Leaders' Technology Adoption in Digital Collaboration: An Affordance Perspective

As digital collaboration platforms and advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence can help large teams' work, this article examines the experiences of leaders in embracing technology for digital online collaboration. Understanding how leaders adopt technology for temporary digital knowledge co-creation on digital collaboration platforms with AI-enabled tools enables us to identify how technology adoption affects digital leadership in collaborative working processes in temporary groups. While digital leadership's impact on working has been explored in the fields of educational technologies and online customer service, amongst others, the understanding of its impact on digital knowledge co-creation on AI-supported digital collaboration platforms and affordances for leaders' rapid technology adoption remains scarce. By drawing on affordance theory and the perception of potential usages of the technologies available, I examine what digital collaboration platforms with AI-enabled tools afford for leaders of digital knowledge co-creation. For this a narrative inquiry method is employed and leaders' own perceptions of their adoption of technology is studied, thus helping to uncover the reasoning behind their technology use. Based on qualitative data generated during a four-week case study, I suggest that the adoption of technology can emerge and develop quickly among the leaders of temporary digital groups. The findings of this study reveal that collaboration technology afforded fostering transparency, communication, idea generating and innovative thinking for those in leadership roles, while limited time and lack of prior use hindered technology adoption. My study contributes to the research and practice of leaders’ technology adoption in collaborative working processes.