Collaborating with Virtual Assistants in Organizations: Analyzing Social Loafing Tendencies and Responsibility Attribution

Stefan Stieglitz (), Milad Mirbabaie (), Nicholas R. J. Möllmann () and Jannik Rzyski ()
Additional contact information
Stefan Stieglitz: University of Duisburg-Essen
Milad Mirbabaie: Paderborn University
Nicholas R. J. Möllmann: University of Duisburg-Essen
Jannik Rzyski: University of Duisburg-Essen

Information Systems Frontiers, 2022, vol. 24, issue 3, No 4, 745-770

Abstract: Abstract Organizations increasingly introduce collaborative technologies in form of virtual assistants (VAs) to save valuable resources, especially when employees are assisted with work-related tasks. However, the effect of VAs on virtual teams and collaboration remains uncertain, particularly whether employees show social loafing (SL) tendencies, i.e., applying less effort for collective tasks compared to working alone. While extant research indicates that VAs collaboratively working in teams exert greater results, less is known about SL in virtual collaboration and how responsibility attribution alters. An online experiment with N = 102 was conducted in which participants were assisted by a VA in solving a task. The results indicate SL tendencies in virtual collaboration with VAs and that participants tend to cede responsibility to the VA. This study makes a first foray and extends the information systems (IS) literature by analyzing SL and responsibility attribution thus updates our knowledge on virtual collaboration with VAs.

Keywords: Virtual collaboration; Virtual assistants; Social loafing; Responsibility attribution; Organizations (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10796-021-10201-0 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:infosf:v:24:y:2022:i:3:d:10.1007_s10796-021-10201-0

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/journal/10796

DOI: 10.1007/s10796-021-10201-0

Access Statistics for this article

Information Systems Frontiers is currently edited by Ram Ramesh and Raghav Rao

More articles in Information Systems Frontiers from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().