Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Design Principles for a Social Question and Answers Site: Enabling User-to-User Support in Organizations

  • Conference paper
Advancing the Impact of Design Science: Moving from Theory to Practice (DESRIST 2014)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNISA,volume 8463))

Abstract

The adoption of consumer technology in organizations, termed as IT consumerization, alters the IT infrastructure of many organizations. Letting employees decide which IT tools to use for their work increases the complexity of the organizational IT landscape and immediately raises the question how to provide adequate support given the multitude of technologies. Bring-Your-Own-Device advocates argue that employees can provide IT support on their own. An established concept to provide user-to-user support are social questions & answers sites (SQA). While such community sites are perfectly suited for exploratory problem solving, they lack however suitability to help solving specific problems subject to a specific organization. Moreover, receiving fast ad-hoc help in SQA is rather unlikely, as communication is always indirect and experts to solve the problem are unknown beforehand. The work presented in this paper explores key design characteristics of SQA sites in organizations that overcome the shortcoming of public SQA sites. Based on existing IS literature, we identify four kernel theories that are relevant for SQA sites in organizations and derive meta-requirements from them. In a next step, we analyze five public SQA sites to identify common design principles of SQA sites that are already applied. The main part of our analysis matches the identified design principles with the formulated meta-requirements to address potential gaps with respect to an enterprise environment. We conclude our research with the suggestion of additional design principles for SQA sites that account for their application in an organizational context.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

References

  1. Harris, J.G., Ives, B., Junglas, I.: IT Consumerization: When Gadgets Turn Into Enterprise IT Tools. MIS Q. Exec. 2012, 99–112 (2012)

    Google Scholar 

  2. Ortbach, K., Köffer, S., Bode, M., Niehaves, B.: Individualization of Information Systems - Analyzing Antecedents of IT Consumerization Behavior. In: International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS), Milano, ITA (2013)

    Google Scholar 

  3. Baskerville, R.: Individual information systems as a research arena. Eur. J. Inf. Syst. 20, 251–254 (2011)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  4. Davenport, T.H.: Rethinking knowledge work: A strategic approach. McKinsey Q., 89–99 (2011)

    Google Scholar 

  5. Forrester: Key Strategies to Capture and Measure the Value of Consumerization of IT. A Forrester Consulting Thought Leadership Paper Commissioned by Trend Micro, Cambridge, MA, USA (2012)

    Google Scholar 

  6. Gens, F., Levitas, D., Segal, R.: Consumerization of IT Study: Closing the Consumerization Gap. IDC, Framingham, Massachusetts, USA (2011)

    Google Scholar 

  7. Barbler, J., Bradley, J., Macaulay, J., Medcalf, R., Reberger, C.: BYOD and Virtualization. Top 10 Insights from Cisco IBSG Horizons Study, San José, CA, USA (2012)

    Google Scholar 

  8. Niehaves, B., Köffer, S., Ortbach, K.: IT Consumerization – A Theory and Practice Review. In: Proceedings of the 18th Americas Conference on Information Systems, Seattle, Washington, USA (2012)

    Google Scholar 

  9. Gartner: Gartner Identifies the Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends for 2014, http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/2603623

  10. Vodanovich, S., Sundaram, D., Myers, M.D.: Digital Natives and Ubiquitous Information Systems. Inf. Syst. Res. 21, 711–723 (2010)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  11. Wang, E., Myers, M.D., Sundaram, D.: Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants - Towards a Model of Digital Fluency. In: Proceedings of the European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS), Barcelona, Spain (2012)

    Google Scholar 

  12. Von Hippel, E., Lakhani, K.R.: How Open Source Software Works: ‘Free’ User-to-User Assistance? Res. Policy 32, 923–943 (2003)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  13. Kaplan, A.M., Haenlein, M.: Users of the world, unite! The challenges and opportunities of Social Media. Bus. Horiz. 53, 59–68 (2010)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  14. Kim, W., Jeong, O.-R., Lee, S.-W.: On social Web sites. Inf. Syst. 35, 215–236 (2010)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  15. Boyd, D.M., Ellison, N.B.: Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship. J. Comput. Commun. 13, 210–230 (2007)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  16. Kügler, M., Smolnik, S., Raeth, P.: Why Don’t You Use It? Assessing the Determinants of Enterprise Social Software Usage: A Conceptual Model Integrating Innovation Diffusion and Social Capital Theories. In: Proc. 33rd Int. Conf. Inf. Syst., ICIS 2012 (2012)

