Team Communication Platforms and Emergent Social Collaboration Practices

Communication Visibility and Enterprise Social Media

Recent studies have shown that ESM technologies enable and intensify affordances for knowledge sharing and social collaboration. The most important difference from previous media is that “rather than functioning as a channel through which communication travels, enterprise social media operate as a platform upon which social interaction occurs” (Leonardi et al., 2013, p. 2). Treem and Leonardi (2012) described visibility, persistence, editability, and association as essential affordances that enable the diffusion of information through social networks in ESM environments. The persistent and virtual nature of ESM communication leads to “increased opportunities for social learning” (Leonardi et al., 2013, p. 3). Collaboration is improved by greater context awareness—the temporal, topical organization of ESM communication and its availability for association with diverse networks of content and people, enables cross-function contributions, allowing people to “focus their attention in ways that allow them to enter conversations more easily at meaningful times” (Leonardi et al., 2013, p. 6). Subsequently, Leonardi (2014) developed a theory of communication visibility in which he argued that ESM technologies both lower the threshold for knowledge sharing and enhance its value for collaboration. Rather than asking workers to document their processes and knowledge, ESM-based collaboration makes communication directly visible and discoverable. The theory of communication visibility proposes that this enables affordances for knowledge workers to develop metaknowledge about “who knows what and who knows who,” avoid duplicating work, combine existing ideas into new ideas for innovation, proactively aggregate information to solve problems, and engage in vicarious learning by observing others.

Similarly, Majchrzak et al. (2013) argued that the interactive, participatory, and social nature of ESM communication leads to a “shift from online knowledge sharing to continuous online communal knowledge conversations” (p. 40). In this view, a primary advantage of ESM is that knowledge sharing is more directly integrated into collaborative work practices. This study addresses four essential affordances. Metavoicing describes the type of reflective dialogue and community discussion that can enable timely feedback and answers to questions, group decision making, and collaborative exploration of challenging topics. Network-informed associating refers to the principle of metaknowledge and the additional value generated by knowledge conversations that are “informed by relational and content ties” (Majchrzak et al., 2013, p. 44). Generative role taking is related to the enhanced opportunities for self-initiative and self-organization enabled by ESM environments. Communication visibility empowers individuals to facilitate group processes and move projects forward; it also enables shared responsibility in which any individual in a team may step forward to contribute to a conversation or task based on availability and expertise. Finally, triggered attending describes “remaining uninvolved in content production or the conversation until a timely automated alert informs the individual of a change to the specific content of interest” (Majchrzak et al., 2013, pp. 42-43). The significance of triggered attending is that it allows individuals to manage attention allocation by delegating real-time monitoring to technology, while still responding immediately to important events and conversations.

This combination of knowledge sharing and integrated social collaboration has positive impacts on social cohesion in teams and organizations as well. In fact, studies have shown that cocreation rather than formalized deep-knowledge sharing is a more effective approach for bridging boundaries in cross-functional and mixed expertise collaborations (Majchrzak, More, & Faraj, 2012). Additionally, communication visibility promotes information symmetry, which is a key driver of social cohesion and productivity for cross-functional and virtual teams (Gardner & Mortensen, 2015). Ellison et al. (2015) also emphasized the social benefits created by ESM and SNP affordances for developing social capital, developing metaknowledge and relationships, and strengthening communication across traditional boundaries in organizational networks. However, Ellison et al. (2015) also cited the potential problem of context collapse in which communication visibility may introduce tensions and conflicts between the different identities and social contexts inhabited by individuals. Identity management and the demands of switching between different discourse communities and social roles may contribute to cognitive overload in ESM environments.

Research has also addressed additional ways that ESM affordances introduce challenges and tensions for workers. Gibbs et al. (2013) have described the way that knowledge workers may strategically manage sharing of knowledge assets and allocation of attention including their availability, virtual presence, and levels of engagement with ESM communications. In terms of knowledge sharing, Gibbs et al. (2013) found that workplace politics and power differentials influenced some workers to guard knowledge and protect social capital. In terms of attention allocation, Gibbs et al. (2013) reported that many users were found to hide their visibility—presence and availability for communication on the platform—in order to prevent interruptive communication from coworkers. Some participants also managed attention allocation and engagement with ESM communications by closing the application or hiding the communication interface while working on important projects or tasks. This study illustrates the way that users develop adaptive practices not only to both take advantage of new affordances but also to manage and work around challenges and tensions introduced by new technologies and media. Most significantly, it underlines the crucial importance of managing attention and task focus in an environment of increased communication visibility and social network connectivity.

Multicommunication and Instant Messaging

Research of routine and virtual team communication has largely focused on IM, which is one of the most commonly used team communication technologies other than e-mail (Bertolotti, Mattarelli, Vignoli, & Macrì, 2015; Darics, 2014). Studies report a wide range of communication uses including routine coordination, intensive collaboration, and intermittent knowledge conversations (Pazos et al., 2012). IM offers unique affordances that distinguish it from other ESM technologies including SNPs. Dennis, Rennecker, and Hansen (2010) cited “silent interactivity, presence awareness, polychronic communication, and ephemeral content” as the primary affordances of IM (p. 849). In many ESM technologies, communication takes place on a common platform that enables third-party observers to access and view public conversations. However, in traditional IM and chat applications, communication is private to the specific individuals invited to a channel or conversation thread. This leads to a more informal communication style in which individual messages can be treated as ephemeral and traditional social norms may be suspended. For example, Dennis et al. (2010) cited the practice of using IM to support “silent whispering” during meetings to support team presentations, back-channel discussions, and multitasking on external projects.

