Collaboration using Mobile Technologies (MCTs): When is it essential?

With the growing popularity of mobile technologies and the increasing use of groups within organizations (with members often distributed globally, and constantly "on-the-go"), question remains as to whether mobile collaboration technologies (MCTs) provide any additional benefits (over face-to-face and conventional CMC technologies) to such collaborations. We attempt to address this specific question by comparing features of MCTs with those of F2F and CMC technologies, and creating a typology of group collaboration that would benefit (or need) MCTs. Overall, the paper hopes to highlight the benefits of MCTs, and the contexts in which it will be most beneficial (perhaps even essential).

1. Introduction

Mobile technologies are becoming increasingly popular in travel, education, stock trading, military, and medical emergency care [1]. Modern day companies are also investing heavily in mobile technologies to further enable their employees, and create competitive advantages. As organizations begin to rely on mobile technologies, at the same time, they are also increasing their reliance on the use of groups to accomplish key organizational tasks [2]. This paper focuses on these two important issues and attempts to understand the effects of mobile collaboration technologies (MCTs) on group work. While limited work in this area has suggested that mobile technologies have sometimes been used in collaboration environments or in learning activities [3], [4], the extent to which mobile technologies have been beneficial in such contexts has not been clearly established. Traditional computer-mediated communication (CMC) technologies has been shown to be extremely beneficial in distributed group work [4] [11]. Today, due to busy schedules and fast-paced nature of modern day life, members of collaborative groups are not only distributed, but often not located in fixed locations. However, the pressure to accomplish the group's task in a given time, often “force” members of such groups to collaborate with other members even when they are commuting or transiting through different locations (e.g., through an airport) [1], [12] [15]. It is thus important to explore whether F2F communication media, or traditional CMC technologies are sufficient (or even possible) in such contexts, or whether such collaboration instances would benefit from the use of MCTs.