The 24-Hour Knowledge Factory Paradigm: The Evolving Model for Offshoring based on Strategic, Economic, Legal, Health, Technical, and Other Considerations

The 24-Hour Knowledge Factory paradigm involves 3 (or more) collaborating centers, each located in a different continent. Individuals at each center work from 9 am to 5 pm in that country, and then pass the work-in-progress to the next collaborating center to enable round-theclock performance in a manner somewhat akin to the deployment of three shifts in the manufacturing sector. The 24-Hour Knowledge Factory is relevant for structured and semi-structured applications in many knowledge-based industries including accounting, legal, design, and development. There is a growing array of examples from healthcare and other domains where off-site professionals have been able to provide better results than on-site professionals, thereby validating that many tasks can be more effectively performed using the 24-Hour Knowledge Factory approach. The gradual adoption of this paradigm is motivated by several considerations. In 2007, the World Health Organization concluded that working at night is a probable cause of breast cancer in women and prostate cancer in men. Attempts by US state governments and even the federal government to discourage outsourcing are unlikely to succeed for multiple reasons, and the notion of “hybrid outsourcing” will gain momentum over time. Plus there are the advantages of developing products and services in a shorter timeframe; furthermore, these products and services can command broader appeal in the global marketplace. A detailed study was conducted at IBM to compare the performance of a co-located team and a distributed team, and the performance of the latter team exceeded initial expectations. The key results from this study will be discussed in this session

Intention to Collaborate: Investigating Online Collaboration in Virtual Teams

The emergence of online tools supporting collaboration has allowed more people to work together online. Virtual team members are expected to collaborate in order to solve predefined problems. Several factors influence a virtual team member intention to collaborate. In this paper, a conceptual model and a measurement scale are derived from previous literature on online collaboration and virtual teams and have been pretested to refine the derived scale items. The scale under development makes important contributions to both research and practice. For research, it will provide a validated scale to measure intention to collaborate, which will support further research in this field. For practice, it will help identify what contributes to a team member\u27s intention to collaborate; this can assist practitioners in establishing virtual teams within their organizations

AN EXTENDED ADAPTIVE STRUCTURATION THEORY FOR THE DETERMINANTS AND CONSEQUENCES OF VIRTUAL TEAM SUCCESS

Virtual teams represent an organizational form which can revolutionize the workplace and provide organizations with unprecedented levels of flexibility and responsiveness. Extant reviews on virtual team research lack in two important aspects: First they do not explain the inconsistencies in virtual team research, and second they fail to explain how virtual teams achieve success. This paper, based on an extensive literature review of available research on virtual teams, identifies key drivers of virtual team effectiveness. Integrating the identified drivers, it develops a conceptual, analytical framework with 9 propositions, to explain virtual teams’ path to success. The new framework is termed as EAST (extended adaptive structuration theory). It goes beyond the generalized frameworks, such as AST (Adaptive Structuration Theory) and Input- Output frameworks to identify virtual team specific constructs such as Mission, Emergent Socio- Emotional States, and Individual Dimension. EAST identifies potential areas of future research for scholars, and provides advice to IS professionals regarding how to deploy virtual teams

Understanding and Modeling Risk and Resilience in Complex Coastal Systems (final workshop report)

On October 29 & 30, 2014 SURA hosted an interdisciplinary workshop on the subject, Understanding and Modeling Risk and Resilience in Complex Coastal Systems, as a prelude to a new SURA-led community science initiative integrating social and natural science. The goals were to identify the most critical issues in assessing future risks, vulnerabilities and resilience of complex coastal systems

Restructuring Higher Education institutions in Europe: The case of virtual learning environments

