Is My Innovation Valid??

So, I'm trying to research how expectations and processes can be used to improve communication and collaboration in a dysfunctional community of practice. In my project from last semester, my innovation was to implement Google Talk as a way to encourage communication and collaboration among this dysfunctional CoP. Well my findings indicated that trust came through as a major issue and lack of structure around this new form of communication. In other words, one challenge around Google Talk was that it was difficult to keep track of an ongoing thread to ensure all parties kept track for follow through etc. They also felt unsure about when to use the tool: for what types of incidents???, quick questions???, only when email was down???, etc. etc. They indicated that they felt rules and/or guidelines around the use of this new tool would have been helpful.

One of the biggest problems this group has is keeping with protocol. They themselves came to this at a recent meeting. Again the issue of rules and procedures came up. They wanted to reinvent their interactions for lack of a better term. I suggested they come up with rules around communication for the most problematic areas. We now have edited and invented new protocol for the communication chain surrounding major incidents, email versus chat, when to do a large group communication and when not to, etc. So, my innovation was going to be the implementation and follow through with the group regarding these now written down procedures/"rules"/guidelines and whether they have helped to improve communication and collaboration among this team. I have thought about this question many times as maybe that is the problem. Maybe my question should be how are these procedures/"rules"/guidelines helping to minimize conflict among the CoP. Now as I work on my lit review, I'm panicked--Is this even a valid innovation and worthy of research? I am finding very little direct literature on this subject. I have a large bibliography but I'm not finding any research studies that look even remotely like mine. Mostly everything that is addressed is theory and generalities. I mean shouldn't someone be doing research on my topic?? I feel like there must be something and that possibly I'm just really bad with the key word searches ????? Any ideas, input, assistance would be much appreciated.