BECS: A Sociotechnical Framework for ECS Benefits Realisation (Phase 1)

Phase 1: Benefits of Enterprise Collaboration Systems

Digitisation and the transition to the Digital Workplace are driving profound change in organisations. Enterprise Collaboration Systems (ECS) that provide large-scale, integrated and socially-enabled collaboration platforms have emerged as a fundamental component of the Digital Workplace. The benefits of ECS and methods for the identification, measurement and realisation of ECS benefits were the subject of investigation in the first phase of this project.Our research revealed that organisations are not only seeking to obtain benefits from ECS but that these benefits and their associated outcomes are part of an organisation-wide process to create a Digital Workplace. This digital transformation process requires organisational resources as well as the development of new competencies and capabilities to deal with emerging challenges and continuously changing requirements. Based on these findings we identify the research imperative to examine the digital transformation process more deeply and to investigate the ways that organisations combine resources, including technology, with organisational routines to create their Digital Workplace.Thus, building on and extending the work in the original project, the proposed project examines the transformative characteristics of ECS. Through the collection of research data in the form of case studies, surveys, interviews and logfile data from 29 ECS using organisations, the next phase of the research will provide the first large-scale, comprehensive, empirical study on the role of ECS in the digital transformation of organisations. The aim of the extension project is to investigate this transformation process and to identify the capabilities and resources required for the design of the Digital Workplace. Specifically, the research objectives are to:

1. Capture and understand how ECS are evolving and how companies can effectively develop a digital transformation capability

2. Develop methods for identifying, capturing and measuring digital transformation capabilities and their change over time

3. Investigate and theorise the processes of digital transformation and develop a framework for understanding digital transformation capabilities

The proposed research project consists of two interlinked research streams.

The first research stream will develop in-depth longitudinal case studies with the objectives of analysing and theorising the digital transformation process in organisations and identifying the required digital transformation capabilities and resources.

The second research strand will develop methods, metrics and tools for the in-depth analysis of large-scale ECS platform usage and provide system-level evidence of digital transformation.

The consolidated findings will provide the basis for the development of an integrated analytical framework to guide the investigation and theorisation and bring greater clarity and cohesion to the study of digital transformation capabilities and resources.