Research has been carried out into the educational and training innovations resulting from the current implementation of Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs) in institutions of higher education in order to understand how these innovations interrelate with teaching and learning; the implications at the institutional level; and the cross-cultural diversity within virtual learning environments, with an emphasis on those that combine face-to-face and virtual learning. In an attempt at innovating public educational institutions through the restructuring and promotion of educational co-operation at the European level, a study was made of nine institutions that provide tertiary education and postgraduate training in six European countries.Research has been carried out into the educational and training innovations resulting from the current implementation of Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs) in institutions of higher education in order to understand how these innovations interrelate with teaching and learning; the implications at the institutional level; and the cross-cultural diversity within virtual learning environments, with an emphasis on those that combine face-to-face and virtual learning. In an attempt at innovating public educational institutions through the restructuring and promotion of educational co-operation at the European level, a study was made of nine institutions that provide tertiary education and postgraduate training in six European countries

Developing Interoperable Collaboration Services to Sustain Activities of Communities of Practice

Communities of Practice (CoPs) have attracted the interest of professionals and researchers as successful environments for enhancing, developing and improving practices through collaboration between their members. More and more, CoPs are choosing virtual environments and services to support their activities. However, recent research has underlined the lack of adequate scaffolding in terms of technical support and appropriate use of technology for communication and collaboration. The paper argues in favour of a collaborative design methodology for the development of services based on new technologies, open-source or open-source minded . Producing interoperable, evolutionary, flexible and truly collaborative services appears of major interest to sustain activities of distributed CoPs. The paper uses as a case study the description of collaboratively designed services addressing the needs of distributed CoPs within the European Project PALETTE. The example of PALETTE shows that in complex project situations, collaborative design sustained by Actor-Network Theory is a helpful framework to reach the goals of the project

Restructuring Higher Education institutions in Europe: The case of virtual learning environments

Research has been carried out into the educational and training innovations resulting from the current implementation of Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs) in institutions of higher education in order to understand how these innovations interrelate with teaching and learning; the implications at the institutional level; and the cross-cultural diversity within virtual learning environments, with an emphasis on those that combine face-to-face and virtual learning. In an attempt at innovating public educational institutions through the restructuring and promotion of educational co-operation at the European level, a study was made of nine institutions that provide tertiary education and postgraduate training in six European countries.Research has been carried out into the educational and training innovations resulting from the current implementation of Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs) in institutions of higher education in order to understand how these innovations interrelate with teaching and learning; the implications at the institutional level; and the cross-cultural diversity within virtual learning environments, with an emphasis on those that combine face-to-face and virtual learning. In an attempt at innovating public educational institutions through the restructuring and promotion of educational co-operation at the European level, a study was made of nine institutions that provide tertiary education and postgraduate training in six European countries

Developing a Framework for Stigmergic Human Collaboration with Technology Tools: Cases in Emergency Response

Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs), particularly social media and geographic information systems (GIS), have become a transformational force in emergency response. Social media enables ad hoc collaboration, providing timely, useful information dissemination and sharing, and helping to overcome limitations of time and place. Geographic information systems increase the level of situation awareness, serving geospatial data using interactive maps, animations, and computer generated imagery derived from sophisticated global remote sensing systems. Digital workspaces bring these technologies together and contribute to meeting ad hoc and formal emergency response challenges through their affordances of situation awareness and mass collaboration. Distributed ICTs that enable ad hoc emergency response via digital workspaces have arguably made traditional top-down system deployments less relevant in certain situations, including emergency response (Merrill, 2009; Heylighen, 2007a, b). Heylighen (2014, 2007a, b) theorizes that human cognitive stigmergy explains some self-organizing characteristics of ad hoc systems. Elliott (2007) identifies cognitive stigmergy as a factor in mass collaborations supported by digital workspaces. Stigmergy, a term from biology, refers to the phenomenon of self-organizing systems with agents that coordinate via perceived changes in the environment rather than direct communication. In the present research, ad hoc emergency response is examined through the lens of human cognitive stigmergy. The basic assertion is that ICTs and stigmergy together make possible highly effective ad hoc collaborations in circumstances where more typical collaborative methods break down. The research is organized into three essays: an in-depth analysis of the development and deployment of the Ushahidi emergency response software platform, a comparison of the emergency response ICTs used for emergency response during Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy, and a process model developed from the case studies and relevant academic literature is described