The Definition of E-Collaboration
The term “E-Collaboration” is defined as “Collaboration among individuals engaged in a common task using electronic technologies” (Kock et. al. 2001). E-collaboration is now an essential activity for firms doing business with partners, regardless of the industry in which the firm is engaged. Inter-organizational e-collaboration as a dynamic concept involves doing tasks together and making decisions in cooperation with business partners. Information sharing and resource sharing, as static concepts, refer to a state of e-collaboration and play a fundamental role in creating value for companies. From the viewpoint of the individual, e-collaboration is an effective method for gathering ideas from others and sharing creativeness globally through the Internet, circumventing the limitations of time and space. As an example, Inno-Centive has found a way to post its problems on the Internet and seek solutions from a distributed global network of specialists (Tapscott & Williams, 2008). E-collaboration can also make companies to encourage their managers always innovative in performing their tasks at all levels (Hamel & Breen, 2007).
Recent trends in research regarding firm’s e-collaboration protocols have largely involved empowering the firm’s IT capabilities in efforts to enhance a firm’s ability to carry out internal and external business processes. More specifically, one study, we will discuss later, has focused on the mediating effect of information exploitation capability on firm performance, and the other focused on firm’s information orientation and its impacts on firm performance (Lee, Ko & Jeong 2009). A firm’s information orientation consists of three sub-constructs, such as information technology practices, information management practices, and information behaviors and values. Another study has focused on the social capital perspective of e-collaboration, in which a firm’s efforts toward e-collaboration, in the long run, specifically in the forms of the relational intensity of partners, shared language, and trust, contribute to improvements in operational and strategic performance (Jeong, Ko, Lee & Jang, 2009). We can extract meaningful constructs from these recent studies, allowing us to elucidate e-collaboration within a cross-organizational context, which includes information sharing, electronic cooperation, information exploitation capability, information orientation, and social capital. These artifacts have surely helped us to understand the mechanisms relevant to e-collaboration and to revitalize it throughout all of the firm’s business processes. A recent study also demonstrated that e-collaboration may help to improve a firm’s performance through information sharing, relational memory, and shared meanings; these factors function as mediators of e-collaboration, and are the artifacts of inter-organizational learning context from a longitudinal perspective (Choi & Ko, 2010).
From the resource-based view, information systems and information resources are characterized by a lack of rarity, imitability, and non-mobility, and in the long-run perspective, it is very difficult for companies to create competitive advantages for value creation and strategic performance. Beyond the adoption of information systems, companies should focus on how those systems can be utilized at a higher level for improved performance (Choi & Ko 2008). Consequently, information exploitation capabilities make it possible for companies to facilitate information sharing and e-collaboration internally, and contribute to increasing efficiency and resultant substantial economic benefits. Information exploitation capabilities can also help companies to utilize information sharing, co-activities, and joint decision-making externally with their business partners, and can help them to accumulate non-imitable social and intellectual capital, thus improving their sustainability.