Bridging the Gap between Enterprise Content Management and Creativity: A Research Framework

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1 Bridging the Gap between Enterprise Content Management and Creativity: A Research Framework Jan vom Brocke University of Liechtenstein jan.vom.brocke@hochschule.li Stefan Seidel University of Liechtenstein stefan.seidel@hochschule.li Alexander Simons University of Liechtenstein alexander.simons@hochschule.li Abstract Enterprise content management (ECM) has emerged as a promising research area in the Information Systems (IS) discipline. According to recent works in the field, ECM may increase the consistency, availability, and traceability of content. We argue that one important aspect has dropped off the agenda the role of creativity. While the above measures are, without any doubt, highly relevant in order to pursue important business imperatives, such as time and budget, organizations must also consider the creativity and innovativeness that employees can unfold in their work processes. In this conceptual paper, we thus advocate an approach to ECM research that not only considers traditional, rather control-oriented factors, but also the impact of ECM on an organization s creativity and vice versa. We propose a research framework for ECM and creativity that is grounded in diverse literatures relating to these two concepts. 1. Introduction ECM has been defined as the strategies, tools, processes, and skills an organization needs to manage all its information assets (regardless of type) over their lifecycle [56, p. 648]. Given that many IS authors in this particular field have adopted this understanding of ECM, there seems to be a consensus that ECM is not only a set of technologies, as it is often considered in practice, but rather an organizational concept that covers multi-faceted business issues [6, 36, 61, 62]. Against this background, it appears somewhat surprising that the impact of ECM on organizational performance is commonly analyzed with regard to efficiency (e.g., reducing searching times) or availability of content (e.g., meeting reporting obligations) only. In contrast, the quality of content has scarcely been discussed in prior ECM research and, if at all, almost exclusively with regard to the consistency and accuracy of content [4]. One such example is the concept of content reuse [40, 44]. Reusing content primarily means unifying content writing [content] once and reusing it many times so that content can appear in multiple places, but resides in only one [40, p. 1274]. A product specification, for example, can be reused in various forms of advertising materials. Here, content management technologies can help organizations to improve the speed in which these materials are created and to ensure that they are kept consistent and up-to-date at any time and any place [44]. However, measuring the quality of content merely in terms of consistency and timeliness bears the risk of undervaluing other important quality measures [4]; for example, the appropriateness and novelty of content. Above any doubt, the implementation of ECM technologies provides a promising means to meet important contemporary challenges organizations are increasingly confronted with, such as reducing searching times, unifying the presentation of content, or adhering to reporting obligations. However, existing approaches to ECM, in both practice and research, often tend to (over)emphasize the role technology plays in managing content, e.g., when narrowing down collaboration to content reuse and treating content quality mainly in terms of content consistency. Consequently, one important issue appears to have dropped off the ECM research agenda: the role of creativity. While existent works on ECM highlight important capabilities regarding strategy development [40, 56], tool support, process development and deployment [62], as well as related change management [36], they tend to neglect the implications that technology has on an organization s capacity of acting creatively. However, it has been shown that organizations not only seek efficiency, but also creativity [27, 52]; creativity is the prerequisite for innovations and thus a core competitive factor in contemporary organizations. As a response, we set out to explore the mutual relationships between ECM and organizational creativity in this paper. We argue that organizations are faced with the risk of overemphasizing traditional ECM measures, such as efficiency or control, while /10 $ IEEE 1

2 turning their back on their employees creativity. We propose a bilateral research model that may guide two major streams of future research in this particular field, namely: ECM research on creativity on the one hand side and creativity-oriented research on ECM on the other hand side. Therefore, we firstly ask How does ECM impact on organizational creativity? and, secondly, How can creativity be embedded into the management of enterprise content? The remainder of this paper is structured as follows. In the next section, we describe the research background and introduce the concepts of ECM and creativity (section 2). Our explanations are grounded in several rich literatures from both fields. We then synthesize the outcomes from the literature analysis and introduce a research framework which identifies two primary research problems as well as a set of more detailed research questions that we believe deserve attention when exploring the impact of ECM on creativity and vice versa (section 3). In the discussion section (section 4), we focus on implications for both research and practice, and explore trade-offs between the seemingly contradictory objectives of control versus creativity. A guiding principle may be seen in achieving control over content while not restricting creativity at the same time. The paper concludes with a discussion of the contribution and limitations of this research (section 5). 