Harnessing collective intelligence of Web 2.0: group adoption and use of Internet-based collaboration technologies

Abstract

Along with the advent of Web 2.0, mass collaboration is of paramount importance in knowledge exploration and diffusion. However, the extent to which Internet-based collaboration technologies can be used to develop new knowledge and to leverage the wisdom of crowds heavily depends on the collective willingness to adopt such tools together. In this study, the adoption and use of instant messaging has been conceptualized as a group-referent intentional social action. The concept of ‘we-intention’, which refers to one's perception of the group acting as a unit, is the focus of our interest. The cognitive, affective and social dimensions that contribute to ‘we-intention’ to adopt and use instant messaging were investigated. A survey was conducted and the findings provided empirical evidence supporting the idea that cognitive, affective and social factors jointly lead to the development of we-intention. This study is expected to provide some useful insights to both researchers and practitioners.

Keywords:

• we-intention
• Web 2.0
• collaborative technologies
• collective intelligence
• social influence
• uses and gratifications

Acknowledgements

The work described in this paper was partially supported by the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (Project No. 121055).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Xiao-Liang Shen

About the authors

Xiao-Liang Shen is currently an Associate Professor of the Economics and Management School at Wuhan University, PR China. He received his two Ph.D. degrees from City University of Hong Kong and University of Science and Technology of China. His current research interests include IT innovation adoption and diffusion, knowledge management, virtual collaboration, and social media and commerce. He has published in international academic journals and conference proceedings, including Journal of Information Technology, Information Systems Frontier, Online Information Review, and International Conference on Information Systems.

Matthew K.O. Lee is a Chair Professor of Information Systems & E-Commerce at the College of Business, City University of Hong Kong. His research interests extend across innovation adoption and diffusion, knowledge management, e-commerce, and social media. His publications in the areas of information systems and electronic commerce have appeared in leading research journals such as MIS Quarterly, Journal of MIS, Communications of the ACM, Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, International Journal of Electronic Commerce, Decision Support Systems, Information & Management, and Journal of International Business Studies.

Christy M.K. Cheung is an Associate Professor at Hong Kong Baptist University. She received her Ph.D. from City University of Hong Kong. Her research interests include virtual community, knowledge management, social media, and IT adoption and usage. Her research articles have been published in MIS Quarterly, Decision Support Systems, Information & Management, Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, and Information Systems Frontiers. She received the Best Paper Award at the 2003 International Conference on Information Systems and was the PhD Fellow of 2004 ICIS Doctoral Consortium.