Research on IM offers unique perspectives on the issues of attention allocation and team communication. Across several studies, the theory of multicommunication has been developed to account for IM-supported practices of engaging in multiple simultaneous, overlapping conversations (Reinsch et al., 2008; Reinsch & Turner, 2006; Turner & Reinsch, 2007). While multicommunication enables collaboration and multitasking, it can also lead to distraction and cognitive overload. Congruent with themes already discussed, Reinsch et al. (2008) found a curvilinear relationship between multicommunication practices and productivity—beyond optimal intensity levels, multicommunication practices have diminishing returns. The key factors that contribute to multicommunication intensity include the total number of conversations, topics, and social roles and the pace of each conversation. In order to manage demands on attention, Reinsch et al. (2008) argued that multicommunicators must exercise two key capacities: compartmentalization and flexibility of tempo. Compartmentalization refers to strategies that allow communicators to effectively divide attention across multiple conversations, topics, and social roles. Flexibility of tempo refers to the need for responsiveness to changes in conversational pace and social acceptance of gaps in communication that allow focus switching between conversations. Variable communication synchronicity is necessary both to accommodate focus switching between communication partners and to prioritize the relative urgency of multiple conversations. In fact, Darics (2014) has noted that a primary affordance of IM is the way that it supports a productive blurring of synchronous and asynchronous communication practices in which teams negotiate unique cultural norms for communication levels of engagement, presence, and responsiveness to communication requests in IM environments.

The theory of multicommunication and research on IM affordances strongly emphasize the practical challenges of routine communication in virtual, interactive environments. It suggests that the knowledge-sharing benefits of communication visibility may be complicated by the challenges of managing information overload and attention allocation in ESM contexts.

Data Collection and Sample

A combination of web and social media searches were used to identify blog posts discussing user experiences with the Slack service. Slack was selected for two primary reasons. First, although many ESM technologies have begun to integrate more robust team messaging capabilities, Slack is among a smaller group of services, including Hipchat and Flowdock, that are exclusively dedicated and marketed as TCPs. Second, the recent creation, rapid growth, and extreme popularity of Slack has generated a large number of practitioner-written blog posts reviewing the service and sharing user experiences. Only posts that reported on specific organizational uses and/or personal experiences were included in the sample. Posts that could be specifically identified as promotional in nature, including case stories hosted on the official Slack website or posts marketing third-party integrations for the Slack service, were excluded from the sample.

The search obtained 100 blog posts written by individuals and self-published on personal or organizational blogs between September 2014 and September 2015. Additional searches were used to cross-reference posts in the sample with organization profiles on LinkedIN and/or official organization websites to identify industry and organization size by number of workers (members or employees). Gender data for post authors were not collected due to the lack of accurate sources.

The organizations and individuals in the sample included representatives of diverse industries and at least 18 different nationalities (see Table 3). The sample is characterized by a strong proportion of small- to medium-sized organizations in information and technology–intensive fields including media, software development, and information technology organizations. There were also a significant number of posts written by individuals who were either freelancers or members of informal teams and communities.

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Table 3.

Characteristics of Sample.

	N		N
Organization size (workers)		Industry
1-10	35	Airlines/aviation	1
11-50	27	Computer software	9
51-200	10	Construction	1
201-500	5	Consumer electronics	2
501-1,000	4	Design	2
1,001-5,000	1	E-learning	1
10,001+	1	Education	2
Individual/team	15	Event services	1
Not available	2	Financial services	2
Total	100	Higher education	1
		Industrial automation	1
Nationality		Information technology and services	17
Australia	3	Internet	25
Austria	1	Management consulting	1
Canada	5	Marketing and advertising	10
Denmark	1	Newspaper	1
France	1	Newspapers	5
Germany	1	Online media	14
India	2	Public relations and communications	2
Ireland	1	Publishing	1
Israel	1	Retail	1
Italy	1	Total	100
Netherlands	2
New Zealand	3
Poland	1
South Africa	1
Spain	2
Switzerland	3
United Kingdom	14
United States	51
Not available	6
Total	100

Content Analysis

Recent studies in business and professional communication have applied quantitative and qualitative content analysis to the study of emergent communication practices and open data sets available on the Internet (Gallagher & Savage, 2015; Graham & Wright, 2014; Hastings & Payne, 2013; Vaast & Kaganer, 2013). Content analysis is a flexible method for analyzing textual or visual data; it is characterized by a systematic approach to condensing data into observable concepts, categories, or themes (Hsieh & Shannon, 2005). In deductive content analysis, existing literature is used to define a preliminary structure and set of analytical codes for analysis. These codes may be supplemented by additional inductive codes developed through the analysis process (Elo & Kyngäs, 2008). Content analysis may include both quantitative and qualitative results.

In this study, blog posts were collected, organized, and coded with both deductive and inductive codes using the Dedoose qualitative and mixed-methods research application. Basic quantitative data on coding frequency were collected to establish the comparative relevance and importance of the coding categories. However, codes were primarily used to establish sensitizing categories that enabled qualitative analysis of the sample. Individual posts were divided into excerpts based on topical coherence and an inclusive coding strategy meant each excerpt could receive multiple codes. In the first stage of the analysis, the data were coded based on the deductive codes established in the literature review of social collaboration and media affordances (see Table 1) and based on the themes identified as relevant to the research questions (see Table 2). During this initial analysis, additional inductive codes were developed based on patterns and themes discovered in the data. In the second stage, these inductive codes were operationalized and organized into a supplementary coding framework and the entire sample was recoded (see Table 4). Finally, a third complete review of all codes was used to ensure consistency and accuracy of the coding. During this final review, code co-occurrence data were also reviewed to ensure the conceptual and operational distinctness of the codes.

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Table 4.

Inductive Categories for Social Collaboration Practices.

