Lean Collaboration Services One Click Away – Should We Stay or Should We Go?

Ability of individuals to work independent of time and place alter the optimal way of supporting core tasks of mobile workers in physical and virtual environments. Information resources are increasingly accessible to individuals, decision making power is shifting from organizations to individuals, sizes of organizations shrink, number of organizations increases and value is
increasingly generated by smaller collaborating actors in networks rather than massive individual organizations. These shifts make collaboration facilitation more complex: partnering organizations and their employees are more and more scattered which creates demand for services that connect people to collaborate physically and virtually.
Collaborative practices, such as meetings and workshops, are being arranged and managed in both physical and virtual environments. Collaboration that takes place in virtual platforms is usually considered less time-taking and more sustainable in terms of carbon footprint but often include major technical nuisances. On the other hand, face-to-face collaboration can be considered more straight forward and fruitful but getting everyone in the same meeting room at the same time can be a challenge.
Therefore, this paper explores the service potential of facilitating collaborative practices by supportive services that are manifested in virtual and physical dimensions of space. It aims to increase understanding on the literature gap between virtual and physical work environments and reflect it to literature on collaborative knowledge work. It does so by first introducing lean management approach and knowledge worker typologies. Second, it discusses results of fourteen interviews and three workshops on collaborative knowledge work practices. Third, it synthesizes the results. Fourth, it discusses the implications and limitations of the study.