Smart workplace technology buzz

Schallenmueller S.

Abstract
During the last decade, technology at the workplace has changed. Realtime communication and collaboration capabilities such as video, instant messaging, presence management, and web sharing have been added to the workplace ecosystem as enterprises have started to introduce social media systems to shape a new way of knowledge management and employee communication and connectivity. Though the introduction of such workplace technology has often been driven from an executive level as part of a vision and optimization initiative with high expectations, adoption among the user community is varying from excitement to denial. The mentioned areas of technology are part of an open infrastructure, and in contrast to business applications (e.g., SAP), there is no dedicated business process guiding the adoption. The adoption is infl uenced both by technical features and the specifi c culture of the enterprise. Trust within teams and management actions has, among other factors, a strong impact on the outcome. Therefore, a multidimensional view on technology and organizational aspects, both on a group and an individual level, is needed to guide enterprises through the journey to a digital workplace. Within this chapter, we will present a framework capturing the various dimensions and discuss the application along a specifi c case. We will also suggest how to approach complex rollouts of workplace technology with a focus on real-time communication and collaboration in an enterprise and how a framework can support a structured way of implementation and community development fostering adoption.

Keywords
Case study; Digital workplace; Interdependence of technology and organizational change; Social collaboration technology