Category	Operationalization
Reasons for adoption
Virtual collaboration	Communication and collaboration in virtual environment to support teams, flexible working, and asynchronous participation
Openness and transparency	Promotion of organizational values of openness and transparency to support a culture of trust and shared responsibility
Interoperability with external services	Requirements for integrations with specific technologies and/or preference for working with “ecosystems” or “constellations” of technologies and services
Centralizing communication and information	Consolidating communication and information flows in a central dashboard including internal communication and essential external sources
Recommendations and/or popularity	Recommendations early adopters and internal or external colleagues or interest based on popularity and media exposure
Media preferences
E-mail	Comparisons of e-mail and team communication platforms (TCPs)
Internet chat relay (IRC)	Comparisons of IRC and TCPs
Instant messaging (IM)	Comparisons of IM and TCPs
Collaboration
Leadership awareness	Addressing the benefits of enhanced context awareness for leadership and management functions

Rationales for Adoption

The analysis revealed that a number of factors play a role in the adoption and use of TCPs. One of the most significant themes, cited by 34% of posts in the sample, was that organizations and users adopted TCPs to better support virtual collaboration for both virtual teams and flexible working styles. In general, the communication visibility enabled by TCPs was argued to bridge gaps between virtual teams and create a stronger sense of social engagement. Perceived benefits and specific practices for virtual collaboration are discussed in more depth in the upcoming Social Engagement section. Additional rationales cited for adopting TCPs included the desire to promote organizational openness and transparency (19%), the need for interoperability with specific external services (17%), the benefits of centralizing internal communication and information (13%), and interest based on recommendations from others or the popularity of the service (4%).

Yet the most cited reason for adopting TCPs was dissatisfaction with other media options, especially e-mail (see Table 8). In fact, 43% of the posts in the sample discussed the advantages of replacing e-mail with TCPs for organizational and team communication. The common theme was that TCPs supported greater productivity based on several key differences. First, e-mail was seen as impeding knowledge sharing and timely discovery of information. Multiple posts suggested that important organizational information is often hidden in individual users’ inboxes and that group conversations often include too many or too few participants. Users also described e-mail as an inefficient medium for the type of brief, synchronous messages that characterize routine team communication. E-mail messaging structures were argued to add extraneous information with group discussions in e-mail chains becoming unwieldy and difficult to follow. These factors exacerbate the challenges of collaboration, especially for new team members who do not have access to the original messages. Furthermore, it was noted that the volume of routine internal e-mail is a distraction from important e-mails with external communication partners including clients, customers, and business partners. Several users argued that compartmentalizing communication—by reserving e-mail for external communication—enhanced focus for internal work tasks and performance in communication with external partners.

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Table 8.

Examples of Frustrations With E-Mail.

Knowledge management	“We made a conscious effort for email not to become a repository for threads of ‘CC conversations’ and historic information that we’d experienced in previous businesses, so needed a solution.”
	“I’ve spent so many hours trailing through old messages looking for telephone numbers, small details or important dates. Moving my volunteers to Slack means searching for any detail quickly and easily.”
Social collaboration	“One of the biggest problems I’ve had with email is [large teams]. . . . Every email from the team gets diluted with every response. Then if someone throws in a different subject or emails a new subject line, the whole email goes into a tail spin.”
	“The problem with email is that at the very core—it can only benefit the people who it’s sent to. Services like Slack create streams of conversation that team members can dip into and read to stay informed.”
	“And that new guy who just started? He doesn’t have access to those vital email chains so he has no idea what’s going on. Ramping up new hires takes weeks or sometimes months because of this problem.”
Attention allocation	“If you’re like me you probably receive hundreds of emails a day. . . . It’s easy to miss something.”
	“With Slack, your inbox will shed itself of clutter — making important emails from clients and colleagues pop.”
	“Internal and external communication often have a materially different cognitive workload per email. Internal communication should have quick turn arounds, and flow freely. External communication should be polished and thorough. Teams shouldn’t handle quick 1-line responses to their team in the same email session as paragraph responses to 3rd parties.”
	“It is quicker to scan through a feed then scan through emails. A chat stream enables quick scrolling through a discussion. Email threading requires processing each message and has a lot of meta text that clutters the UI. This makes catching up much faster.”

Note. UI = user interface; CC = carbon copy.

Several other media were discussed as potential alternatives. Users described IM as too ephemeral and noted that important information is left hidden in communication between individuals. Internet chat relay was described as too technical for many users and lacking in media-sharing features. Interestingly, SNPs were not cited as an alternative or point of comparison by any of the practitioners in the sample. This suggests that for many professionals SNPs are not seen as an appropriate ESM for routine team and internal organizational communication.

Media Capabilities

Beyond the core messaging functionality, the most frequently mentioned capabilities were integrations (61%), automations (14%), and bots (15%; see Table 6). Most prominently, users valued integrations for established third-party file sharing, productivity, project management, and videoconferencing services. Organizations also used integrations to receive notifications from external ICTs. For example, media teams integrated web and social media feeds to receive notifications for new publications and social media mentions; and web developers integrated notifications from external ICTs for new software releases, customer service requests, bug reports, and server or system errors.

Many organizations in the sample also used TCPs’ built-in bots—a simple interface for performing repetitive tasks—and open APIs to develop complex automations. One of the benefits of this extensibility is that organizations have self-developed and shared recipes for bots and automations and have contributed to the open development of tools, extensions, and plug-ins for TCPs. For example, one organization programmed a bot to request a status update from each team member every morning and then report the response to a shared channel. Another organization used a combination of bots and APIs to create a “Foodbot” that requests lunch orders from team members though the TCP and then submits them through a custom-coded interface with a food service mobile application for delivery. Although automations and bots require technical knowledge to develop, they can be used to support nontechnical users. For example, the Slack service has created a “Slackbot” that engages new users in interactive dialogue to provide an orientation and support setting up initial account details and service integrations.

Knowledge Sharing

In discussing the media capabilities and productivity benefits of using TCPs, users emphasized the knowledge-sharing affordances of centralized, integrated communication visibility (see Table 9). Knowledge sharing and management is supported by both the search feature and groups and channels functionality. Users praised the utility of the search function including the full indexing of shared files on the Slack platform. The ability to organize conversation threads into public groups and channels that could serve different functions was also cited as a key to knowledge management. The typical approach employed by organizations in the study included dedicated channels for knowledge conversations, specific projects and teams, and social engagement. In addition to directing attention to organizational priorities, users noted that compartmentalization made it easier to contribute and to find useful information. Furthermore, whether posted manually by team members or automatically through integrations, any piece of information is more likely to be encountered, discussed, and used effectively when integrated into the flow of routine team and organizational communication.

