The German CIO magazine has recently realized an “IT Excellence Benchmark” and has published the most interesting resultsin German in its October edition. More than 13,000 employees from 66 companies have been interviewed and i.e. asked whether they use the following tools for collaboration:
- Wikis: 34% said “no, I don’t use them”, 22% said “don’t know”, 18% said “I’m opposed to the usage of this tool”, only 15% said “fully agree”
- Blogs/RSS-feeds: 35% said “no, I don’t use them”, 28% opted for “don’t know”, 25% are opposed to the usage of this tool, and only 5% “fully agree”
- Instant Messaging: 32% don’t use them, 25% don’t know whether their company uses IM, 23% are opponents, and just 13% “fully agree”
These findings have led the magazine to title the article with “Real communities exist only in real life”. Well. that’s certainly just half of the truth. Maybe the real reason for the low adoption of web 2.0 in companies in comparison to their large usage in a privat environment lie in the difference between the norms governing them.
I’m just reading the excellent book of Dan Ariely “Predictably Irrational” and in his chapter 4 he exactly outlines “why we are happy to do things, but not when we are paid to do them”. A study that should be realized is whether the employees of companies which think more in terms of social norms also more easily adopt the social network tools.
