The purpose of this chapter is to answer the primary research question associated with the empirical study, around the extent to which the introduction of emerging unified communications and collaboration (UC&C) technologies for innovation and productivity management within the context of large-scale automotive design, manufacturing, and business operations at General Motors (GM), a leader in the global automotive industry, influenced the impact of digital transformation on communication and collaboration.
TopIntroduction
This section will introduce the area described in general in the chapter and end by specifically stating how the objective of the chapter bridges these gaps.
Boisit (1998) pointed to knowledge assets and innovation as key to securing competitive advantage in the information economy. Innovation in terms of “the act of creating a new product or process” (Kahn, 2012, p. 454), as well as business models, help industry to provide economic value to their customers. Discovering innovative opportunities and exploring, generating, championing and then implementing these ideas (Ngugi & Goosen, 2021), including “the work required to bring an idea or concept to” the market (Kahn, 2012, p. 454), require investing a lot of resources that could incur large costs. Enterprise management of emerging technologies could support industry to foster innovation towards remaining competitive in the marketplace (Glazer, Kenkins & Schaper, 2005). This chapter intends to serve as a platform for resources related to technology absorption in industry to impact innovation and productivity management. Practices, successful reporting, empirical findings and results (well-supported by validations) will be considered. Lessons learned frominnovation efforts made to tackle the coronavirus are also included.
This chapter introduces an area of research related to the implementation of emerging Unified Communications and Collaboration (UC&C) technologies for productivity and innovation management within the context of large-scale automotive design, manufacture and business operations at General Motors (GM), a leader in the global automotive industry. It further discusses how the chapter bridges the gaps presented through the design of the research developed with the purpose of evaluating the impact of said emerging technologies. In terms of mentioning what problems existed, prior to the research undertaking reported on in this chapter, General Motors had not implemented unified communications within its manufacturing, design or business operation functions and had not engaged in the development of an Internet of Things (IoT)-related digitization strategy.
Research Approach and Justification
According to Miles, Huberman and Saldana (2014, p. 7), “research is actually more of a craft … than a slavish adherence to methodological rules. No study confirms exactly to a standard methodology; each one calls for the research to bend the methodology to the uniqueness of the setting or case.”
The approach for this research comprised of literature and empirical studies on the deployment and impact of unified communications and collaboration technologies over a four-year period at General Motors, one of the world’s largest automotive manufacturers. The underlying research design centered on a qualitative research approach, leveraging case study research that included documentation review and qualitative methods, including interviews and surveys. As described by Taylor, Bodgan and DeVault (2016), a qualitative methodology refers in a broad sense to a process of research that produces descriptive data. The descriptive data produced represents people’s own written or spoken words and observable behavior.
The research approach, design and associated methods leveraged within the scope of this study were specially selected to facilitate evaluation of user perceptions of productivity and innovation post-implementation of General Motors’ unified communications and collaboration architecture and service deployment. The phenomenological perspective is central to a qualitative research approach and methodology.
Open coding was leveraged to examine and analyze the perceptions of participants. Open coding techniques are frequently leveraged in qualitative research to develop a theory that is grounded in data organizationally and systematically (Yin, 2011). Open coding also facilitated the process of investigating, comparing, conceptualizing and assigning categories to specific phenomena (Urquhart, 2013).
Objective
Similar to the theme of the book, the objective of this chapter will be to highlight the role of emerging communication and collaboration technologies in assisting the global automotive industry to innovate their products, processes and business models. The accurate selection of such technologies can help them to innovate at lower costs. The chapter will also show how these provided them with the necessary criteria and guidelines for the selection and implementation of emerging technologies and in what situations to use these (Goosen, 2004).