We ain’t tellin’.
Among the first things to consider in empirical research is to see where you can get your data from. Before sending out a survey, you need to know who to send it to. Knowing you audience is not only key to a good book, presentation, or what have you, but it is certainly a major concern in doing empirical research. In other words, and for our research on Wikis in Organizations in particular, it is crucial to cooperate with partners as early as possible.
Of course, we had our eyes on organizations before the project even officially started. Still, it is only now that we are able to talk to them about the project in a little more detail and actually see them in person, which helps a great deal convincing them to participate in research that they mostly benefit from at a later point in time.
In the first couple of meetings we had with partnering organizations, euphoria about our research is not the problem. The people in charge are genuinely interested in what we do and, of course, what we can do for them. The problem is more on the side of the business as we are met with concerns about data security and privacy issues. And we do understand these concerns. We are not out to track employee use of wikis and report them back to management. Neither are we going to publish any data without anonymizing it beforehand. These issues are part of the non-disclosure agreement that we are signing as well as part of a code of conduct for doing scientific research. And they’re just common sense to follow so that you don’t get into trouble, either with the organization or the scientific community.
Unfortunately, that also means that we’re limitted in this weblog’s first-hand reports on corporate wikis. So far, we’ve seen different usage patterns, different user roles, and much more, very exciting stuff for us as researchers, and probably and hopefully interesting stuff for you, the audience.