    Google Scholar 

  17. Zhao, L., Lu, Y.: Enhancing Perceived Interactivity through Network Externalities: An Empirical Study on Micro-Blogging Service Satisfaction and Continuance Intention. Decis. Support Syst. 53, 825–834 (2012)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  18. Lin, K.-Y., Lu, H.-P.: Why People Use Social Networking Sites: An Empirical Study Integrating Network Externalities and Motivation Theory. Comput. Human Behav. 27, 1152–1161 (2011)

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  19. Shipps, B., Phillips, B.: Social Networks, Interactivity and Satisfaction: Assessing Socio-Technical Behavioral Factors as an Extension to Technology Acceptance. J. Theor. Appl. Electron. Commer. Res. 8, 7–8 (2013)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  20. Meyer, P., Dibbern, J.: An Exploratory Study about Microblogging Acceptance at Work. In: Proceedings of the Americas Conference on Information Systems (AMCIS), Lima, Peru (2010)

    Google Scholar 

  21. Cheung, C.M.K., Chiu, P.-Y., Lee, M.K.O.: Online Social Networks: Why Do Students Use Facebook? Comput. Human Behav. 27, 1337–1343 (2011)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  22. Cheung, C.M.K., Lee, M.K.O.: A Theoretical Model of Intentional Social Action in Online Social Networks. Decis. Support Syst. 49, 24–30 (2010)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  23. Muller, M.: Lurking as Personal Trait or Situational Disposition? Lurking and Contributing in Enterprise Social Media. In: Proceedings of the ACM 2012 Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, New York, NJ, USA, pp. 253–256 (2012)

    Google Scholar 

  24. Pöyry, E., Parvinen, P., Malmivaara, T.: Can We Get from liking to buying? Behavioral differences in hedonic and utilitarian Facebook usage. Electron. Commer. Res. Appl. 12, 224–235 (2013)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  25. Pi, S.-M., Chou, C.-H., Liao, H.-L.: A Study of Facebook Groups Members’ Knowledge Sharing. Comput. Human Behav. 29, 1971–1979 (2013)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  26. Harper, F., Raban, D.: Predictors of answer quality in online Q&A sites. In: Proc. SIGCHI Conf. Hum. Factors Comput. Syst. (2008)

    Google Scholar 

  27. Shah, C., Oh, J.S., Oh, S.: Exploring characteristics and effects of user participation in online social Q&A sites. First Monday 13, 18 (2008)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  28. Gazan, R.: Social Q&A. J. Am. Soc. Inf. Sci. Technol. 62, 2301–2312 (2011)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  29. Gazan, R.: Specialists and synthesists in a question answering community. Proc. Am. Soc. Inf. Sci. Technol. 43, 1–10 (2007)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  30. Tiwana, A., Bush, A.A.: Continuance in Expertise-Sharing Networks: A Social Perspective. IEEE Trans. Eng. Manag. 52, 85–101 (2005)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  31. Adamic, L., Zhang, J., Bakshy, E., Ackerman, M.S.: Knowledge sharing and yahoo answers: everyone knows something. In: Proceedings of the International Conference on World Wide Web, pp. 665–674 (2008)

    Google Scholar 

  32. Gazan, R.: Social Annotations in Digital Library Collections. D-Lib Mag. 14 (2008)

    Google Scholar 

  33. Hevner, A.R., March, S.T., Park, J., Ram, S.: Design Science in Information Systems Research. MIS Q. 28, 75–105 (2004)

    Google Scholar 

  34. Markus, M.L., Majchrzak, A., Gasser, L.: A Design Theory for Systems That Support Emergent Knowledge Processes. MIS Q. 26, 179–212 (2002)

    Google Scholar 

  35. Gregor, S., Jones, D.: The Anatomy of a Design Theory. J. Assoc. Inf. Syst. 8, 312–336 (2007)

    Google Scholar 

  36. Wiig, K.M.: Knowledge Management: An Emerging Discipline with a Long History. In: Despres, C., Chauvel, D. (eds.) Knowledge Horizons, pp. 3–26. Butterworth Heinemann (2000)

