Odd Person Out? Studies of Distributed Group Work Where Communication Technologies are Unequal

在当今的组织中，许多人必须使用电子邮件、视频和音频会议、语音邮件等方式在一起工作，即使他们并不位于同一地点。远程团队成员通常会感到，他们不仅总体上接触较少，而且信息也不丰富。 与那些共处一地的人相比，偏远地区的人有多大的劣势？ 损失了多少生产力、信任和社会资本？ 该研究计划使用一种新的研究工具，长期组织模拟来衡量各种损失。 参与者参与了一项任务，他们模拟在竞争激烈的市场上相互买卖东西，每次持续数周。 在买卖过程中，他们形成了对彼此的印象，达成了长期的交易，并以快速的反应和较低的价格偏袒一些供应商。各种理论预测了当偏远地区人口数量及其位置不同时损失将如何变化，以及各种干预措施将如何提供帮助。 这项研究不仅使我们能够整理出一些主要的关系形成和社会资本理论的预测，但将建议管理者的分布式团队如何提高效率，有效性和士气，这些团队。

In today's organizations, many people have to work together even though they are not collocated, using email, video and audio conferencing, voicemail, etc. Remote team members typically feel that they suffer from having not only less contact overall, but less rich information as well. How much of a disadvantage do remote people have compared to those who are collocated? How much productivity, trust and social capital is lost? This program of research measures various losses using a new research vehicle, the long-term organizational simulation. Participants engage in a task in which they simulate buying and selling things to each other in a competitive market for weeks at a time. In the course of buying and selling, they form impressions of each other, make long standing deals, favor some suppliers over others with speedy reactions and lower prices. Various theories predict how the losses will vary when the numbers of remote people and their locations vary, and how various interventions will help. This research will not only allow us to sort out predictions of some major theories of relationship formation and social capital, but will advise managers of distributed teams how to improve efficiency, effectiveness and the morale of these teams.