2. Background 2.1. Enterprise Content Management This work builds upon our prior research in the field of ECM in which we conducted an in-depth literature search in the IS domain. We analyzed more than 100 of the most significant IS journals according to the consolidated list shared by the Association for Information Systems (AIS) and edited by Carol Saunders ( We also included three major IS conferences in our literature search (namely: the International and the European Conference on IS and the Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences). In addition, we conducted a backward search by reviewing the references of the articles yielded from the keyword search to not overlook other articles [64]. The full details of the literature review will be reported elsewhere; this paper only presents a brief summary of contributions we uncovered in our literature search [10, 11, 31, 36, 38, 39, 40, 42, 50, 51, 56, 57, 61, 62]. In doing so, we particularly focus on identifying common ECM objectives and drivers in order to characterize the minor role that creativity has played in ECM research so far. So as to prepare the ground for the subsequent explanations, we firstly introduce the term ECM. As the market for ECM software is booming and still about to consolidate [4, 38], it seems as if no clear consensus of what the term actually means has evolved yet [56]. As indicated, we understand ECM as the strategies, tools, processes, and skills an organization needs to manage all its information assets (regardless of type) over their lifecycle [56, p. 648]. So as to distinguish ECM from its predecessors, e.g., document management [58] or Web content management [37], we suggest to consider ECM as an integrative approach for managing the entirety of an organization s information assets [42]; examples include reports, spreadsheets, Web pages, presentations, s, word processing documents, records, invoices, images, or audio and video files [6, 36, 42, 56, 61]. That said, the term ECM not only covers content that is necessarily informational, but also non-informational assets (e.g., images or music files) [61]. Moreover, while traditional solutions for content management differ with respect to the lifecycle of content [26], ECM takes a holistic view on the content lifecycle [36, 56], reaching from capturing and managing content to retaining, storing, and delivering content [6]. As a result, ECM can perhaps be best understood as a convergence of related concepts, some of which rather tend to support individual lifecycle phases, e.g., Web content management (delivering content) or records management (retaining and storing content) [14]. As indicated in the Introduction, it is also crucial to understand that ECM is more than just software, even though many vendors would suggest that their software is a panacea [56, p. 647, 61]. Indeed, most researchers in the IS domain consider ECM as being multi-dimensional, since it is firmly rooted in the interaction of business with content, people, processes, and tools [40, p. 1274]. Serving as a foundation for crafting our research framework later in this paper, we thus distinguish between four dimensions of ECM: strategies, processes, tools, and people [40, 49, 56, 61]. Given this understanding of ECM, we now discuss the main drivers of ECM initiatives. Grounded in our review of the ECM literature we identified four main categories of ECM objectives (note that other authors have used differing classifications, e.g., [42, 56]): efficiency, availability, traceability, and consistency. As indicated, the review also showed that the role of creativity in managing enterprise content has only slightly been examined in the considered literature. 2

3 Efficiency primarily refers to cost and time savings in managing content; e.g., when reducing searching times by using well-defined metadata or material and storage cost by digitalizing paper documents [40, 56]. Increased efficiency can certainly be considered a core ECM driver: Smith and McKeen, for example, convened a focus group of knowledge workers for exploring ECM practices and conclude that its members were adamant that the only reason to do ECM was to improve outcomes [56, p. 649] (emphasis in original). Similarly, Päivärinta and Munkvold analyzed 58 rather practitioner-oriented case studies and identified cost savings in information processing and routines as an important ECM objective [42]. These authors also highlight the benefits of navigation aids [42, 56]. Increased efficiency in navigating through content and documents leads to another important ECM driver: availability. Given the ever-increasing amount of especially unstructured information captured in today s organizations, the availability of content is of growing importance. Availability