Information and Communication Technology Enabled Collaboration: Understanding the Critical Role of Computer Collective-Efficacy

The organizational use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) presents sociotechnical challenges for organizational managers. One significant benefit of ICTs is facilitating the collaborative efforts of geographically dispersed teams of individuals with diverse skills. However, introducing ICT into these collaborative situations can compound the perceived barriers associated with these teams’ typical virtuality constraints. Conversely, ICTs can facilitate better communication and performance despite these limitations. In the current study, we build on social cognitive theory propositions underlying the concept of collective efficacy to reconceptualize and re-operationalize the computer collective-efficacy construct. Collective efficacy has seen a recent surge of interest in ICT-mediated collaborative team environments because it strongly predicts performance. Although collective efficacy shows promise in these settings, it does not reference technology and, therefore, is not well-suited for gauging the sociotechnical aspects of using ICTs for collaborative purposes. Computer collective-efficacy, however, directly references ICT-mediated teams’ abilities to utilize computer technology. Thus, researchers and practitioners should consider it an essential predictor of ICT-mediated team success. In this study, we discuss the theoretical framework, conceptualization, and operationalization of the computer collective-efficacy construct and provide a validated measure researchers can apply in future ICT-mediated collaborative research. We then conclude with significant theoretical and practical implications of this research.