Virtual teams: A literature review

In the competitive market, virtual teams represent a growing response to the need for fasting time-to-market, low-cost and rapid solutions to complex organizational problems. Virtual teams enable organizations to pool the talents and expertise of employees and non-employees by eliminating time and space barriers. Nowadays, companies are heavily investing in virtual team to enhance their performance and competitiveness. Despite virtual teams growing prevalence, relatively little is known about this new form of team. Hence the study offers an extensive literature review with definitions of virtual teams and a structured analysis of the present body of knowledge of virtual teams. First, we distinguish virtual teams from conventional teams, different types of virtual teams to identify where current knowledge applies. Second, we distinguish what is needed for effective virtual team considering the people, process and technology point of view and underlying characteristics of virtual teams and challenges they entail. Finally, we have identified and extended 12 key factors that need to be considered, and describes a methodology focused on supporting virtual team working, with a new approach that has not been specifically addressed in the existing literature and some guide line for future research extracted.Virtual team, Literature review, Effective virtual team,

In-Depth Revealing Grid Based Web Service Provision Model: Grid Service Provision (GSP)

Current development of network infrastructures is undergoing rapid transformation. With the emergence of the Open Grid Service Architecture and Globus Toolkit as incubators for evolving ASP business model to maintain profitability, this paper presents an in-depth analysis of the hypothetical Grid Service Provision (GSP) model by firstly giving an historical account of evolutionary factors in Internet architectures leading to Grid and P2P and secondly, investigating GSP model in the contexts of Service Level Agreements metrics and GSP implementation details. It is acknowledged by some experts that this hypothetical model is technologically feasible in reality

Resource Aware Application for Mobile Device In An Ad Hoc Wireless Network Environment

Ad hoc wireless networks can be applied in a collaborative computing in which the requirements of a temporary communication infrastructure for quick communication with minimal configuration between a group of people in a conference or gathering. The main purpose of this research is to develop an application that allows mobile nodes in a collaborative environment to share files among nodes. For this project, the application will be implemented on nodes in an ad hoc wireless network that have a strong incentive to collaborate and share resources. This paper presents the results of our preliminary study which are based on the previous research. It is divided into five sections where in the first section is an introduction of ad-hoc wireless network, then in the next section is regarding motivation of doing research in this area. In section four and five, the paragraphs focused on the evaluation for Mobile Ad Hoc Networking and related works respectively

A Cultural Critique of Organizational Change: Getting in Touch with Reality Stream: Social Networks

In organizations, change ideas are often implemented as ‘instruments of modernity’ (Giddens, 1991)prescribing a unified pattern of work, behavior and thought (Suchman, 1995). Reflecting a strongbelief in the engineerability of organizational reality, they generally serve the purpose of improvingmanagement control. A cultural critique of organizational change entails investigation of how suchchange ideas evolve from discourse to praxis, how they are received by the organization’s relevantsocial groups (Bijker et al., 1987), and how they impact everyday organizational life. For that, weperformed an ethnographic study in a large IT firm where we followed a change project that wasaimed at improving the organization’s learning capabilities through the concept of virtual community.By contrasting the organizational discourse around this concept, the intentions and appropriations ofthe firm’s management and moderators, and the responses of the employees, we describe how theintroduction of this modern change idea caused a dynamic interplay of negotiation in which numerousdivergences and tensions between the practice espoused and actual practice played a decisive role. Fora deeper understanding of this dynamic interplay, the larger part of this paper unravels the cumulativelayers of meaning employees attached to the virtual community idea. The first layer involves actorstaking a stand vis-à -vis the technology and the organizational practice in which it is applied. Thesecond layer illustrates that the appropriations of the employees are based upon the relational andsituational nature of their professional identity. In this way, we deconstruct the boundaries of thevirtual communities imposed, and show the networks of belonging with which the employees trulyidentify. In other words, we demonstrate how prescriptive instruments of modernity can lead to anartificialization of organizational life and suggest that fostering people’s passion for knowledge andtheir identification with the organization could provide a more productive alternative

Wiki: A Technology for Conversational Knowledge Management and Group Collaboration

Wikis (from wikiwiki, meaning fast in Hawaiian) are a promising new technology that supports conversational knowledge creation and sharing. A Wiki is a collaboratively created and iteratively improved set of web pages, together with the software that manages the web pages. Because of their unique way of creating and managing knowledge, Wikis combine the best elements of earlier conversational knowledge management technologies, while avoiding many of their disadvantages. This article introduces Wiki technology, the behavioral and organizational implications of Wiki use, and Wiki applicability as groupware and help system software. The article concludes that organizations willing to embrace the Wiki way with collaborative, conversational knowledge management systems, may enjoy better than linear knowledge growth while being able to satisfy ad-hoc, distributed knowledge needs

Reviewing the impact of virtual teams in the information age

This paper provides an overview of virtual teams in the information age, focussing on the definition of virtual teams, their salient characteristics, the communication issues they face, (including information overload, geographic and social distance), the technical issues involved (linking this to theories of media use), the issues raised by cultural diversity in the teams (including identity, trust and conflict) and managerial implications. Suggestions are made on how to address the issues raised and omissions from pervious research are highlighted

ECSCW 2013 Adjunct Proceedings The 13th European Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work 21 - 25. September 2013, Paphos, Cyprus

This volume presents the adjunct proceedings of ECSCW 2013.While the proceedings published by Springer Verlag contains the core of the technical program, namely the full papers, the adjunct proceedings includes contributions on work in progress, workshops and master classes, demos and videos, the doctoral colloquium, and keynotes, thus indicating what our field may become in the future