11:00 AM -- 12:00 Noon, Friday, March 29th, 2002
3rd Floor Tower Room

Speaker: David Rine, Department of Computer Science
George Mason University

Abstract:
The presentation addresses the following question: What are the optimum organizational conditions for the formation of virtual teams – i.e., adaptable distributed work groups that are supported by collaborative software? Addressing this question requires the interdisciplinary correlation of studies in two domains: computer supported cooperative work (CSCW), a field proper to computer science, and “organization studies,” a field
devoted to the description and prescription of forms and norms in the world of human organizations. This joint inquiry will eventuate in a model that embeds the conceptual elements of organizational learning in an advanced agent based collaborative system. The presentation integrates the two fields of Social and Organizatio nal Learning with Computer Science. The presentation traces the history of our endeavor back to 1985 when MIT and Digital Equipment Corporation organized an interdisciplinary workshop to explore
technology’s role in the work environment and coined the term “computer-supported cooperative work” (CSCW) to describe it. CSCW refers to groups that use computerized tools to support and enhance collaborative work processes. This field is also referred to by the terms GroupWare, Workflow, Office Automation, and Group Decision Support Systems.

Although the problems faced by CSCW have been considerable, it has taken only sixteen years for theory to be transformed into a robust marketplace. A recent KMPG survey of 400 companies with annual revenue exceeding $270M indicates how far CSCW has penetrated organizational life: 43% of the surveyed companies now use
groupware. Lotus Notes (the first mover in the early 90s) dominates the field with scores of competitors (e.g., InfoWorkSpace, Parlano, Groove) vying for market share. While futurists predict escalating adoptions of web based collaborative tools, CSCW research and development continues to search for solutions to the user problems posed by the multiple complexities of human interaction. Designing tools that account for these complexities has proved to be a wicked problem, one that could keep CSCW from becoming as ubiquitous as word processing or email. The primary key to success lies in user comfort with tools designed to enhance
collaborative efforts with other geo-distributed knowledge workers. Successful tools must feel like a natural extension of the user’s own cognitive powers, interpersonal capacities, and organizational functions. The problem is that virtual work, as mediated by computers, is unnatural and requires significant adaptations to approximate the comfort and productivity of real time f2f contexts. This is even more so the cases with
regard to complex and non-routine work like problem solving, conflict resolution, and deliberate innovation.

Virtual work disrupts the natural order of relations, imposes physical and temporal separation, and replaces human presence with networked information processing machines. Compelled by either desire or necessity, the knowledge workers who adopt this distributed work mode are stressed in two ways. First, they must learn how to use a new set of tools and integrate them within the work sphere they currently employ. Second, they must learn how to adapt the interpersonal and dialogical skills they have developed for f2f work.

Having a very short evolutionary history, the current generation of collaborative tools is quite primitive. They enable virtual work but not without significant hardship. We predict, however, that the situation will improve rapidly as the user base expands, becomes more refined, provides feedback to the software designers, and migrates to succeeding generation tools. The new tools will be agent enabled, will employ visualization schemata, and will be embedded with a wide range of practical knowledge. The work in CSCW suggests that intelligent software agents programmed with diverse scenarios can go far in naturalizing the user experience. The software agent is a module with which the human user interacts. In this case, the user-agent interaction takes place within an automated work environment and enables guided access to collaboration support services. Based upon cooperative work models derived in organizational studies, there are many generic CSCW agents that can be modeled using the Unified Modeling Language (UML) international standard.

In sum, the presentation will eventuate in a model of an advanced agent based collaborative system that is informed by the insights of organizational studies.

Key Words and Phrases: Organizational Learning, Knowledge Management,
Knowledge, Agents, Personal Information System, Collaboration, Organizational
Knowledge, and Organizational Architecture.