Information technology has radically altered corporate structures and the way work is transacted in corporate organizations. Firms are seeking to enhance their efficiency by themselves becoming more geographically dispersed and by availing of the benefits of outsourcing. Functional groups are becoming increasingly “virtual” and spatially dispersed; much of organizational interaction is now technology mediated. These trends in turn call for further technology innovations to facilitate communication and collaboration in such situations. Wiki-based systems are an emergent and promising platform for technology mediated interaction. In this study, we describe a Wiki-based system, delineate its major features, and compare it with other available communication technologies. We then examine how the use of Wiki-based systems can enhance communication and collaboration outcomes in the context of a collaborative task, requirements elicitation, chosen for this purpose since it is high value and demands intense interaction across functional domains. We present a model and develop an understanding of the manner in which specific Wiki features enhance three variables – media richness, contextual richness, and organizational memory – which in turn impact communication quality as well as requirements quality in terms of the clarity, completeness, and consistency of a requirements specification. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of our study and of possible future research in this area.
