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

虚拟组织是一群人，他们的成员和资源可能在地理上和结构上分布，但通过使用协作技术，他们作为一个连贯的单位发挥作用。在企业的背景下，虚拟组织通过灵活和流动的结构提供了增长和创新的承诺，但员工面临着管理协调成本的挑战，作为动态和不断发展的工作的结果。新的协作技术，如促进交流和知识共享的技术以及社会媒体和任务整合能力，提供的协调效益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）界定和衡量各种结构中的组织结构、协作技术和工作流程成果的特点（包括虚拟组织结构）在采用新的和紧急的组织结构的商业组织内，（B）描述后果不同的组织结构和协作技术对工作流程成果的影响（积极和消极），及（c）建立一个公共网站─的资源，可用于组织和技术社区，以更好地了解影响工作流成果的结构和技术的种类。研究虚拟组织结构和协作技术的交叉研究仍处于起步阶段。从这种独特的经验环境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重要的见解。除了促进对虚拟组织的科学理解外，这项研究的一个潜在的变革性成果是促进对科学，教育，医疗保健和其他类型组织的虚拟组织的理解。此外，研究结果可以被纳入到设计和测试的协作技术，这可能有助于新的进步的工具，以支持分布式工作。

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.