Journal of Systems and Information Technology

Kock, Ned; Davison, Robert; Wazlawick, Raul; Ocker, Rosalie

2001 Journal of Systems and Information Technology

doi: 10.1108/13287260180001059

The guesteditors of the first Special Issue on ECollaboration provide an introduction to the issue. Ecollaboration is broadly defined as collaboration among individuals engaged in a common task using electronic technologies. A brief history of the evolution of ecollaboration technologies is offered along with a discussion of research in the area. The paper concludes with a brief review of the contributions to the Special Issue and a look at one important future challenge for ecollaboration researchers, the challenge of theoretical summarization.

Vranes, Sanja; Opacic, Branislav; Pizzio, Francesco

2001 Journal of Systems and Information Technology

doi: 10.1108/13287260180000757

Our multiparadigm software toolset consisting of BATEV, DEBATER and CyberDELPHI software tools enables a holistic forecasting exercise, combining some good aspects of various foresight paradigms, based on both panel activities scenarios, recommendations, policy proposals, etc. and a large scale ecollaboration among wide expert base. The ecollaboration encompasses vianet Delphi survey and software mediation and facilitation, based upon intelligent group decision support paradigm. The combination of multiple paradigms supplies a firm foundation for addressing complex technology foresight problems more objectively. Following a brainstorming process assisted by BATEV technology repository, and DEBATER intelligent decision support system for technology assessment in which potential future opportunities for scientific and technological advances are identified, panels engage in an extensive and collaborative consultation process, using the CyberDELPHI ecollaboration software. The CyberDELPHI implementation is very useful in reducing the time required to evaluate the experts responses and also helps to encourage experts to give as much detail as possible. It has been used succesfully in the preliminary phase of a Regional Programme on Technology Foresight for Latin America, launchad by UNIDO United Nations Industrial Development Organisation and ICS International Centre for Science and High Technology.

Burke, Kelly; Aytes, Kregg

2001 Journal of Systems and Information Technology

doi: 10.1108/13287260180000758

Organization efforts in groups generate interaction and procedural structures, or rules of behavior. The type and extent of structuring are affected by preexisting preferences among group members for a desired degree of procedural order, as well as by the communication media available in the meeting environment. Analysis of thirty partiallydistributed groups that met over a series of four sessions was conducted by using two methods. Questionnaires were administered to ascertain perceptions of satisfaction and procedural practices. Content analysis was used to determine actual procedural behavioral patterns. It appears that preferences for procedural order does affect structuring behaviors, but do not affect their satisfaction with the group process. Interestingly, and counter to the expectations elicited from a history of media richness theory and studies, results here indicate that interaction media video conferencing vs. audio conferencing have no affect on either members perceptions of procedural structuring, their satisfaction, or their actual procedural structuring practices. Implications of these results are discussed.

Yoong, Pak; Gallupe, Brent

2001 Journal of Systems and Information Technology

doi: 10.1108/13287260180000759

Electronic meeting facilitation efacilitation continues to be a critical success factor in the use of information technology to support facetoface collaborative work. Yet researchers and practitioners continue to struggle to understand the subtleties and difficulties in the application of meeting facilitation techniques in the electronic context. To clarify that understanding, this paper develops a new theoretical framework that examines how technology interacts with human facilitator behavior in an electronic group meeting. This framework, The Dualities of EFacilitation, is composed of two dualities the Duality of Computer and Human Interaction, and the Duality of Routine and Intuitive Actions. The framework emerged from an analysis of the efacilitation behaviors of newly trained facetoface electronic meeting facilitators.

Jackson, Thomas; Dawson, Ray; Wilson, Darren

2001 Journal of Systems and Information Technology

doi: 10.1108/13287260180000760

The use of email by employees at the Danwood Group was studied and it was found that the interrupt effect from emails is more than generally believed. Employees allowed themselves to be interrupted almost as frequently as telephone calls and the common reaction to the arrival of an email is to react almost as quickly as they would respond to telephone calls. This means the interrupt effect is comparable with that of a telephone call. The recovery time from an email interruption was found to be significantly less than the published recovery time for telephone calls. It is to be concluded, therefore, that while Email is still less disruptive than the telephone, the way the majority of users handle their incoming email has been shown to give far more interruption than expected. By analysing the data captured the authors have been able to create recommendations for a set of guidelines for email usage within the workplace that will increase employee efficiency by reducing the prominence of interruptions, restricting the use of emailtoall messages, settingup the email application to display three lines of the email and to check for email less frequently. It is recommended that training should be given to staff on how to use email more effectively to increase employee productivity.

Fuks, Hugo; Lemos de Assis, Rodrigo

2001 Journal of Systems and Information Technology

doi: 10.1108/13287260180000761

Questions related to perception in groupware systems have received a lot of attention in recent Computer Supported Cooperative Work CSCW studies. This paper presents a model of support of perception for a groupware approach based upon communication, coordination and cooperation. The suggested model is applied through learningware technology. The AulaNet learning environment was used as a source of experiences for development of the proposed model. The conception of a new service, implemented on AulaNet to illustrate the utilization of perception information, also is presented. Some of the problems that have been encountered, questions of implementation and difficulties derived from the addition of new functionalities, are highlighted throughout the paper.

CecezKecmanovic, Dubravka

2001 Journal of Systems and Information Technology

doi: 10.1108/13287260180000762

The paper investigates knowledge sharing and cocreation in an organisationwide discussion supported by ComputerMediated Communication CMC. The paper draws on the empirical evidence from a field study of a consultative process as part of a University strategic decisionmaking. Informed by Habermass theory of communicative action, the investigation focuses on communicative practices in the CMC discussion and the ways participants interact, share knowledge and cocreate meanings in a particular situation. Communicative analysis of organisational discourse via CMC reveals hidden structures and mechanisms that impede knowledge sharing and inhibit cooperative meaning making. The issue here is whether CMC enables or disables some of these structures and mechanisms. By interpreting the CMC discussion as an argumentation process the paper aims to provide deeper insights into this issue. Among the lessons learned are requirements for new technologies to support knowledge sharing and meaning cocreation.