a broader scope of system features so that firms can benefit from the use of such technology. Prior research has called for a deeper understanding of how managers can encourage greater innovation with technology in the workplace. Drawing on the team climate and technology use literatures, we identify team learning climate and team empowerment climate as key factors that affect employees' propensity to explore a new system's features. We develop and test our use in a field study involving 268 employees embedded in 56 work teams. Three main findings come out of this research. First, the results reveal that the two types of team climate differ in their cross-level effects on individual intention to explore, such that team learning climate promotes greater intention to explore, whereas team empowerment climate reduces employees' intention to explore the technology. In addition, we find that team learning climate and team empowerment climate interact in shaping individual intention to explore, such that the presence of a strong learning climate is more effective in promoting intention to explore when teams also have a strong empowerment climate. Second, the findings show that men and women are affected differently by team climate. We find that for men, team empowerment climate has no influence on intention to explore, whereas for women there is a significant negative cross-level effect. Finally, we find that intention to explore has a positive effect on usage scope, suggesting an important link between team climate, individual cognition, and the scope of features used by employees in team settings. Taken together, the model and results highlight the important role of team climate and gender-and the interplay between them-as drivers of technology feature exploration. Our findings, especially those related to team empowerment climate, are counterintuitive when compared to prior literature and offer useful insights for managers. On the one hand, managers should consider leveraging team learning climate to intrinsically stimulate employees to engage in exploration of technology. On the other hand, managers should be cautious and guard against saddling employees with too many additional responsibilities during the stages of exploration and experimentation with system features. It is possible that through an expanded set of responsibilities and expectations fostered by team empowerment climate, employees may be experiencing work overload, thus reducing their likelihood of exploring a broader set of technology features. Managers should be especially attentive to this based on the gender composition of their teams.
Team network structure has been shown to be an important determinant of both team and individual performance outcomes, yet few studies have investigated the relationship between team network structure and technology usage behaviors. Drawing from social network and technology use literature, we examine how the structure of a team's advice-seeking network affects individual use of a newly implemented information technology. We develop cross-level hypotheses related to the effects of the structure of mutually interconnected ties within the team (i.e., internal closure) as well as the structure of nonredundant ties outside the team boundaries (i.e., external bridging). The hypotheses are tested in a field study of 265 employees working in 44 teams in a large financial services institution. Results show that internal closure has a U-shaped effect on individual use such that individual usage of the system is higher when the number of internal advice-seeking ties within the team is low or high, suggesting that medium levels of internal closure are the least desirable network configurations because in such instances teams neither realize the benefits of high closure information sharing nor are they able to avoid in-group biases associated with low closure conditions. Our results also reveal that in addition to having a direct positive effect on individual use, external bridging interacts with internal closure in a complex manner. The U-shaped effect of closure is dominant when bridging is high but assumes an inverted U-shaped pattern when bridging is low. Several implications for managers follow from these findings. First, in order to increase usage of technology, in teams characterized by low internal closure, managers should encourage the development of ties across team boundaries. Second, managers should maximize within-team interconnections in order to facilitate the circulation of external knowledge within team boundaries. Finally, managers should be aware that maximizing internal closure by facilitating interconnections among team members could be dangerous if not accompanied by mechanisms for external bridging.