    Google Scholar 

  37. Alavi, M., Leidner, D.E.: Review: Knowledge management and knowledge management systems: Conceptual foundations and research issues. MIS Q. 25, 107–136 (2001)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  38. Choi, S.Y., Lee, H., Yoo, Y.: The Impact of Information Technology and Transactive Memory Systems on Knowledge Sharing, Application, and Team Performance: A Field Study. MIS Q. 34, 855–870 (2010)

    Google Scholar 

  39. Gregor, S., Benbasat, I.: Explanations from intelligent systems: Theoretical foundations and implications for practice. MIS Q. 23, 497–530 (1999)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  40. Julian, J.: How project management office leaders facilitate cross project learning and continuous improvement. Proj. Manag. J. (2008)

    Google Scholar 

  41. Petter, S., Randolph, A.B.: Developing soft skills to manage user expectations in IT projects: Knowledge reuse among IT project managers. Proj. Manag. J. 40, 45–59 (2009)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  42. Koskinen, K.U., Pihlanto, P., Vanharanta, H.: Tacit knowledge acquisition and sharing in a project work context. Int. J. Proj. Manag. 21, 281–290 (2003)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  43. Petter, S., Vaishnavi, V.: Facilitating experience reuse among software project managers. Inf. Sci. (Ny) 178, 1783–1802 (2008)

    Google Scholar 

  44. Short, J., Williams, E., Christie, B.: The Social Psychology of Telecommunications. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. (1976)

    Google Scholar 

  45. Rockmann, K.W., Northcraft, G.B.: To be or not to be trusted: The influence of media richness on defection and deception. Organ. Behav. Hum. Decis. Process. 107, 106–122 (2008)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  46. Zimbardo, P.G.: The human choice: Individuation, reason, and order versus deindividuation, impulse, and chaos. In: Nebraska Symp. Motiv., vol. 17, pp. 237–307 (1969)

    Google Scholar 

  47. Djamasbi, S., Siegel, M., Tullis, T., Dai, R.: Efficiency, Trust, and Visual Appeal: Usability Testing through Eye Tracking. In: 2010 43rd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS), pp. 1–10 (2010)

    Google Scholar 

  48. Walter, N., Ortbach, K., Niehaves, B.: Great to have you here! Understanding and designing social presence in information systems. In: ECIS 2013 Proc., pp. 1–12 (2013)

    Google Scholar 

  49. Walther, J.B., D’Addario, K.P.: The Impacts of Emoticons on Message Interpretation in Computer-Mediated Communication. Soc. Sci. Comput. Rev. 19, 324–347 (2001)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  50. Cyr, D., Head, M., Larios, H., Pan, B.: Exploring Human Images in Website Design: A Multi-Method Approach. MIS Q. 33, 539–566 (2009)

    Google Scholar 

  51. Lombard, M., Ditton, T.: At the Heart of It All: The Concept of Presence. J. Comput. Commun. 3, 1–30 (1997)

    Google Scholar 

  52. Goffman, E.: The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Anchor Books (1959)

    Google Scholar 

  53. Walter, N.: Does Human Warmth Matter? – An Experiment on User Profiles in Initial Business Interaction. SIGHCI 2013 Proc. Paper 18 (2013)

    Google Scholar 

  54. Hertel, G., Schroer, J., Batinic, B., Naumann, S.: Do Shy People Prefer to Send E-Mail? Personality Effects on Communication Media Preferences in Threatening and Nonthreatening Situations. Soc. Psychol. (Gott) 39, 231–243 (2008)

    Google Scholar 

  55. Hess, T., Fuller, M., Campbell, D.: Designing Interfaces with Social Presence: Using Vividness and Extraversion to Create Social Recommendation Agents. J. Assoc. Inf. Syst. 10, 889–919 (2009)

    Google Scholar 

  56. Marcus, B., Machilek, F., Schütz, A.: Personality in cyberspace: Personal web sites as media for personality expressions and impressions. J. Pers. Soc. Psychol. 90, 1014–1031 (2006)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  57. Deterding, S., Dixon, D., Khaled, R., Nacke, L.: From game design elements to gamefulness: defining gamification. In: Proceedings of the International Academic MindTrek Conference: Envisioning Future Media Environments, pp. 9–15. ACM (2011)

