research-article

When Distance Doesn't Really Matter: Effects of Geographic Dispersion on Participation in Online Enterprise Communities

Authors:

Jeffrey Warshaw,

Steve Whittaker,

Barton A. SmithAuthors Info & Claims

CSCW '16: Proceedings of the 19th ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work & Social Computing

Pages 335 - 345

https://doi.org/10.1145/2818048.2835237

Published: 27 February 2016 Publication History

Abstract

Research on small team collaboration repeatedly shows that 'distance matters'. More recent work has refined this concept of distance to develop geographic dispersion measures to explain the negative effects that team configuration has on productivity and interaction. Dispersion measures explain why teams distributed across multiple time zones, or across multiple sites, have more coordination difficulties than collocated teams with a single remote member. Although larger online communities are increasingly used in enterprises, few studies have examined the effects of dispersion on community behavior. We studied 1206 online enterprise communities (OECs), each using a set of collaborative tools. We present new data showing counter-intuitively that OEC dispersion does not affect content generation or contribution inequality, even when restricting community size to those that most resemble small teams (with 3-12 members). We found that previously documented negative effects of geographic dispersion seem to be reduced in enterprise communities regardless of size. Our results provide additional support to prior case studies suggesting that online communities can mitigate geographic dispersion by providing resources that support coordination and resource sharing.

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When Distance Doesn't Really Matter: Effects of Geographic Dispersion on Participation in Online Enterprise Communities
1. Human-centered computing
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2. Social and professional topics
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cover image ACM Conferences

CSCW '16: Proceedings of the 19th ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work & Social Computing

February 2016

1866 pages

ISBN:9781450335928

DOI:10.1145/2818048

General Chairs:
Darren Gergle
Northwestern University
,
Meredith Ringel Morris
Microsoft Research
,
Program Chairs:
Pernille Bjørn
University of Copenhagen
,
Joseph Konstan
University of Minnesota

Copyright © 2016 ACM.

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Published: 27 February 2016

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February 27 - March 2, 2016

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CSCW '16 Paper Acceptance Rate 142 of 571 submissions, 25%;

Overall Acceptance Rate 2,235 of 8,521 submissions, 26%

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https://doi.org/10.4018/979-8-3693-1938-3.ch015
Hu XHinds RValentine MBernstein M(2022)A "Distance Matters" Paradox: Facilitating Intra-Team Collaboration Can Harm Inter-Team CollaborationProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/35128956:CSCW1(1-36)Online publication date: 7-Apr-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3512895
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https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1002/smr.2317
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