is a crucial precondition for ECM as it reflects the need to create and store content in a way that enables its users to retrieve it later on. The relevance of this aspect is underpinned by the awareness that organizations spend a lot of time, money, and resources essentially creating, recreating, and re-creating the same content [44, p. 7]. This, in turn, requires robust content management systems to create, store, deliver, browse, and access heterogeneous data and awareness of the importance of metadata among content producers [36, pp. 70&76]. Moreover, availability is crucial due to the growing need for organizations to strictly meet external regulations and standards [42]. This leads to a third ECM driver: traceability. Traceability reflects that ECM solutions offer organizations a way to control every aspect of the lifecycle of information how it is created, routed, managed, accessed, and archived and thus help organizations meet strict compliance regulations [4, p. 65]. We argue that traceability, though also closely related to availability and efficiency (e.g., versioning of content or search and retrieval), is an ECM objective in its own right. Indeed, many authors consider compliance as one of the biggest drivers for ECM adoptions [4, 55, 60]. Traceability thus enables an effective organizational memory in the sense of Päivärinta and Munkvold for recording the practice, history, and transactions of the enterprise [42, p. 2]. Finally, the consistency of content can be perceived as the result of unifying content across an organization [44]. As indicated, many authors emphasize that a systematic, that is, automatic [44], approach to content reuse plays an important role here. It is our belief that this is where the concept of ECM in particular requires researchers attention. Andersen, for example, is one of the recent writers who point to the risks of defining the quality of content mainly in terms of consistency and accuracy [4]. One of her major concerns is that automatically generated documents are no longer tailored to a particular audience for a particular purpose in a particular context [4, p. 74] thus over-emphasizing information instead of people and control and regulation instead of flexibility and autonomy [4]. Indeed, the potentials of content reuse are reduced development and maintenance costs and rapid configuration as well as translation of content in particular [44]. Clark agrees that a well-designed system could produce outputs that are no less rhetorically effective than individually crafted documents, and at the same time could provide cost and time savings [12, p. 36]. Yet, he argues that it would be at least strange that the rhetorical assumptions underlying the separation of content and presentation, and reusing content respectively, are very seldom discussed [12, p. 36]. For example, in practice cutting and pasting is usually followed by editing and revising, whereas a systematic reuse of content essentially automates the copy-andpaste process (while neglecting the revision process) [12, p. 50]. Moreover, it has been found that the adoption of content management technologies may also result in a poorer communication among the content creators [4]. All this leads to the question of how far ECM technologies may thus constrain their creative potential. Or, speaking in the words of Anderson: Are ECM technologies liberating workers creativity or closing it down? [4, p. 83]. In conclusion, existent research on ECM in the IS domain highlights several important drivers that we categorized as efficiency, availability, traceability, and consistency. While we are aware that other ECM objectives are discussed in the literature, we believe that the chosen dimensions represent a level of abstraction that can accommodate other concepts. The concept of creativity, however, is, if at all, only slightly discussed in the considered literature, even though its relevance seems indisputable: Päivärinta and Munkvold, for example, mention the case of an advertising company that applies ECM systems to facilitate creative idea generation and teamwork [42]. For exploring the role that creativity plays in the context of ECM, the concept of creativity, and research thereof, are described in the following section. 3

4 2.2. Creativity Creativity is commonly associated with the generation of products, services, processes, or ideas that are both novel and appropriate [3, 66]. Research on organizational creativity has traditionally focused on individuals, groups, and organizations as the level of analysis [15]. Existent theories explain the occurrence of creativity, creative behavior, and creative products at these levels [2, 16, 24, 46, 47, 65]. For instance, at the individual level, the personality of creative persons [5, 34], cognitive abilities [25], motivation [2], and knowledge [1] have been identified as factors that impact on the creative outcome. At the group level, factors such as leadership, group composition, group structure, cohesiveness, and availability of resources have been proposed [29, 43]. With regard to the organizational level, most notably factors have been identified that impact on the organizational climate. These include the encouragement of risk taking and the legitimization of conflicts [47, 48]. Multilevel theories, such as the one proposed by Woodman et