Dealing with mobility: Understanding access anytime, anywhere

The rapid and accelerating move towards the adoption and use of mobile technologies has increasingly provided people and organisations with the ability to work away from the office and on the move. The new ways of working afforded by these technologies are often characterised in terms of access to information and people ‘anytime, anywhere’. This paper presents a study of mobile workers that highlights different facets of access to remote people and information, and different facets of anytime, anywhere. Four key factors in mobile work are identified from the study: the role of planning, working in ‘dead time’, accessing remote technological and informational resources, and monitoring the activities of remote colleagues. By reflecting on these issues, we can better understand the role of technology and artefact use in mobile work and identify the opportunities for the development of appropriate technological solutions to support mobile workers

Innovation dialogue - Being strategic in the face of complexity - Conference report

The Innovation Dialogue on Being Strategic in the Face of Complexity was held in Wageningen on 31 November and 1 December 2009. The event is part of a growing dialogue in the international development sector about the complexities of social, economic and political change. It builds on two previous events hosted the Innovation Dialogue on Navigating Complexity (May 2009) and the Seminar on Institutions, Theories of Change and Capacity Development (December 2008). Over 120 people attended the event coming from a range of Dutch and international development organizations. The event was aimed at bridging practitioner, policy and academic interests. It brought together people working on sustainable business strategies, social entrepreneurship and international development. Leading thinkers and practitioners offered their insights on what it means to "be strategic in complex times". The Dialogue was organized and hosted by the Wageningen UR Centre for Development Innovation working with the Chair Groups of Communication & Innovation Studies, Disaster Studies, Education & Competence Studies and Public Administration & Policy as co; organisers. The theme of the Dialogue aligns closely with Wageningen UR’s interest in linking technological and institutional innovation in ways that enable ‘science for impact’

Introduction to Professional Development: A Business Communication Approach

This book was created to service the BCOM 210: Introduction to Professional Development course in the Department of Applied Business Studies (ABS) in the Robbins College of Business and Entrepreneurship (RCOBE) at Fort Hays State University (FHSU). The course is required for several ABS majors and a popular elective among RCOBE students. BCOM 210 uses concepts from business communication to assist students in understanding their professional desires and forming a plan for their career futures.https://scholars.fhsu.edu/all_oer/1004/thumbnail.jp

Proceedings of the 5th QS-APPLE Conference

This volume is a post-conference publication containing the refereed papers and abstracts of all presentations at the QS-APPLE Conference held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia from 24th-26th November, 2009

Exploring the relationship between multiple team membership and team performance: the role of social networks and collaborative technology

Firms devoted to research and development and innovative activities intensively use teams to carry out knowledge intensive work and increasingly ask their employees to be engaged in multiple teams (e.g. R&D project teams) simultaneously. The literature has extensively investigated the antecedents of single teams performance, but has largely overlooked the effects of multiple team membership (MTM), i.e., the participation of a focal team\u2019s members in multiple teams simultaneously, on the focal team outcomes. In this paper we examine the relationships between team performance, MTM, the use of collaborative technologies (instant messaging), and work-place social networks (external advice receiving). The data collected in the R&D unit of an Italian company support the existence of an inverted U-shaped relationship between MTM and team performance such that teams whose members are engaged simultaneously in few or many teams experience lower performance. We found that receiving advice from external sources moderated this relationship. When MTM is low or high, external advice receiving has a positive effect, while at intermediate levels of MTM it has a negative effect. Finally, the average use of instant messaging in the team also moderated the relationship such that at low levels of MTM, R&D teams whose members use instant messaging intensively attain higher performance while at high levels of MTM an intense use of instant messaging is associated with lower team performance. We conclude with a discussion of theoretical and practical implications for innovative firms engaged in multitasking work scenarios

Non-verbal interaction in the design of telepresence robots for social nomadic work

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, 2012.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (p. 77-84).Telepresence robots have emerged as a novel solution to meeting the social communication needs of nomadic workers. This thesis provides an overview of non-verbal communication cues for telepresence robot applications, and a snapshot of the competitive landscape for commercially available telepresence robots today. It then follows the design of a low-cost telepresence robot which can be remotely operated whilst running Skype, and discusses how further non-verbal communication cues could be incorporated to increase the feeling of social presence. Specifically, face tracking and the ability to communicate gaze is developed in the final prototype.by Jennifer S. Milne.S.M