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Table 9.

Examples of Knowledge Benefits of Team Communication Platforms.

Proactive knowledge aggregation	“Everyone posts links to this great content in the shared . . . channel. This authentically curated channel is our highest-quality source of content. Slack keeps this content deluge organized. Even better, Slack gives us a place to discuss this content internally.”
	“Slack is an almost perfect platform to find out what a team is reading, valuing and sharing. It’s the best way I know to curate the curiosity and intelligence of a team.”
	“For instance. . . . Marketing can create “websites” and “social media” channels and invite people from other departments who are on the “websites” or “social media” team to join. . . . The channel can remain public with activities available to everyone in the marketing department or the entire firm: a new level of transparency and domain knowledge.”
Recombinant idea generation	“One of my favorite channels is a group called #Headlines-and-Framing. Any editor or writer can pop into the channel, offer the headline ideas they’re working through, and ask who has feedback. There are always people who have a few moments to hang out and workshop a line.”
	“Let’s not bury the lede [sic]: this was 100% a side project for all involved, and came together because our teams have easy and open communication with each other constantly.”
Vicarious learning	“Whether we realize it or not, we learn and retain information by overhearing conversations. . . . Public channels within a Slack team allow for anyone who is relevant to the conversation to listen and observe communication being exchanged even if it doesn’t directly apply to them. When people overhear conversations they’re able to catalog insights and apply them in many beneficial ways.”
	“I hear it all the time in the room, that traders have learned more in a month there then they have in years, trading by themselves.”

In particular, organizations were described as using knowledge-specific channels to further proactive knowledge aggregation (17%) and collaborative learning. Many created channels to host strategic conversations. For example, one organization created a channel that integrated news feeds about their primary competitors. Through this channel, members of the organization contributed to discussion, analysis, and strategic planning based on industry trends. Similar channels used by other organizations addressed a range of topics: developing ideas for new products, services, or for promoting organizational growth; evaluating a new logo or advertising campaign; and, providing employee feedback and input for the CEO or leadership team. Channels were also used to support collaborative learning activities similar to those that would occur in a virtual community of practice including sharing and discussion of information related to specific disciplines, expertise, or methods. In web development teams, channels could be used to monitor and discuss news and changes in important industry specifications and/or partner platforms and APIs. In fact, a significant number of posts described using TCPs to support informal and formal learning communities for professionals in higher education, secondary education, journalism, and web development. In several cases, TCPs were used to support cross-organizational collaborations such as a research project developed by a team of scientists at different institutions or an open source software project that included contributors from multiple organizations and the public.

There was also support for the argument that communication visibility supports both recombinant idea generation (15%) and vicarious learning (12%). Recombinant idea generation was supported both by knowledge discussions and collaborative processes. Several media organizations reported creating channels that hosted combinations of web and social media feeds and manually shared stories to serve as inspiration for new articles and projects. Journalists described using channels for impromptu brainstorming sessions with available colleagues. Web development professionals shared difficult problems and received help in generating programming solutions. In terms of vicarious learning, users cited diverse examples of highly contextualized learning that depended on observations of team communication and collaborative workflows. In particular, vicarious learning was correlated with collaboration affordances including context awareness and boundary work that will be discussed shortly. Finally, users reported that observation of situated work practices and collaboration led to the development of metaknowledge about “who knows what and who knows who” (6%).

Social Engagement

Although previous research has emphasized the social networking benefits of ESM and communication visibility, there has been limited discussion of the positive role of play and fun in virtual environments (Huy & Shipilov, 2012). This theme was prominent in user discussions of social engagement in TCPs (17%). In particular, users discussed their appreciation for the engaging and “fun” elements of the Slack interface including the use of emoji, animated GIFs, and the humorous and lighthearted tone of interactions with the “Slackbot” (see Table 10). Several organizations reported creating dedicated channels for social engagement. These channels could be used for casual conversation, posting funny pictures, sharing music, or sharing picture of families and pets. Additionally, these types of social engagement were seen as crucial to maintaining energy and morale, developing personal relationships, and building team commitment.

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Table 10.

Examples of Social Benefits of Team Communication Platforms.

Social engagement	“Being able to share fun, funny moments and things of interest on Slack fosters a company-wide sense of community throughout the day. It can be hard to form one-on-one relationships in an open-layout office where group conversation prevails, especially at a startup where everyone is totally engrossed in their work.”
	“From #Cat Channels to #Music and #inspiration, we have an outlet to share ideas and inspiration. Sometimes you’ve got to take a break and have a good laugh.”
Social cohesion	“Slack is one of the threads that holds our internationally distributed teams together. We use it to be incredibly productive and transparent, but also to foster team-building and camaraderie with remote colleagues.”
Virtual collaboration	“We have a remote and global team. Slack helps shrink the time zones and give us a productive, family-like feel most startups can only hope to achieve. We’ll even force ourselves to use it even if we’re sitting right next to each other so everyone on the team (regardless of location) feels included in conversations.”
	“Communicating across 12 hours of time zones is challenging. But with Slack these distances seem shorter due to the immediacy of communications, the ability for all relevant team members to huddle and collaborate instantly. . . . An additional benefit is that employees across multiple sites feel part of a larger company and ‘in the game’ as opposed to an outpost team on their own.”

As already mentioned, users cited the value of TCPs for addressing the challenges of virtual teams (34%). In particular, users emphasized that the communication visibility of TCPs enabled information symmetry across team members in different locations. Multiple users discussed developing an organizational commitment to using TCPs for even collocated interactions in order to document the discussion for remote collaborators. Another unexpected finding was that multiple users described the benefits of TCPs for communication in open office environments. One user noted that even though his teams were located in the same office, they frequently held meetings via chat in the TCP environment to avoid ambient noise and to ensure that meeting notes would be fully captured and available for future reference. Other users also described the benefits for flexible working in which employees may spend significant amounts for time working from outside the office, whether at home or from public spaces like coffee shops. Overall, analysis of the sample revealed patterns of behavior based on cultivating a balance of informal intimacy and disciplined communication visibility to enable social cohesion and productivity for virtual and flexible working teams, respectively.

