Institut für Wirtschafts- und Verwaltungsinformatik
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Moderne Instant-Messaging-Systeme als Plattform für sicherheitskritische kollaborative Anwendungen
(2010)
Many Instant Messaging (IM) systems like Skype or Spark offer extended services, e.g., file sharing, VoIP, or shared whiteboard functionality. IM applications are predominantly used for a spontaneous text-based communication for private purposes. In addition, there is a potential to use such applications in a business context. In particular, the discussion in this dissertation shows that IM systems can serve as platforms for secure collaborative applications (e.g., electronic contract negotiation, e-payment or electronic voting). On the one hand, such applications have to deal with many challenges, e.g., time constraints (an "instant" communication is desired), the integration of multiple media channels and the absence of one unifying "sphere of control" covering all participants. On the other hand, instant messaging systems provide many advantages, e.g., (i) a spontaneous and flexible usage, (ii) easy distribution of information to many participants and (iii) the availability of different channels for the tasks at hand. The original intention of these systems (spontaneous free-flowing information exchange), their modular construction, the unsupervised installation and the ability to easily transmit information over a multitude of channels raise many questions and challenges for IT security. For example, one needs to consider how to contain confidential information, how to verify the authenticity of a communication partner, or how to ensure the non-repudiation of statements. This thesis aims to design security mechanisms that allow to use IM systems as a platform for a collaboration that is both (i) spontaneous and flexible as well as (ii) secure, authentic and non-repudiable. Example applications where such collaboration platforms could be used are the electronic negotiation of contracts, electronic payments or electronic voting.
This Thesis contributes by reporting on the current state of diffusion of collaboration information technology (CIT). The investigation concludes, with a high degree of certainty, that today we have a "satisfactory" diffusion level of some level-A CITs (mostly e-Mail, distantly followed by Audio Conferencing), and a "dissatisfactory" diffusion level of higher-level CITs (i.e. those requiring significant collaboration and cooperation among users, like Meeting Support Systems, Group Decision Support Systems, etc.). The potential benefits of the latter seem to be far from fully realised due to lack of user acceptance. This conclusion has gradually developed along the research cycle " it was suggested by Empirical Study I, and tested through Empirical Studies II and III. An additional, unplanned and rather interesting, finding from this study has been the recognition of large [mostly business] reporting on numerous Web 2.0 user-community produced collaboration technologies (most of them belonging to the category of "social software") and their metamorphosis from autonomous, "bottom-up" solutions into enterprise-supported infrastructures. Another contribution of this Thesis " again suggested by Empirical Study I, and tested through Empirical Studies II and III " pertains to the "process structure" of CIT diffusion. I have found that collaboration technology has historically diffused following two distinct (interdependent but orthogonal) diffusion paths " top-down (authority-based) and bottom-up. The authority-based diffusion path seems to be characterised by efforts aimed at "imposing" technologies on employees, the primary concern being to make sure that technology seamlessly and easily integrates into the organisational IT infrastructure. On the other hand, the bottom-up diffusion trail seems to be successful. The contribution of this investigation may be summarised as threefold: 1. This investigation consolidates most of the findings to date, pertaining to CIT adoption and diffusion, which have been produced by the CIT research community. Thus, it tells a coherent story of the dynamics of the community focus and the collective wisdom gathered over a period of (at least) one decade. 2. This work offers a meaningful framework within which to analyse existing knowledge " and indeed extends that knowledge base by identifying persistent problems of collaboration technology acceptance, adoption and diffusion. These problems have been repeatedly observed in practice, though the pattern does not seem to have been recognised and internalised by the community. Many of these problems have been observed in cases of CIT use one decade ago, five years ago, three years ago, and continue to be observed today in structurally the same form despite what is unarguably "rapid technological development". This gives me reason to believe that, at least some of the persistent problems of CIT diffusion can be hypothesised as "determining factors". My contribution here is to identify these factors, discuss them in detail, and thus tackle the theme of CIT diffusion through a structured historical narrative. 3. Through my contribution (2) above, I characterise a "knowledge-action gap" in the field of CIT and illuminate a potential path through which the research community might hope to bridge this gap. The gap may be operationalised as cognitive distance between CIT "knowledge" and CIT "action".
In the last years the e-government concentrated on the administrative aspects of administrative modernisation. In the next step the e-discourses will gain in importance as an instrument of the public-friendliness and means of the e-democracy/e-participation. With growing acceptance of such e-discourses, these will fastly reach a complexity, which could not be mastered no more by the participants. Many impressions, which could be won from presence discussions, will be lacking now. Therefore the exposed thesis has the objective of the conception and the prototypical implementation of an instrument (discourse meter), by which the participants, in particular the moderators of the e-discourse, are capable to overlook the e-discourse at any time and by means of it, attain their discourse awareness. Discourse awareness of the present informs about the current action in the e-discourse and discourse awareness of the past about the past action, by which any trends become visible. The focus of the discourse awareness is located in the quantitative view of the action in the e-discourse. From the model of e-discourse, which is developed in this thesis, the questions of discourse awareness are resulting, whose concretion is the basis for the implementation of the discourse meter. The discourse sensors attached to the model of the e-discourse are recording the actions of the e-discourse, showing events of discourse, which are represented by the discourse meter in various forms of visualizations. The concept of discourse meter offers the possibility of discourse awareness relating to the present as monitoring and the discourse awareness relating to the past as query (quantitative analysis) to the moderators of the e-discourse.