al., suggest that creativity at a higher level is a function of creativity at the lower levels [66]. In summary, existent research mainly focuses on how the creative outcome of an organization can be enhanced. As a consequence, Drazin et al. identify that scholars tend to model creativity as a discrete task, conducted by individuals or small groups who are isolated from broader organizational and occupational pressures [15, p. 289]. They also state that viewing creativity as an outcome rather than a process has led towards static models with the purpose of explaining variance of the creative outcome. Exemptions can be found in [7, 15, 19, 52], where the authors propose process-oriented models of creativity. Seidel, for example, argues that creative organizations in particular pursue both conventional (time, cost etc.) and creative process performance two often contradicting objectives [52]. As indicated by other authors [27] this holds certainly also true for those organizations that do not primarily focus on creativity but require creativity within their work processes. Such process-oriented, interactionist models have the capacity of explaining how complex processes that involve both human actors and information technologies interact over time. They thus enable researchers and practitioners to understand how the use of technology impacts on the creativity at various levels, and vice versa. The IS discipline has paid some attention to creativity. Most of the work explains how creativity can be embedded into the process of software development [32] and how information technology can be utilized in order to enhance creativity at the individual and group level [9, 35]. However, the relationships between the management of enterprise content and creativity can be framed as an under-researched IS domain Research Gap While research on ECM has primarily focused on aspects such as efficiency and control, its relationship to organizational creativity has not been investigated in depth. This has resulted in a gap between research on creativity on the one hand side and research on ECM on the other hand side. The challenge may thus be seen in bridging the gap between these two diverse literatures. This challenge appears to be twofold; the following primary research problems (RP) can be identified (compare Figure 1). Figure 1. The relationship between the two concepts We do not argue that none of the phenomena linked to creativity and ECM have been targeted by fellow researchers. For example, it has been shown that the usage of technologies that aim at providing human actors with information may have a negative impact on the creative performance [9]. With this paper we rather contribute to the discussion on ECM by systematizing challenges and research problems in the above described context. In doing so, we present a research framework that may be utilized to break down the above mentioned, rather broad research problems into more detailed research questions. 3. Research Framework 3.1. Dimensions of the Two Phenomena The research framework we propose is grounded in the above summarized literature review. By identifying major dimensions of the two phenomena being 4

5 the pivots of this paper we suggest a research agenda. Note that other researchers may have chosen different dimensions. However, we argue that the framework we propose exhibits a level of generality that can accommodate a broad range of research questions and may be further enhanced by an advanced understanding of the two phenomena of creativity and ECM. As explained earlier, ECM can be characterized by four categories that represent capability areas that organizations build in order to successfully manage enterprise content. These are tools, strategies, processes, and people. Table 1 provides an overview. Table 1. Dimensions of ECM Dimension Description Literature Tools Strategies Processes People ECM tools include technologies relating to Web content management, document management, records management, knowledge management, and content management ECM strategy development includes justifying ECM investments, identifying content, its users and user needs, their information behaviors, information audits, and implementing ECM technologies ECM process development and deployment particularly includes the implementation of content lifecycle activities The people dimension includes ECM governance, acceptance, training, and change management [12, 40, 42, 51, 56] [8, 36, 40, 56] [61, 62] [6, 36, 56] Group level factors Organizational level factors Group factors include group cohesiveness, group composition, and availability of resources Organizational factors include the legitimization of conflicts or the encouragement of risk taking, which impact on the creative climate of an organization [29, 43, 65] [47, 48, 66] In order to break down RP1, we suggest researchers to investigate the four ECM dimensions with regard to their impact on creativity at the individual level, at the group level, and at the organizational level. Similarly, in order to seek answers to RP2, researchers must investigate how creativity at various levels can be embedded into the four ECM dimensions of tools, strategies, processes, and people. Figure 2 provides an overview. It becomes noticeable that the different dimensions cannot be viewed independently. The ECM concepts of