In addition to enhancing social engagement and enabling virtual collaboration, users argued that the increased openness and transparency of communication in TCP environments fostered social cohesion for the entire organization (26%).

Collaboration

The communication visibility afforded by TCPs also had direct impacts on collaboration processes. Users noted that communication visibility—especially when supported by compartmentalization of groups, projects, and topics—enabled more distributed and self-organized styles of collaboration (see Table 11). For example, an owner of a construction company reported that creating an independent channel for each job site drastically reduced the amount of time his workers spent on communication for coordination among its various teams. This enabled a greater focus on collaboration and problem solving. Across the posts in the sample, there was a consistent correlation of greater context awareness (37%) leading to reduced levels of communication for coordination and increased levels of collaborative communication. The documentation of routine communication and decision making for all team members meant that it was less necessary to “push” information updates and the routine information requests could often be replaced with information searches and “pulled” directly from the TCP. Routine communication for coordination could be avoided as redundant work (28%), which created space for a greater emphasis on collaborative discussion and metavoicing (34%). Users frequently described the benefits of receiving not just timely responses to questions but direct and detailed feedback and team support for decision making.

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Table 11.

Examples of Collaboration Benefits of Team Communication Platforms.

Boundary work	“We have a Slack room connected directly to WordPress VIP, so every time we make a change . . . the staff is notified. This has been a real boon for us because writers and producers . . . start to think about how technology can simplify their workflow, or make the site better for readers. Features like this came directly from our editorial team, and so have hundreds of micro changes.”
Context awareness	“It helps our team if everyone is made aware of what’s going on in all sides of the business in order to either interject, ask a question, or for individuals to plan their own work around what was being done elsewhere.”
	“Thanks to Slack now all of our staff can easily share client and internal updates and feel involved. When clients contact us it’s easy for team members to be aware of any updates that affect them.”
	“I work remotely and now have access to conversations I was not previously privy to. I’m also aware of important decisions being made in the company via project-based channels I’m not directly involved with but that may impact what I’m doing.”
	“This is great especially when you’re ‘on boarding’ a new team member. Everything and anything that has to do with the project is in-line and it’s easier to get the new member up to speed.”
Generative role taking	“What makes Slack so powerful is that it allows for individual initiative while at the same time providing the user with constant collaborative feedback and support.”
	“But the messiness is mostly an advantage. It helps people figure out, over time, the way in which they want to organize themselves.”
Flexible routines and collaborative workflows	“What sets Slack apart from other chat and IM tools, though, is the integration between it and other services. For example, we pipe in all the responses to our Twitter posts, so that instead of having to constantly keep an eye on TweetDeck, we can see what people are saying to us in Slack. Sometimes, we will then discuss what the right kind of response will be to a post—and whether we should retweet it to our followers.”
	“Each time we deploy code to either staging or production servers, developers and clients are notified. . . . This saves us ages! As long as everything goes smoothly, developers don’t have to wait to check a build state. . . . If something fails, the notification is pushed as a Slack chat message with a direct link to the build.”
Leadership awareness	“It has opened up the communications between senior management and the rest of the company. I immediately got much more visibility into the pulse of the company—who’s doing what, employee sentiment, operational issues that previously were hidden, etc. And my employees have much more visibility into what I’m up to, what I care about, and what’s happening with the company.”
	“Check-in meetings are great, email updates are helpful, but nothing provides a clearer window into the progress toward a goal than reading through a project discussion on Slack. . . . Very quickly, you’ll see what’s challenging the team, what the products (documents, designs, whatever) they’re creating look like, and how the team feels about the work. And, wherever necessary, you can jump in to provide guidance and help.”

TCPs amplified the mutually reinforcing effects of context awareness for boundary work (11%) and generative role taking (18%) to support greater levels of self-initiative and to make it easier and more likely for individuals to contribute to the work of others. In terms of boundary awareness, many organizations developed workflows and channels to create overlap between different functions or disciplines. These shared collaborative spaces included both knowledge conversations and routine workflows. One user noted that this type of boundary work led to both knowledge effects—including vicarious learning that helped develop greater empathy and more holistic perspectives across functions—and to the creation of numerous highly specific improvements to their products and services.

Within teams, context awareness facilitated distributed work and shared responsibility. Multiple users described the advantages of shared awareness of communication with clients and partners. Typically, a single individual may be the primary liaison for an account, client, or business partner to ensure continuity and responsiveness. Yet, if that individual is unavailable, communication with the client and advocacy for their needs can be compromised. Context awareness allows all team members to share responsibility and to respond to needs more quickly while maintaining continuity and consistency. In fact, in-depth context awareness supported generative role taking for a wide range of activities including responding to communication, solving problems, and completing tasks. Communication visibility and context awareness also supported training or “on boarding” new team members or cross-functional collaborators. Since all recent activity and team materials are available in a shared channel, even newcomers are able to contribute more readily. This affordance was described as especially crucial by leaders of organizations that employed freelance workers, needed to scale to meet the demands of specific projects, or were experiencing rapid growth.

