Enhancing Enterprise Frontiers Through E-Collaboration with a Three-Dimensional Model Based on Web 2.0 Technology Use

Abstract

2 Due to behavior evolution and technology progress, collaboration with customer communities becomes an important part of company transformation. This article aims at enhancing virtual community management with a 3D model of choice of collaboration. It fills the gap between collaboration practices recommended in the literature and the reality of Web 2.0 collaborative tools use and interest measured in a sample of 99 large companies. A functional analysis and the classification of 18 Web 2.0 tools triggered a tri-dimensional model of e-collaboration identifying major utilizations: value addition, member satisfaction, and flexibility of frontiers. Moreover, a large company survey identified that two types of companies were opposed to e-collaboration with customers and that three were favorable with different aims and tools. Our findings underline that e-collaboration seems interesting if the "value creation" dimension was positive and if "member satisfaction" and "flexible frontiers" dimensions were positive at the same time. Otherwise, customer communities are not perceived as an opportunity. This research offers practitioners a managerial model to support their transformation targets with suited distance practices and tools. It triggers theoretical evolutions with the concept of flexible frontiers.