Analysis of collaborative tools usages in heterogeneous contexts.

Abstract

Situations of collaborative working are more and more complex and various in organizations. Such diversification is little studied in the literature. Researches about °technologies usages° in °collaborative situations° mainly focus on specific contexts where a given group is using a specific technology. In this paper, we focus on the richness of a real world environnement of collaboration technologies' implementation, where different groups are working in various contexts (profession, localizations, tasks, etc) and using different tools. We propose a model to analyze usages and to bring with patterns in such complexity. First, we propose a brief introduction about the notion of "usage". In the second section, we present a research framework obtained by the integration of elements from different models and disciplines. The model was applied to analyze collaborative work tools usage in a French automotive company. As result, this study allowed us to map a global tools usage description, identify user groups' configurations, their needs, practices and usages.