Instant Messaging in Business Practices: Underutilized due to Privacy Concerns? (new)

Instant messaging (IM) has been gaining increasing popularity in corporations because of its potential to raise productivity and save costs. However, privacy issues associated with IM pose challenges to its introduction in organizations, and to its adoption in daily work practices. These privacy issues stem from the potential for increased interruption and intrusion, the fear of being monitored, and the lack of control over logging and archiving. This research project investigates the extent to which privacy concerns lead to underutilization of IM in businesses, with the goal of proposing design solutions that will allow IM to derive its full potential for productivity gains.

The following questions are explored to gain a better understanding of the underutilization of IM in organizations:

• What is the extent of underutilization of IM compared to projected expectations?
• What is the loss experienced by the organization due to underutilization – monetarily and otherwise?
• What factors contribute to underutilization?
• What could be done to mitigate these factors so that IM could derive its full promise?

Corporate E-Learning: Exploring Implementation and Outcomes

As companies become more connected, the market for corporate e-learning is growing by leaps and bounds. Increasing demands on companies to upgrade employee skills, manage knowledge and contain training costs continue to drive the need and potential for e-learning in the business sector; however, implementing e-learning represents a major change in most organizations. Corporate managers must contend with such issues as the technological literacy level of employees, existing job descriptions, the organizational culture, e-learning technology requirements, and governance over the e-learning process, to name just a few. Using comparative case studies, this project examines the following questions:

• What is the effect of the company’s initial technological, organizational and cultural environment on the introduction of e-learning and vice versa?
• To what extent can the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology explain differences in employee acceptance of e-learning initiatives?
• Is there an appropriate mix between e-learning and other modes of training?