An Empirical Study of Distributed Technologies Used in Collaborative Tasks at Statoil ASA

This paper presents results of a survey, related to the theoretical task-technology-fitness framework. The survey was conducted in a large Oil and Gas company in Norway, namely Statoil ASA. The task-technology-fitness framework indicates which groups of medium or technology are appropriate to choose according to the task to be performed, when collaborating with others. We have here presented the extended version of the task-technology-fitness framework, according to how Statoil ASA's employees use SMS, e-mail, instant messaging and audio (phone call), in different collaborative tasks. In total, there were 333 out of 747 respondents who participated in the survey. The results reveal that SMS and Instant Messaging are not seen as efficient or well suited communication channels for collaborative tasks. E-mail seems to be favorable among the respondents for the collaborative tasks, while audio (phone call) follows closely. The results are important in that they indicate when SMS, e-mail, instant messaging and audio (phone call) are appropriate to use. The purpose of the survey was to discover potential area of improvements for Statoil ASA