VOSS: Creating Functionally Collaborative Infrastructure in Virtual Organizations

该奖项是根据2009年《美国复苏和再投资法案》(公法111-5)提供资金的。组织正在重组为协作系统，以便通过将分布在业务职能、知识专长和地理位置上的专业知识结合起来来解决复杂的问题。通常情况下，这些系统面临复杂和多方面的目标，需要不同的团队协调他们的工作，并汇编分布在团队网络(即，多团队系统)中的关键信息。本研究将提供对使虚拟组织有效运作所必需的动机、认知、情感和行为动力学的理解。本研究测试了基于多团队系统理论和网络理论的虚拟组织有效性理论模型的组成部分。方法包括荟萃分析集成、应急响应系统的实地研究和实验室实验。元分析将被用来识别将虚拟特征(例如，同步性)和结构特征(例如，分布的性质)与基本行为(例如，信息共享)、动机(例如，功效)、情感(例如，跨团队信任)和认知(例如，交互记忆)动态联系起来的核心原则。将使用实地方法审查在高度复杂的虚拟环境中运作的多机构协调结构中最紧迫的实际问题及其与网络特征的关系。实验室实验将评估沟通规范的标准化和灾前网络的形成，以使虚拟组织能够协调一致地运作。这一多学科、多方法调查的结果将有助于对虚拟团队和多团队系统(例如，组织内和组织间级别)的文献的深入了解。这些发现将最终改善各种虚拟组织在应急响应和恢复、军事和学术研究方面的运作。特别是，这些知识将为此类组织的设计、领导、培训、政策和反馈系统提供必要的变更信息。

This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5). Organizations are restructuring into collaborative systems in order to address complex problems by combining expertise distributed across business functions, knowledge specialties, and geographic locations. Often times these systems face complex and multifaceted goals requiring distinct teams to coordinate their efforts and compile crucial information distributed across a network of teams (i.e., multiteam system). This project will render an understanding of the requisite motivational, cognitive, affective, and behavioral dynamics that enable virtual organizations to function effectively.This research tests components of a theoretically-based model of virtual organizational effectiveness grounded in multiteam systems theory and network theory. Methods include meta-analytic integration, field research on emergency response systems, and laboratory experimentation. Meta-analysis will be used to identify core principles linking virtuality features (e.g, synchronicity) and structural characteristics (e.g, nature of distribution) to essential behavioral (e.g., information sharing), motivational (e.g, efficacy), affective (e.g, cross-team trust), and cognitive (e.g, transactive memory) dynamics. Field methods will be used to examine the most pressing practical problems, and their relation to network features, in multiagency coordination structures operating in highly complex virtual settings. Laboratory experimentation will evaluate standardization of communication norms and pre-disaster network formation in enabling the coherent functioning of virtual organizations.Findings from this multidisciplinary, multimethod investigation will contribute insights to the literatures on virtual teams and multiteam systems (e.g., intra-organizational and interorganizational level). These findings will ultimately improve the functioning of a variety of virtual organizations operating in emergency response and recovery, military, and academic research. In particular, this knowledge will inform needed alterations to the design, leadership, training, policy, and feedback systems in such organizations.