Culture Shock: Online Collaboration

As many of us know from our own work experience, every organization has its own culture.  Sometimes that culture is obvious just from the process by which you were hired and other times it may take a few weeks to start to recognize the individual culture of a new workplace.  I know that in one of my early library  courses we heavily discussed culture and the ways that it effects management.  After reading the article, "Corporate Culture, Not Tech, Drives Online Collaboration" from the Web Worker Daily, I am now beginning to understand how culture can also either foster the use of internal collaboration tools, or completely discourage it.  And the most fascinating part of this is that it can happen unintentionally.  An organization may think they are all for the idea of internal collaboration and supply great new tools, but if the mechanisms within the fabric of that organization are not conducive to collaboration in general, it will not succeed.

The above mentioned article states some key components of a corporate culture that is advantageous to using online collaboration.  Some of these components include an organization that is fine with their employees making their own schedules and maybe telecommuting.  Such a philosophy is indicative of a culture that does not depend on a lot of face-to-face interaction.  This type of organization may greatly benefit from online collaboration.

Also important is a culture that encourages technologically minded employees.  If the organization tends to fall behind on tech trends, does not encourage embracing current technology or simply does not do well with technology, then online collaboration will not flourish.  The tools may be available but ultimately employees will not use them.

That ties into the next component, which is that the culture must be willing to do more than just supply the tools.  There must be people who are sufficiently familiar with how to use them and are able to instruct others on how to work on them as well.  It also takes time to plan out strategies of how to implement online collaboration into the organization so that it is used efficiently.

Lastly, any culture attempting to use online collaboration absolutely must have strong support from management.  There must be leaders within the organization that believe in online collaboration.  Without such support they will not be able to bolster confidence in this new form of communication.