    Google Scholar 

  58. Kumar, S., Nepal, S., Colineau, N., Paris, C.: Using Gamification in an Online Community. In: 8th International Conference Conference on Collaborative Computing: Networking, Applications and Worksharing, pp. 611–618 (2012)

    Google Scholar 

  59. Nielsen, J.: Participation inequality: Encouraging more users to contribute, http://www.nngroup.com/articles/participation-inequality/

  60. McLure Wasko, M., Faraj, S.: Why Should I Share? Examing Social Capital and Knowledge Contribution in Electronic Network of Practice. MIS Q. 29, 35–57 (2005)

    Google Scholar 

  61. Welser, H.T., Gleave, E., Barash, V., Smith, M., Meckes, J.: Whither the Experts? Social Affordances and the Cultivation of Experts in Community Q&A Systems. In: 2009 International Conference on Computational Science and Engineering, pp. 450–455. IEEE (2009)

    Google Scholar 

  62. Huotari, K., Hamari, J.: Defining gamification: A service marketing perspective. In: Proceeding Int. Acad. MindTrek Conf., pp. 17–22. ACM (2012)

    Google Scholar 

  63. Gyarmati, L., Trinh, T.: Measuring user behavior in online social networks. IEEE Netw. 24, 26–31 (2010)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  64. Hsieh, G., Counts, S.: mimir: A market-based real-time question and answer service. In: CHI 2009 Proc. SIGCHI Conf. Hum. Factors Comput. Syst., pp. 769–778 (2009)

    Google Scholar 

  65. Gazan, R.: Microcollaborations in a social Q&A community. Inf. Process. Manag. 46, 693–702 (2010)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  66. Agichtein, E., Castillo, C., Donato, D., Gionis, A., Mishne, G.: Finding high-quality content in social media. In: Proc. Int. Conf. Web Search Web Data Min., WSDM 2008, p. 183 (2008)

    Google Scholar 

  67. Anderson, A., Huttenlocher, D.: Discovering value from community activity on focused question answering sites: a case study of stack overflow. In: Proc. 18th ACM SIGKDD Int. Conf. Knowl. Discov. Data Min. (2012)

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. European Research Center for Information Systems, University of Münster, Germany

    Kevin Ortbach, Sebastian Köffer & Nicolai Walter

  2. Information Systems IV, University of Mannheim, Mannheim, Germany

    Oliver Gaß, Silvia Schacht & Alexander Maedche

  3. Institute for Enterprise Systems, University of Mannheim, Mannheim, Germany

    Alexander Maedche

  4. Hertie School of Governance, Berlin, Germany

    Bjoern Niehaves

Authors
  1. Kevin Ortbach
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Oliver Gaß
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Sebastian Köffer
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Silvia Schacht
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  5. Nicolai Walter
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  6. Alexander Maedche
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  7. Bjoern Niehaves
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. College of Business, Florida International University, 11200 SW 8th Street, 33199, Miami, FL, USA

    Monica Chiarini Tremblay

  2. Florida International University, 11200 SW 8th Street, 33199, Miami, FL, USA

    Debra VanderMeer

  3. University of Nevada Las Vegas, 4505 Maryland Parkway, 89154-6001, Las Vegas, NV, USA

    Marcus Rothenberger

  4. University of Tennessee Chattanooga, 615 McCallie Avenue, 37403, Chattanooga, TN, USA

    Ashish Gupta

  5. Virginia Commonwealth University, 301 W. Main Street, 23284-4000, Richmond, VA, USA

    Victoria Yoon

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2014 Springer International Publishing Switzerland

About this paper

Cite this paper

Ortbach, K. et al. (2014). Design Principles for a Social Question and Answers Site: Enabling User-to-User Support in Organizations. In: Tremblay, M.C., VanderMeer, D., Rothenberger, M., Gupta, A., Yoon, V. (eds) Advancing the Impact of Design Science: Moving from Theory to Practice. DESRIST 2014. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 8463. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-06701-8_4

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-06701-8_4

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-06700-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-06701-8

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation