Improving Collaborative Convergence through Distributed and Parallel Sorting

This paper examines a convergence process of organizing ideas that are generated during collaborative idea generation activities. The method presented reduces the impact of organizing brainstorming ideas on individual participants by dividing the convergence activity into smaller, discrete tasks that can be completed individually, and in parallel, by the participants. The entire pool of brainstorming ideas is subdivided into smaller pools and each participant is then tasked with organizing one of the subsets of ideas. The results show that by dividing up the overall activity into subtasks, the subjects experienced a more favorable environment. Furthermore, the subjects were able to work through their subset of ideas and produce results that were similar to those performing the full sort of the entire pool

Mining for Solutions: How Expertise Distribution and Influence Structures Impact Team Improvisation

Organizations increasingly must operate in unpredictable, dynamic, and complex situations, and scholars in a wide variety of fields argue that flexibility and adaptation in these changing environments represent important capabilities for high performing groups. In response, teams in these challenging environments often require improvisation to help them react, plan, and execute in a short time frame. Despite widespread acknowledgement in the literature that preparation is essential for teams to be able to productively improvise, few have attempted to define what antecedents would promote and enable it. I develop and test a model of how team structure can influence improvisation. Deriving improvisational behaviors from the experiential learning process, I examine how teams modify these knowledge creation behaviors to perform in situations where planning and execution time are inhibited. I then explore how the distribution of expertise and influence shape the development of these improvisational behaviors and the subsequent ability to respond when the need for improvisation arises. I propose that by structuring teams with a moderate overlap of expertise distributed across team members and variable influence that allow teams to rotate decision-making to members with the most relevant expertise, teams can best perform the improvisational behaviors necessary to successfully respond to unanticipated problems or opportunities. I test this theory in a field study using mine rescue team competitions that finds mixed support for these propositions

The determination of whether a Unified Communication System can be effective in supporting informal communication and collaboration in virtual teams

The overall objective of the research is to determine whether a Unified Communication System intervention can be effective in supporting informal communication and collaboration in virtual teams. In so doing, this research is aimed at developing a current framework of critical success factors for facilitating informal collaboration and communication. As teams have evolved to the point where there is no longer a need for team members to be co-located, with a greater importance now being placed on how they collaborate, this framework will also highlight how it can support virtual teams due to the huge potential advantage they can provide to the organisation. A virtual communication and collaboration system will be selected based on the outputs of the current framework and interactions which occur through the system will be observed to provide quantitative and qualitative results. In conclusion, the research will suggest recommendations for the successful implementation of informal communication and collaboration technologies within the organisation. The research will also indicate to a limited degree, the impact of the implementation of these technologies, and the outcome for the organisation, whether positive or negative. Whilst conducting the research, it became apparent that while the UCS was capable of performing the processes and functions required, the individuals and teams engaging with the technology did not always make use of the full scope of the technology provided. Regardless, a UCS was observed to provide direct benefits to an organisation in increasing communication and collaboration in the organisation. These increases can be observed in both the physical and virtual sense. However, the converse is true for generating social capital which lead to the observation that there are a smaller number of interactions happening in the smaller teams, but these are of higher value when compared to the larger teams of this study. It is also clear that the larger a team becomes, the more the trend is to focus on adopting new technologies to make their roles more efficient. This adoption is not however translated into outputs such as social capital but is translated into stronger networks and the formation of new networks. It is also clear that most negative factors around the UCS are related to the respondent’s hardware rather than the solution itself. Cost reductions because of virtuality will also be observed and using the Developed Framework as a blue print, an organisation should be able to observe direct benefits for an organisation by being able to confirm the thesis of this research in that having a UCS intervention is effective in supporting informal communication and collaboration in virtual teams

Mining for Solutions: How Expertise Distribution and Influence Structures Impact Team Improvisation

Organizations increasingly must operate in unpredictable, dynamic, and complex situations, and scholars in a wide variety of fields argue that flexibility and adaptation in these changing environments represent important capabilities for high performing groups. In response, teams in these challenging environments often require improvisation to help them react, plan, and execute in a short time frame. Despite widespread acknowledgement in the literature that preparation is essential for teams to be able to productively improvise, few have attempted to define what antecedents would promote and enable it. I develop and test a model of how team structure can influence improvisation. Deriving improvisational behaviors from the experiential learning process, I examine how teams modify these knowledge creation behaviors to perform in situations where planning and execution time are inhibited. I then explore how the distribution of expertise and influence shape the development of these improvisational behaviors and the subsequent ability to respond when the need for improvisation arises. I propose that by structuring teams with a moderate overlap of expertise distributed across team members and variable influence that allow teams to rotate decision-making to members with the most relevant expertise, teams can best perform the improvisational behaviors necessary to successfully respond to unanticipated problems or opportunities. I test this theory in a field study using mine rescue team competitions that finds mixed support for these propositions

From Seed to Fruit: A Posthuman Journey From Stage to Page

This thesis uses Cybernetic Fruit: A Posthuman Fairytale (a show directed by Shauna MacDonald and Nico Wood) to explore notions of posthumanism. The thesis of this project is that every being possesses beingness (one could say, a soul), be it raccoon, raspberry, or rock; that nothing is perfect or ever can be, for perfection and imperfection (like order and disorder) are human constructions spun from human vantage points and seen with a human-level of resolution; that collaboration fosters propagation of a posthuman discourse and compassionate behavior; and finally, that staging philosophical inquiry, in the flesh and for the community, is a potent methodology for germinating new theoretical fruit