In TCP-based working environments, generative role taking can also extend to the self-organization of groups, channels, and collaborative workflows. Many user posts described the way their organization gradually discovered and refined an optimal organization of channels, groups, and integrations to support flexible routines and collaborative workflows (31%). In a typical example, a software company created a channel that integrated notifications from an external customer relationship management service. The team for this channel comprised both customer service representatives and software programmers with shared responsibility for using their combined expertise to discuss problems, making decisions, and respond to these customer messages. Collaborative discussion and decision making with shared responsibility ensured thoughtful and rapid responses even if specific individuals were unavailable. The user noted that this process was a dramatic improvement over previous practices in which customer issues were shared with a single programming team representative in individual e-mails. Another software development team developed a process in which Slack supported automated code deployment, reporting, and error notifications including routing of notifications to appropriate team members and clients. In another example, an online media organization developed workflows and integrations for channels dedicated to breaking news, real-time site analytics, and the editorial process. In one news organization, Slack was used to support a fast-paced collaborative workflow for “live tweeting” a news event that included integrated social media feeds and contributions of multiple writers, editors, and web programmers. These examples illustrate the essential characteristics of TCP supported workflows including: integrated information flows from external sources and ICTs; reduced coordination and increased collaboration communication; context awareness and boundary work; and shared responsibility and generative role taking.

Several organizations extended this style of open collaboration even further by adding clients or other external business partners as guests to specific groups or channels. One leader for a software development team noted that despite some initial concerns, providing guest access to clients led to very positive outcomes. His team found that through shared communication visibility, clients developed greater empathy and understanding for the feasibility of their requests and were able to contribute valuable and timely feedback. Multiple organizations described building stronger and more productive partnerships with clients and external partners through collaboration in TCP environments.

Even while TCPs support more decentralized and self-organized workflows, these environments also offered enhanced leadership awareness (17%) for managers and organizational leaders. One manager noted that context awareness can largely replace the “check-in” or status update meeting that is a regular feature of many organizations. He argued that the rich detail and context awareness of TCPs provide managers with unparalleled access and perspective on work processes, products, and employee morale. Several leaders noted the TCPs allowed them to observe team progress and offer targeted interventions to solve problems and improve processes without “micromanaging” or inhibiting individual team members’ self-initiative. Leaders of larger organizations also appreciated the benefits of communication visibility. Channels dedicated to strategic knowledge development promoted employee feedback, supported greater awareness of organizational morale, and vertical communication. Finally, the centralization of communication and visual organization of organizational activities enables a macro view of how human resources and attention are being allocated.

Attention Allocation

Enhanced productivity due to shifting routine internal and team communication from e-mail to TCPs was one of the most consistent themes across all posts in the sample; this theme was raised in references to e-mail (43%), context awareness (37%), and avoiding redundant work (28%). Users noted that communication visibility, group and channel organization, search function, and streamlined messaging interface all contributed to quicker and more efficient routine communication. Additionally, users found greater levels of context awareness helped reduce the need and overall volume of communication for coordination. Similarly, multiple organizations described 80% to 90% reductions in the volume of internal e-mails. Organizations also used TCPs to replace traditional meetings, including face-to-face and teleconferencing modalities. Meetings were both less necessary—with context awareness replacing “check-in” meetings—and were more frequently held via synchronous, collaborative chat discussions. As noted previously, many teams prioritized the communication visibility offered by TCP-based discussions. A particularly interesting finding is that several users discussed the benefits of mixed synchronicity for team meetings and discussions. These users described scenarios in which several team members would engage in a synchronous chat meeting, and then later in the day other team members, who had not been available, would not only review the discussion but also contribute to it after the fact. This example illustrates the way that TCP use led to emergent work routines and communication behaviors that prioritized communication visibility and flexibility for asynchronous participation that even replaced entrenched communication genres such as team e-mail and face-to-face meetings.

The increased communication visibility and context awareness created by shifting organizational and team communication from e-mail and meetings into the groups and channels of a TCP promoted and necessitated the development of strategies for managing attention allocation (see Table 12). In seeking to balance the demands of multitasking and multicommunication in TCP environments, three affordances proved especially crucial for managing attention: compartmentalization (38%), engagement and presence (29%), and synchronicity (26%). At the most basic level, effective compartmentalization was based on the effective division of communication into groups, projects, and topics to enable focus switching and facilitate referencing organizational knowledge. Several posts noted that whereas teams tended to discuss “everything all at once” in e-mail chains, most users and teams quickly adapted to directing questions, sharing ideas, and conducting discussion in appropriate groups or channels in TCPs. This helped streamline activity and maintain focus in individual groups and channels. Prioritization and focus were also enabled by the flexibility of public, private, and individual messaging options. Many organizations developed informal guidelines and best practices for which activities to conduct publicly versus privately. Multiple posts also reported frequently creating new groups or channels to support ad hoc groups and special projects without distracting a larger team. Prioritization and focus were also supported by the ability to archive channels and groups that were no longer active.

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Table 12.

Examples of Attention Allocation Benefits of Team Communication Platforms.

Engagement and presence	“Slack is much better for controlling noise, especially in high volume accounts. You can control notification on a per-channel basis, and even disable notifications entirely for a channel.”
	“We encourage the staff to disable Slack notifications, particularly for groups. . . . Concealing notifications also adds a nice asynchronous feel to the Slack workflow, which helps us slow down and make more deliberate decisions. . . . People can click into it when they want to check it, instead of it being this constant presence.”
Compartmentalization	“A way we’ve overcome . . . [overload]—and become more organized—is by being more granular with our channels. . . . The more specific our rooms are, the easier it is to make conversations productive and reference previous discussions.”
	“The ability to create invite only groups on the fly between the team has also proved a useful asset in preparing for events or knowledge sharing between locations without disrupting the wider team.”
	“Slack enables users to archive channels and private groups. This allows teams to keep communication clear of clutter while still having the content available for later reference.”
Synchronicity	“The cool thing about Slack is that it’s simultaneously synchronous and asynchronous. You can get immediate feedback on something, but if someone comes into the room later, they might be able to add something, whereas if you didn’t go to a [physical] meeting, you’re not going to be able to contribute later.”
	“It compresses a lot of the stuff you might otherwise do in meetings into a Slack channel, so that information is visible to everyone it should be visible to, and it saves people time: They don’t necessarily have to meet but can stay updated on a project’s status.”

