Designing Virtual Organizations for Impact and Sustainability: Exploring a Resource-Use-Impact Planning Model

越来越多的虚拟组织被用来从事科学和工程研究，但成败参半。该项目创建了一个基于资源的框架，用于规划和评估虚拟组织的开发工作，并探讨了该框架在增强虚拟组织成功方面可以发挥的作用。基于资源的框架有助于确定虚拟组织是否能够通过自愿的个人行动成功地创建和调动共享资源，以利用外部利益相关者的支持，并在虚拟组织内部和外部产生重大影响。该项目在社会科学研究、基础设施设计和管理规划与评估之间架起了桥梁。该框架关注创建和维护虚拟组织所需的资源和支持的性质，参与者将参与的活动以及虚拟组织的预期影响，包括如何使这些影响对参与者和外部利益相关者可见。这三个领域之间的相互作用也进行了研究。提议的框架将通过与虚拟组织领导者和开发人员进行的访谈、案例研究和可用性练习的组合来开发、改进和测试。为虚拟组织设计和评估制定科学指导方针是开发网络基础设施支持的虚拟组织的关键一步，这些虚拟组织更具可持续性，并对许多政府机构、非营利组织、企业和非政府组织正在进行的团队科学工作产生更广泛的影响。开发虚拟组织规划和评估工具将产生深远的影响，允许技术汇集广泛的资源来解决关键问题和解决基本问题。此外，代表性不足的群体和少数机构可以更容易地参与从事科学和工程合作的虚拟组织。

Increasingly, virtual organizations are being formed to undertake science and engineering research, but with mixed success. This project creates a resource-based framework for planning and evaluating virtual organization development efforts and explores the role that this framework can play in enhancing virtual organization success. The resource-based framework helps identify whether a virtual organization will be able to successfully create and mobilize shared resources through voluntary individual action to leverage the support of external stakeholders and have significant impacts within and beyond the virtual organization itself. This project bridges the gap between social science research, infrastructure design, and management planning and evaluation. The framework draws attention to the nature of the resources and the support needed to create and maintain virtual organizations, the activities that participants will engage in and the expected impacts of the virtual organization, including how these impacts will be made visible to participants and to external stakeholders. Interactions between these three areas are also investigated. The proposed framework will be developed, refined, and tested through a combination of interviews, case studies, and usability exercises undertaken with virtual organization leaders and developers.Creation of science-informed guidelines for virtual organization design and evaluation is a crucial step in developing cyberinfrastructure-supported virtual organizations that are more sustainable and have a broader impact on the team science efforts underway at many government agencies, non-profits, businesses and NGOs. Developing a tool for virtual organization planning and evaluation will have a profound impact, allowing technology to bring together a wide range of resources to solve critical problems and address fundamental questions. In addition, under-represented groups and minority institutions can more easily participate in virtual organizations engaged in scientific and engineering collaborations.