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

虚拟组织在科研和教学中的作用日益重要。支持VO的传统工具（例如，电子邮件）使远距离和跨越机构障碍的沟通和协调成为可能。在这种情况下，组建和维持志愿组织的组织工作侧重于使用这些工具来促进信任，并就公平和有效的资源利用进行谈判。最近，计算机科学的研究试图将这种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、改善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距离沟通和协调问题，但对新工具如何改变VO的了解要少得多。开放性问题包括：委托信任，访问和资源分配到基于网格的系统的后果;维持计算支持的VO的挑战;以及VO的维护和维护所需的新型组织角色和责任。 本项目对长期生态研究网络（LTER）和开放科学网格（OSG）这两个领先的合作科学网络中VO的形成和维持进行了比较研究。 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。 尽管LTER使用各种各样的传统工具来增强组织通信（展示了通信范例，或“弱技术委托”VO），但OSG将组织生命和维护的关键组件委托给基于网格的机制（即，是吗？强技术委托VO，举例说明计算范例）。本研究运用民族志和比较的方法，并借鉴科学技术研究、组织科学和人机交互的理论，比较了LTER和OSG的不同方法，以：i）提供一个更好和更复杂的对包含VOs的个人、团体和组织特征的映射;（ii）为维持自愿组织的不同人力和技术工作制定严格的比较模型。

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.