Self-organization and generative role taking were especially crucial to effective compartmentalization. Users of TCPs can take initiative for creating or revising groups and channels structures and can self-subscribe or follow groups and channels. This was important because it allowed individual users and teams to negotiate and “right-size” group membership and allowed variable levels of participation. Flexible participation and group membership were also highly correlated with affordances for managing engagement and presence. TCPs offer highly flexible options for managing attention allocation based on capabilities for triggered attending (15%). Individual users are able to manage notifications for groups and channels in order to prioritize communication central to their responsibilities. A typical user may regularly monitor and receive notifications for several important groups and channels, while occasionally browsing secondary groups and channels that are of less operational importance, but still valuable for context awareness and boundary work. Additional flexibility is supported by TCP capabilities for mentions. Mentions allow a user to be sent a notification by including their username in a message. This way individuals can manage their own levels of engagement and presence in particular channels, but can also be sent a request for “on-demand” participation by others through mentions. The extreme flexibility and customization of engagement and triggered attending means that usage patterns of these media capabilities are subject to social negotiation and norming and may vary widely across organizations. For example, one organization encouraged employees to disable notifications entirely. Another organization found that its employees were so responsive to notifications and mentions that it had to recommend deleting the TCP application from their mobile devices while on vacation.

The final key affordance for TCPs for attention allocation relates to media synchronicity and multimodality. TCP-based work routines and communication behaviors consistently prioritized a blended approach to synchronous and asynchronous communication. In fact, users reported highly flexible and variable uses of media synchronicity. A full spectrum would include not only asynchronous and synchronous messaging but also videoconferencing, screensharing, and collaborative work in virtual documents or other ICTs via integrations. As previously discussed, the persistence of synchronous messaging and recorded teleconferences enables subsequent asynchronous contributions and ongoing group discussion over time.

A very interesting feature of emergent user practices is the way the synchronicity levels are flexibly scaled as needed by the team. In a typical example, an event might trigger an asynchronous discussion between two members, then escalate to a synchronous discussion with multiple team members, and then further escalate to a videoconferencing meeting as necessary. Multiple posts described relying on asynchronous messaging to support routine activity and multitasking, and shifting to synchronous messaging and/or teleconferencing to solve urgent problems and to make important decisions. It is worth noting that this practitioner behavior correlates with previously discussed research showing that low media synchronicity supports multitasking, while high synchronicity supports timely completion of individual projects and tasks.

Flexible synchronicity is especially useful for supporting rapid team responses to crisis events. For example, one media organization reported facing a crisis when an article hosted on their website went viral. This was discovered when, after normal working hours, a programmer received a notification via integration that their server was experiencing increased demand. He communicated this to a team leader who cross-referenced this activity with social media mentions of the story as reported in another TCP channel. Through the TCP environment, other team members were quickly mobilized: Programmers monitored Internet traffic and adjusted server capacity to meet demand; media specialists engaged story commenters and social media discussions in real time, and writers developed a follow-up story to capitalize on the public attention. Across all of this activity, the TCP environment was crucial to rapid and flexible coordination including a full range of synchronous and multimedia communication. While this level of rapid response may not be typical, flexible scaling of media synchronicity was one of the most significant and unique aspects of emergent communication and collaboration behaviors described across all organizations and users in the sample.

Challenges and Adaptive Behaviors

Though posts in the sample focused primarily on the benefits and affordances of TCPs, a number of significant challenges and examples of drawbacks were discussed as well. One extremely crucial issue is the importance of uniform adoption of the TCP across the organization. The benefits of communication visibility and capabilities for highly synchronous communication depend on the participation and engagement of all members of the organization. Furthermore, one user noted that a lack of complete adoption would inhibit productivity by making it necessary to manage internal communication across both TCPs and e-mail or other media. Most posts in this sample described nearly immediate and complete adoption of the platform with high levels of organizational support overall. In large organizations, TCPs were often adopted initially by specific teams and departments and then gradually spread to additional groups. Several posts also discussed concerns about controlling information (3%) and managing confidential information through the appropriate use of private versus public channels. As TCP use spreads beyond early adopters and enthusiasts, the issues of adoption, engagement, and management of confidential or proprietary information may prove even more significant.

The other most frequently cited challenge was information overload (7%). Multiple users noted that the sheer volume of messages, groups, and channels could be intimidating and even overwhelming. Demographics and generational dynamics could contribute to this issue. One user noted that as an older manager of younger “millennials,” he found it difficult to keep up with his teams’ levels of communication. He noted that important information could become “buried” by subsequent discussion. This concern was echoed by a user who noted that important decisions could be “lost in the shuffle” of ongoing conversations. Demands on attention were also concern of some users. One user described closing his TCP application for focused work sessions. Others described becoming “addicted” to engaging in TCP communication even after work hours or while on vacation. The always-on demands of TCPs could have negative impacts on employee work-life balance. Furthermore, while many posts cited the value of TCPs for social engagement and as a source of productivity-enhancing fun, others noted that social content could become a distraction from work activity. Similarly, one post reported example of context collapse (3%) in which social conflict was created by a teams’ use of inappropriate humor in public channel.

Overall, most posts in the sample discussed overcoming these challenges through effective use of the positive affordances of TCPs. For example, information overload was typically addressed through the affordances of compartmentalization, triggered attending, and flexible synchronicity. Multiple organizations supplemented TPCs by integrating a project management service in order to ensure clear documentation and accountability for decision making and project deliverables. Time management and social conflicts were addressed through a combination of adaptive work routines and social norming. Finally, several users also noted that most of these challenges are endemic to team and organizational communication using any technology. However, it is clear that balancing the benefits and drawbacks of multitasking and multicommunication in TCPs will be a crucial issue for all types of users and organizations.

