From networking to collaboration : role of trust, risk and rewards in enhancing online working together relations

From the very early days of mankind people have worked together to achieve greater outcomes to meet both short and long term needs and desires. In recent times advances in mobile and other digital technologies have enabled the creation of many online applications to support such working together activities. Yet not all of these applications have succeeded. Often “collaboration” is used to indicate working together activities; but there are many types of working together relations. To better understand the essential characteristics of a successful online application to effectively support people wanting to work together we first systematically analysed related literature using inductive analysis. By combining findings in literature we were able to clearly articulate the characteristics associated with currently identifies 4 types of working together relations; Networking, Coordination, Cooperation and Collaboration. We also identified essential activities that get performed in each type of relations and factors that enabled successful working together relations in terms of trust, risk and rewards. These insights will assist to design successful online applications to support different types of working together relations