VOSS: Innovating Across Cultures in Virtual Organizations

创新工作中的全球协作越来越普遍，需要新的虚拟组织形式。地理上分散的项目同时带来了新的工作形式，同时引入了可能导致冲突和混乱的距离和差异。创新工作专注于创造性实践和探索复杂而鲜为人知的决策空间，在这些环境下尤其具有挑战性，因为模棱两可和开放性是这一过程的固有部分。本研究调查了人们在面对距离、文化隔离、时间压力和模棱两可的挑战时，为有效工作而采用的社会和组织实践。具体地说，我们从民族志的角度来研究这些做法，借鉴了彼得·加利森和S的交易区概念，作为一个概念框架来审查跨文化的创新工作。我们建立和扩展了之前对跨国和跨文化设计的研究，在这项研究中，我们遇到了人们参加的三个活动领域？凝聚力工作(保持共同理解和共同目的感)、基础设施工作(维持相互行动的物质条件)和别具一格的工作(创造共同的语言和交流模式)。这项研究以这些初步观察为起点，广泛参与临时虚拟组织中的跨文化创新。我们的研究为跨文化合作和交流是如何在创造性工作中完成的提供了一个清晰的视角。研究现有的日常实践让我们了解人们如何配置和定位现有的基础设施，他们如何建立互动和交流的模式和实践，以及他们如何保持一致的群体身份和目标？简而言之，虚拟组织是如何在社会和物质突发事件的背景下完成的。我们的发现将为虚拟组织中网络基础设施的设计和部署提供参考，特别是在考虑文化因素的情况下。

Global collaborations in innovation work are increasingly pervasive and require new forms of virtual organizing. Geographically dispersed projects simultaneously enable novel forms of work, while introducing distance and difference that can cause conflict and confusion. Innovation work, focused on creative practices and exploration of complex and little-known decision spaces, is particularly challenging in these settings, since ambiguity and openness are inherent parts of the process.This research investigates the social and organizational practices that people employ to work effectively in the face of challenges of distance, cultural separation, temporal pressure, and ambiguity. Specifically, we investigate these practices ethnographically, drawing on Peter Galison?s concept of trading zones as a conceptual framework to examine innovation work across cultures. We build upon and extend a prior study of transnational and intercultural design, in which we encountered three areas of activity to which people attended ? cohesion work (maintaining common understandings and a sense of shared purpose), infrastructure work (sustaining the material conditions of mutual action), and pidgin work (creating of shared languages and patterns of communication). This research takes these initial observations as a starting point for an extensive engagement with intercultural innovation in temporary virtual organizations.Our research provides a clear view of how cross-cultural collaboration and exchange are accomplished in creative work. Studying existing everyday practices gives us a view into how people configure and orient around existing infrastructures, how they establish patterns and practices of interaction and exchange, and how they maintain coherent group identity and purpose ? in short, how virtual organizing is accomplished in the context of social and material contingencies. Our findings will inform the design and deployment of cyberinfrastructure in virtual organizations, especially when cultural considerations are at play.