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

Stefan Stieglitz; Milad Mirbabaie; Nicholas R J Möllmann; Jannik Rzyski

doi:10.1007/s10796-021-10201-0

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

Inf Syst Front. 2022;24(3):745-770. doi: 10.1007/s10796-021-10201-0. Epub 2021 Oct 21.

Authors

Stefan Stieglitz¹, Milad Mirbabaie², Nicholas R J Möllmann¹, Jannik Rzyski¹

Affiliations

¹ Digital Communication and Transformation, University of Duisburg-Essen, Duisburg, Germany.
² Faculty of Business Administration and Economics, Paderborn University, Paderborn, Germany.

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: Organizations; Responsibility attribution; Social loafing; Virtual assistants; Virtual collaboration.