VOSS-Collaborative Research: Virtualization of Work Capabilities in Project-Based Design Organizations

该奖项是根据2009年美国复苏和再投资法案（公法111-5）资助的。 基于项目的设计组织是当代不断追求创新的基础。设计组织不可避免地具有虚拟组件，其设计过程深受作为设计基础设施的信息技术（IT）的影响。过去对虚拟组织的研究强调虚拟化如何通过替代传统组织来提高绩效？身体上的组织的形式。然而，随着信息技术变得无处不在，这种观点既不实用，也不具有理论可持续性。所有的组织都是由比特和原子同时建立的，虚拟组织总是位于物理物质中。 我们的目标是研究：（a）基于项目的设计组织如何通过纠缠虚拟和物理实质性来虚拟化他们的工作能力;（B）设计控制和环境波动性如何影响虚拟化过程。 首先，我们将开发和验证一个半正式的符号来描述设计过程中虚拟和物理物质性纠缠的内容和范围。我们早期的实地考察表明，基于项目的组织虚拟化他们的工作能力，根据他们的具体，？收到？过程逻辑其次，使用经验验证的虚拟化工作能力的时序表示，我们将研究两个关键的偶然变量的影响-控制和环境波动-设计组织如何可能虚拟化他们的工作。 为了解决这些问题，我们在四个基于项目的设计组织中进行纵向案例研究-施工设计和管理，软件团队，网络（硬件/软件）产品设计团队，以及复杂的机械和工艺工程（航空航天中的流体控制），涉及不同级别的设计控制和环境波动性。这些研究将分为四个独立的多层次（涉及组织单位、战略业务单位和设计项目）研究，利用面向实地的数据收集技术，包括半结构化访谈、观察、档案研究、调查、使用视频和图像（解决材料工作的物理方面）和过程建模。主要的数据分析技术是面向过程的事件结构研究和模式匹配。

This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5). Project-based design organizing is fundamental to the contemporary relentless pursuit of innovation. Design organizations inevitably have virtual components and their design processes are deeply affected by information technologies (ITs) serving as design infrastructures. Past research on virtual organizations emphasizes how virtuality can improve performance through substituting traditional ?physical? forms of organizing. As IT becomes ubiquitous, such a view, however, is neither practical, nor theoretically sustainable. All organizations are built simultaneously with both bits and atoms and virtual organizing is always situated in physical materiality. Our goal is to study: (a) how project-based design organizations virtualize their work capabilities by entangling both virtual and physical materiality; (b) how design control and environmental volatility affect the virtualization process.The proposed study addresses these three goals. First, we will develop and validate a semi-formal notation to describe the content and scope of the entanglement of virtual and physical materiality in design processes. Our earlier fieldwork indicates that project-based organizations virtualize their work capabilities according to their specific, ?received? process logic. Second, using empirically validated chronological representations of virtualized work capabilities, we will examine the impact of two critical contingency variables- control and environmental volatility- how design organizations are likely to virtualize their work. To address these questions, we conduct longitudinal case studies in four project-based design organizations- construction design and management, software teams, network (hardware/software) product design teams, and complex mechanical and process engineering (fluid controls in aerospace) involving different levels of design control and environmental volatility. The studies will be organized as four separate multi-level (involving both organizational units, strategic business units and design projects) studies that draw upon field-oriented data collection techniques involving semi-structured interviews, observations, archival research, surveys, the use of video and images (to address the physical aspects of material work) and process modeling. Main data analysis techniques are process oriented event structure studies and pattern matching.