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88 Part One Organizations, Management, and the Networked Enterprise

In addition to improving delivery of government services, e-government
makes government operations more efficient and also empowers citizens by
giving them easier access to information and the ability to network electroni-
cally with other citizens. For example, citizens in some states can renew their
driver’s licenses or apply for unemployment benefits online, and the Internet
has become a powerful tool for instantly mobilizing interest groups for political
action and fund-raising.

2.3 SYSTEMS FOR COLLABORATION AND SOCIAL
BUSINESS

With all these systems and information, you might wonder how is it possible to
make sense of them? How do people working in firms pull it all together, work
towards common goals, and coordinate plans and actions? Information systems
can’t make decisions, hire or fire people, sign contracts, agree on deals, or
adjust the price of goods to the marketplace. In addition to the types of systems
we have just described, businesses need special systems to support collabora-
tion and teamwork.

WHAT IS COLLABORATION?

Collaboration is working with others to achieve shared and explicit goals.
Collaboration focuses on task or mission accomplishment and usually takes
place in a business, or other organization, and between businesses. You
collaborate with a colleague in Tokyo having expertise on a topic about which
you know nothing. You collaborate with many colleagues in publishing a
company blog. If you’re in a law firm, you collaborate with accountants in an
accounting firm in servicing the needs of a client with tax problems.
Collaboration can be short-lived, lasting a few minutes, or longer term,
depending on the nature of the task and the relationship among participants.
Collaboration can be one-to-one or many-to-many.
Employees may collaborate in informal groups that are not a formal part
of the business firm’s organizational structure or they may be organized into
formal teams. Teams have a specific mission that someone in the business
assigned to them. Team members need to collaborate on the accomplishment
of specific tasks and collectively achieve the team mission. The team mission
might be to “win the game,” or “increase online sales by 10 percent.” Teams are
often short-lived, depending on the problems they tackle and the length of time
needed to find a solution and accomplish the mission.
Collaboration and teamwork are more important today than ever for a variety
of reasons.
• Changing nature of work. The nature of work has changed from factory
manufacturing and pre-computer office work where each stage in the
production process occurred independently of one another, and was
coordinated by supervisors. Work was organized into silos. Within a silo,
work passed from one machine tool station to another, from one desktop to
another, until the finished product was completed. Today, jobs require much
closer coordination and interaction among the parties involved in producing
the service or product. A recent report from the consulting firm McKinsey &
Company argued that 41 percent of the U.S. labor force is now composed of
jobs where interaction (talking, e-mailing, presenting, and persuading) is the

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