Adoption and Use of Electronic Meeting Systems in Large Australian and New Zealand Organizations

As globalization increases and competition grows, firms are becoming increasingly dependent upon group work and collaboration. The recent surge of reengineering efforts to reinforce a process view of organizational work and the emergence of virtual corporations spanning the globe indicate that firms are relying more on group work today than ever before. Information technology (IT) may have the capability to greatly enhance the quality of collaboration in accomplishing group tasks. This paper focuses on electronic meeting systems (EMS), which are mostly aimed at supporting group work in a face-to-face setting, and empirically assesses their adoption and use in supporting task-oriented collaborative work in Australian and New Zealand organizations. Results from survey data collected from 147 organizations indicate that EMS adoption has been somewhat limited. Most organizations had not adopted EMS to support group work. Further, both the level of adoption and level of use of EMS within the organizations was very low. Barriers to adoption were identified along with implications for future research. Organizational barriers, including compatibility with cognitive styles, lack of incentives and resistance to change, were the most important adoption obstacles. Technological and costs issues were somewhat less significant. Overall, the findings are fairly similar to the US study on which the survey instrument was based, though some adoption differences occurred which may be related to the structure and ownership of the organizations.