VOSS: Delegating Organizational Work to Virtual Organization Technologies: Beyond the Communicational Paradigm

虚拟组织在科研和教学中的地位日益重要。支持VOS的传统工具(例如电子邮件)实现了远距离和跨机构障碍的沟通和协调。在这种情况下，建立和维持志愿人员组织的工作侧重于使用这些工具来促进信任和谈判公平和有效的资源利用。最近，计算机科学领域的研究试图将这样的组织工作委托给一类新的VO工具，统称为网格？技术。网格技术被设想为提供新的协作模式，改进稀缺资源的分配，以及发现和创新的新途径。虽然过去的研究已经成功地解决了涉及传统工具的远程通信和协调问题，但关于新工具如何改变VO的了解要少得多。悬而未决的问题包括：将信任、访问和资源分配委托给基于网格的系统的后果；维持计算支持的VO的挑战；以及维护和维护VO所需的新类型的组织角色和责任。该项目对长期生态研究网络(LTER)和开放科学网格(OSG)这两个领先的协作科学网络中VO的形成和维护进行了比较研究。LTER和OSG都是支持多学科科学研究的成熟企业；然而，它们在VO工具使用的性质上有所不同。LTER使用各种各样的常规工具来增强组织沟通(表现为通信范式，或技术上弱授权的VO)，而OSG将组织生活和维护的关键组件委托给基于网格的机制(即，技术上强授权的VO，举例说明了计算范式)。本研究运用人种学和比较法，借鉴科学技术研究(STS)、组织科学和人机交互的理论，比较LTER和OSG所采取的不同方法，以：i)提供更好和更复杂的个人、群体和组织的特征图谱；ii)为支持Vos的不同的人和技术工作建立严格的比较模型。

Virtual organizations (VOs) are increasingly significant to research and teaching. Traditional tools to support VOs (e.g., electronic mail) enable communication and coordination at a distance and across institutional barriers. In such cases, the organizational work of forming and sustaining VOs focuses on the use of these tools to foster trust and to negotiate equitable and efficient resource utilization. More recently, research in computer science has sought to delegate such organizational work to a new class of VO tools, collectively termed ?Grid? technologies. Grid technologies are envisioned to provide new modes of collaboration, improved allocation of scarce resources, and novel pathways for discovery and innovation. While past research has successfully addressed questions of long-distance communication and coordination involving traditional tools, much less is known about how new tools may transform VOs. Open questions include: the consequences of delegating trust, access and resource distribution to Grid-based systems; the challenges of sustaining computationally-supported VOs; and the new kinds of organizational roles and responsibilities necessary for the upkeep and maintenance of VOs. This project undertakes a comparative study of VO formation and maintenance in two leading collaborative science networks: the Long Term Ecological Research Network (LTER) and the Open Science Grid (OSG). Both LTER and OSG are mature enterprises for supporting multidisciplinary scientific research; however, they differ in the nature of their VO tool use. Whereas LTER uses a broad variety of conventional tools to augment organizational communication (exhibiting the communicational paradigm, or a 'weakly technically delegated' VO), OSG delegates key components of organizational life and maintenance to Grid-based mechanisms (i.e., a ?strongly technically delegated VO, exemplifying the computational paradigm). Using ethnographic and comparative methods, and drawing on theories from science and technology studies (STS), organization science, and human-computer interaction, this study will compare the different approaches taken by LTER and OSG to: i) provide a better and more sophisticated mapping of the characteristics of individuals, groups and organizations that embrace VOs; and ii) develop rigorous comparative models for the differential human and technical work which sustain VOs.