tools, strategies, processes, and people are closely interrelated. The same holds true for the different levels of organizational creativity, which is expressed in multilevel models of creativity in particular; these models recognize that organizational creativity cannot be viewed in isolation, but is a complex interplay of individuals and organizational resources [52, 66]. As reinforced by various authors [15, 52], and as has been explained in the background section, research on organizational creativity must consider factors on at least three levels, namely: individual level factors, group level factors, and organizational level factors. Table 2 provides an overview. Table 2. Levels of organizational creativity Dimension Description Literature Individual level factors Individual factors on creativity include cognitive abilities, knowledge, expertise, and motivation [1, 2, 5, 21, 25, 34, 54] Figure 2. Research framework In the following, we discuss how the rather broad research problems may be broken down into more detailed research questions. We also provide an outlook to potential research strategies that may be applied in order to seek answers to these questions. As indicated, we do not argue that no research has been conducted. Yet, a main challenge may be seen in synthesizing different strands of literature in order to provide theories that offer ample answers to those research questions that emerge at the borderline between ECM and creativity. 5

6 3.2. Research Questions with Regard to RP1 With regard to RP1, we suggest researchers to seek answers to the impact of ECM on organizational creativity. As indicated, the use of technology can impact creativity at various levels. Consequently, the following research question is proposed: How does the use of ECM tools impact on the creative performance of individuals/groups/organizations? It is anticipated that attempts to seek answers to this research question will involve well-known concepts at different levels, including cognitive abilities, motivation, and knowledge as well as factors such as group cohesiveness or group composition. It can further be assumed that this research question will particularly require the researcher to understand the individual capabilities of the involved group members, as research has shown that baseline creativity of involved people affects the impact that knowledge reuse can have onto the creative performance [9]. Potential strategies of inquiry include experiments [17] and surveys [20]. Another potential research question focuses on the underlying ECM processes: What are the stages of ECM processes that impact on the creative performance of individuals/groups/organizations? While the former research question may be answered by a functionalist model with the creative outcome as the dependent variable, this research question may require researchers to develop a processual model that accounts for involved interactions in particular. Such models are capable of providing rich insight into the reciprocal relationships between human actors and technology [63]. Potential strategies of inquiry include case study research [63, 67], action research [13], and grounded theory [22, 59]. Rather design-oriented research will focus on the process of developing ECM solutions. Such research can serve to evaluate ECM in practice and, through this evaluation, further contribute to the development of theory [23]. We propose the following research question: What are the key factors that organizations need to consider when implementing ECM solutions in order to support creative processes? Potential strategies of inquiry include action research and design science research [28, 33]. More specific research questions, for example, may focus on the concept of reusing content. As described above, recent works already discuss the impact that a systematic approach to content reuse can have on the flexibility and autonomy of content producers as well as the quality of the content created [4, 12]. Correspondingly, the following research question is proposed: How does the reuse of content impact on the creative performance of individuals/groups/organizations? 3.3. Research Questions with Regard to RP2 With regard to RP2, researchers must seek answers to how creativity can be embedded into the management of enterprise content. For example, the following research question may be asked: Can creativity be embedded into ECM processes so as to improve the quality of content? In this case, content quality may be extended by constructs such as novelty and appropriateness, which are key dimensions of creativity. One main challenge must be seen in measuring the creative quality of a product. However, according measures have been proposed in the related literature [18]. One such example is the so-called Creative Product Semantic Scale (CPSS) [41] for the evaluation of products across domains. More specific research questions may focus on the processes of searching and storing content, for example. In particular a solely convergent search process that quickly leads to a result may compromise creativity as it may prevent exploration and divergent thinking [53]. Correspondingly: Can creativity be embedded into the search process and thus lead to improved content retrieval? As to the storage of content, one important challenge lies in finding an adequate balance between efforts and benefits. Storing content requires the content user to define appropriate metadata (in order to enable other users to retrieve the content later on) [36]. The challenge may thus be seen in determining an appropriate amount of metadata to be used; the time an employee needs to invest in defining the required metadata must not exceed the expected time savings in searching content. This poses the question in how far the responsibility for selecting metadata, 6

