VOSS: Virtual organizations in action: Understanding socio-technical systems through changes in structure and technology

虚拟组织是一组个体，其成员和资源可能分布在地理上和结构上，但通过使用协作技术，它们作为一个连贯的单元发挥作用。在商业环境中，虚拟组织通过灵活和流动的结构提供了增长和创新的希望，但由于动态和不断变化的工作，员工面临着管理协调成本的挑战。新的协作技术，例如那些促进沟通和知识共享以及社交媒体和任务集成能力的技术，提供的协调好处可以抵消，甚至可能超过在虚拟组织中工作所产生的协调成本。通过对个人的定性访谈和对工作组的在线调查，本项目将：(a)定义和测量采用新型和新兴组织结构的业务组织内一系列结构（包括虚拟组织结构）中的组织结构、协作技术和工作流结果的特征；(b)描述不同组织结构和协作技术对工作流结果的影响的后果（积极和消极）；(c)创建一个公共的基于web的资源，供组织和技术社区使用，以更好地理解影响工作流结果的各种结构和技术。虚拟组织结构与协同技术的交叉研究还处于起步阶段。从这种独特的经验设置中收集的数据将为新结构和新技术如何相互影响以及工作流程结果提供关键见解。除了促进对虚拟组织的科学理解之外，这项研究的一个潜在变革成果是促进对科学、教育、医疗保健和其他类型组织的虚拟组织的理解。此外，研究结果可以整合到协作技术的设计和测试中，这可以促进支持分布式工作的工具的新进展。

Virtual organizations are groups of individuals whose members and resources may be distributed geographically and structurally, yet who function as a coherent unit through the use of collaborative technology. In the context of business, virtual organizations offer the promise of growth and innovation through flexible and fluid structures, yet employees face the challenge of managing coordination costs as a result of the dynamic and evolving work. New collaborative technologies, such as those that facilitate communication and knowledge sharing as well as social media and task integration capabilities, offer coordination benefits that could counter, and possibly exceed, the coordination costs that arise from working in virtual organizations.Through qualitative interviews of individuals and an online survey of working groups, this project will: (a) define and measure features of organization structure, collaborative technology, and workflow outcomes in a range of structures (including virtual organization structures) within a business organization adopting a new and emergent organizational structure, (b) describe the consequences (positive and negative) of different organization structures and collaborative technologies in terms of their impact on workflow outcomes, and (c) create a public web-based resource that can be used by the organizational and technology communities to better understand the kinds of structures and technologies that affect workflow outcomes.Research on the intersection of virtual organization structures and collaborative technology is still in its infancy. Data collected from this unique empirical setting will provide critical insight into how new structures and new technologies influence each other as well as workflow outcomes. In addition to furthering scientific understanding of virtual organizations, a potentially transformative outcome of this research is facilitating understanding of virtual organizations for science, education, healthcare, and other types of organizations. Moreover, study results can be incorporated into the design and testing of collaborative technology, which could contribute to new advances in tools to support distributed work.