Communication Visibility and Flexible Routines

The theory of communication visibility was developed by Leonardi (2014) to account for the affordances enabled by ESM technologies such as SNPs. The affordances described by this theory emphasize the knowledge sharing and social networking functions that are characteristic of SNPs. The unique opportunity offered by TCPs is that they integrate communication visibility with capabilities for routine team communication and ICT-based workflows. The most direct effect is that the imbrication of communication visibility and collaborative workflows enhances the role of knowledge creation, collaborative deliberation, and self-reflection both for and in work:

A multimodal polysynchronous setting enables such self-questioning to be more than a merely retrospective exercise, since it affords participants more possibilities of encountering various degrees of dialogically generated ‘strangeness’ in real time, thus requiring reflection in (not merely on) action. (Baralou & Tsoukas, 2015, p. 614)

In this sense, as knowledge sharing becomes integrated more directly into collaborative work processes, it thereby creates new opportunities for reflective understanding that informs thoughtful action, problem solving, and innovation. However, a second and equally important aspect of this shift is that knowledge creation in virtual contexts is amplified and extended through dialogical interactions with not just real and invisible others but also virtual epistemic objects including system events and information flows (Baralou & Tsoukas, 2015). The most radical innovation of TCPs is the way that these technologies extend the effective capacities of organizations, teams, and individuals through automation and integration of diverse external services.

While the various functions of knowledge sharing, social connectivity, team communication, and ICT-based workflows have been supported by independent technologies for some time, the centralization and flexible coordination of these functions through TCPs enables unprecedented opportunities for social collaboration. Before TCPs, the type of workflows described in this study could only be achieved through the development of disciplined collaborative procedures that manually coordinated processes and communicated information across multiple technological platforms, knowledge sets, and disciplinary or departmental contexts. More often than not, previous research has found that collaborative workflows are not highly disciplined but rather rely on work-arounds and communication through fragile, informal social networks with individual team members facilitating crucial steps in work processes and acting as the sole communication node between organizational boundaries (Cross et al., 2000). Although the extreme flexibility of TCP platforms does require the development of organization and team-specific routines and workflows, the key difference is that these routines can be integrated, automated, and become native features of an organization’s collaboration and communication environment. TCPs have the potential to allow collaboration practices that were once difficult and exemplary to become normal and routine.

The model employed by TCPs is one in which organizations and users may choose among diverse third-party services dedicated to specific functions while still managing communication, collaboration, and information sharing processes from the TCP environment. It points to a model in which organizations rely on ecologies of specialized and interconnected media and ICT technologies as opposed to employing a series of all-in-one solutions. Practically speaking, this means that TCPs will gradually become not just a bundle of media capabilities but a bundle of interconnected media and information services. The unique workflows and collaborative routines developed by organizations in different industries may become quite diverse as these services and their capabilities continue to evolve. One essential area of future research will be qualitative studies that can address how adoption of TCPs changes the way teams and organizations get work done and how different organizations and industries leverage TCPs to support customized workflows that meet unique needs.

Multicommunication and Polysynchronicity

The behavioral patterns enabled by TCPs also complicate previous research on multicommunication and media synchronicity. In their seminal study, Reinsch et al. (2008) excluded group interactions and parallel conversations hosted by virtual systems in order to focus solely on conversations between individuals. However, technologies that support communication visibility—including SNPs and TCPs—enable a default communication style based precisely on group interactions and parallel conversations. In these contexts, the intensity of multicommunication is mediated by the impact of having an open-ended number of contributors for any given conversation. On one hand, communication visibility and additional communication participants may add intensity by complicating messaging contexts. On the other hand, collaborative communication also enables generative role taking in which any team member may address a question or need based on availability and/or expertise. Thus, the distributed responsibility enabled by communication visibility may support both more responsive communication and more efficient allocation of team attention.

Similarly, the granular options for organizing groups and channels leads to new opportunities for compartmentalizing conversations and topics. While the total number of conversations and topics available to an individual communicator may increase, effective compartmentalization can support more efficient focus switching and information discovery. Based on affordances for triggered attending, TCP users may also narrow their focus as needed by engaging fewer groups and channels while remaining available for on-demand or just-in-time participation in response to self-managed notifications or mentions from team members. Finally, in TPCs, communication intensity is mediated by a spectrum of scalable options for media synchronicity and modality including asynchronous messaging, synchronous messaging, screensharing, videoconferencing, and real-time virtual collaboration through ICTs. Across all of these affordances, the behavioral patterns described by TCP users are characterized by flexible and responsive approaches to multitasking, multicommunication, and attention allocation.

Reinsch et al. (2008) situated multicommunication as an extension of the earlier concept of polychronicity. Polychronicity describes the general preference for engaging in multiple tasks or events at the same time across the levels of tasks, project, and teams (Bluedorn, Kalliath, Strube, & Martin, 1999; Mohammed & Harrison, 2013). However, the emergent practices of TCP users cannot be adequately described by the concepts of multicommunication and polychronicity alone. Previous scholars have used the term polysynchronous as a general term to describe virtual contexts in which multiple channels and levels of synchronicity overlap (Baralou & Tsoukas, 2015). Based on the analysis of this study, I argue for using the term polysynchronicity as a parallel concept to polychronicity. Polysynchronicity characterizes a preference for flexible variability and dynamic scaling of communication synchronicity—the degree to which communication behavior is shared and coordinated. In technological contexts that enable polysynchronicity, multicommunication intensity would be mediated by the following factors:

More significantly, polysynchronicity would describe affordances and preferences for exercising flexible and responsive scaling across all of these dimensions. TCP users demonstrated both an awareness of the challenges of cognitive overload and the use of proactive strategies to dynamically balance the demands of attention allocation for each of these factors. Just as TCPs enable collaboration by amplifying affordances for communication visibility, TCPs also enable attention allocation by amplifying affordances for polysynchronicity.

One of the most pressing questions for future research is whether or not organizations and individuals can be effective at balancing the benefits and drawbacks of communication visibility and multicommunication in TCPs. These questions could ideally be addressed through quantitative studies correlating productivity and TCP use. Another important opportunity will be studying how overall media channel usage patterns change in organizations that adopt TCPs. This could include exploration of how TCP adoption affects the role of face-to-face communication and traditional meetings.