Business process improvement using asynchronous e-collaboration: Testing the compensatory adaptation model

Businesses find themselves caught in a “double bind”—consumed by the pressures of daily operations, but needing to rework how they operate (business process improvement) in order to maintain or obtain a competitive edge. Previous use of total quality management and business re-engineering methods burdened companies with costly face-to-face meetings with low success rates. As organizations grow and distribute operations, scheduling face-to-face meetings becomes difficult, cost-prohibitive, or nearly impossible. To overcome time and place limitations, asynchronous, Internet-based communication media may be used for e-collaboration within process improvement groups. Although little is understood about the impact of e-collaboration on these groups, especially in a natural business setting, one model which attempts to explain the success of these groups is the compensatory adaptation model.; This action research study tests the compensatory adaptation model and sheds light on a variety of contributing factors by conducting process improvement groups in two organizations: an audio-visual supply company and an educational service organization. Four groups at each site used both process improvement methodology and asynchronous e-collaboration. All participants were interviewed based on a detailed questionnaire.; The results show that asynchronous electronic communications media can be used successfully for process improvement. Perceived gains over face-to-face groups include: increased individual cognitive effort, knowledge sharing, participation, satisfaction, quality of contributions, and commitment; social cues suppression; increased interdepartmental, interlevel, and interlocational cooperation; increased adoption of a structured process, group efficiency, and focus; increased management involvement and support; and increased redesign quality and successful implementation of redesign proposals.; The results dispute theories that would indicate the necessity of face-to-face communications for a process improvement task. In attempting to explain both the negative and positive results in this context, this study contributes to filling the theoretical gap by supporting the compensatory adaptation model, which explains the interplay of the decreased naturalness of an asynchronous electronic media, increased cognitive effort, overcompensation for perceived obstacles to communication, and increased outcome quality. This study also demonstrates the use of a research framework that synthesizes the four dialectics of rigor/relevance of research, positivist/interpretive epistemology, quantitative/qualitative methods, and confirmatory/disconfirmatory evidence.