Introduction Studying Coordination and Mobility in Organizations.pdfVIP

Studying Coordination and Mobility in Organizations Working Paper, January 2005 David Tilson Tilson@case.edu Telephone: +1 216 368 5105 Fax: +1 216 368 4776 Information Systems Department Weatherhead School of Management Case Western Reserve University 10900 Euclid Avenue, Cleveland, Ohio, 44106, USA Introduction Information and communication technologies (ICT) have been used in organizations for several decades. Many of these technologies were introduced to help organizations and groups of people to improve the coordination of the activities they undertake (e.g. ERP, supply-chain management, e-mail and groupware). Mobile information and communication technologies (m-ICT) are increasingly prevalent in today’s organizations and in people’s personal lives more generally. A wide range of devices are used: mobile phones of varying capabilities, PDAs, Blackberries, laptops and tablet computers as well as application specific devices (e.g. the ruggedized devices used by UPS and FedEx delivery personnel). These mobile technologies hold out the hope of increased efficiency and effectiveness through improved coordination within groups and organizations and perhaps between organizations as well. In this paper we focus on the question of how mobile computing effects the coordination at the individual and team levels. In the next section we discuss several streams of literature dealing with coordination and highlight the role that ICT has played in improving coordination. This is followed by a brief introduction to mobility and mobile computing as emergent research areas. We introduce a framework for s