7 and storing content, can be transferred to the content creators. Consequently, the following research question is proposed: Can creativity be embedded into the process of storing content and thus lead to improved content storage and retrieval? It becomes apparent that there are many research questions at the borderline between the management of enterprise content on the one hand side and creativity on the other hand side. We believe that this diverse field will require researchers to apply various research strategies, ranging from inductive, exploratory theory-building research to testing functionalist theories on the impact of the use of ECM onto the creative outcome as well as rather design-oriented research that is considered to be of high relevance to practitioners. 4. Discussion 4.1. Implications for the Practice of ECM It is expected that practitioners will benefit from research that particularly investigates the tradeoff between control and creative performance. While it can be anticipated that ECM solutions will improve the availability and consistency of content, there is evidence in the related literature that they may also inhibit creativity. Research on creativity and business process management has shown that organizations pursue both conventional process performance (such as time and cost) and creative process performance (such as novelty and appropriateness) while they simultaneously seek to mitigate both conventional and creative risk [52]. It is expected that, in a similar manner, organizations use ECM technologies to both support organizational performance and mitigate risk through higher levels of efficiency, availability, and traceability, while, at the same time, not compromising creativity. Rather design-oriented research can further contribute to this discussion by shedding light on how systems can be developed that adhere to these requirements. This is conducive to the ECM domain s nature of being an applied discipline that has, over the last years, mainly been driven by the emergence of new technologies Implications for Research Researchers can apply the suggested framework in order to identify relevant research questions in the above described context as well as position their own research and relate it to the work of their fellow colleagues. The proposed framework provides concepts/constructs that may be utilized in order to generate research models in positivist hypothesis testing research. In interpretive theory building research, for example, the framework may be used as a guiding sensitizing device [30]. Moreover, knowledge about related concepts and theories also becomes critical when researchers compare and contrast their own work with the existent literature with the goal of generalizing their findings. It is our belief that researchers will particularly have to develop processual, interactionist models. As research on creativity has shown, theories in a functionalist-reductionist [45] manner are not capable of explaining the dynamics that processes enfold over time [15]. Yet, such knowledge becomes critical when organizations seek to deploy the merits of technologies such as ECM, as this particularly requires them to understand the dynamics of underlying business processes [52]. 5. Conclusion This paper contributes to the IS literature by providing researchers and practitioners with a research framework that exhibits areas of interest in the contexts of ECM and creativity. It is our belief that organizations must not only consider conventional measures such as efficiency and control when implementing ECM technologies, but also the impact that these technologies can have on the organizations creative performance. Such knowledge becomes critical when organizations seek to deploy ECM technologies to a set of work processes that are not merely transactional, but also require the involved actor s creativity. At the same time, organizations must recognize the creative skills and expertise of the involved people so as to improve the process of managing enterprise content. It is thus also hoped that the framework will contribute to the ongoing discussion of the phenomenon of creativity in the IS discipline. The paper has some limitations. It may be argued that the concepts of creativity and ECM have been described at a relatively high level of abstraction. For example, besides distinguishing factors at the individual, group, and organizational levels, one may also utilize the distinction between the constituent concepts of creativity; i.e., the creative product, the creative person, the creative process, and the creative environment. The same holds true for the conceptualization of ECM as an interplay of strategies, tools, processes, and people. Other authors in the field propose a multitude of sometimes very different capabil- 7

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