Team member selection decisions for virtual versus face-to-face teams

We compared the importance placed on task skills and four personal characteristics when selecting members of virtual and face-to-face teams. We expected that task skills would be most important in selection decisions for virtual teams due to the lack of physical proximity and visibility, whereas personal characteristics would be more important for face-to-face team selection. In a policy capturing study, 100 undergraduates’ decision policies indicated that task skills had a greater impact on selection decisions for virtual teams. Gender also influenced selection decisions, with women choosing more female than male applicants for both types of teams. Applicants’ race, physical attractiveness, and attitudinal similarity to participants did not influence selection decisions for either type of team; however, when assessed by self-report evaluations, these characteristics and gender, had a greater influence for face-to-face teams.     

The contingent effects of leadership on team collaboration in virtual teams

Decision-making in virtual teams creates challenges for leaders to structure team processes and provide task support. To help advance our knowledge of leadership in virtual teams, we explore the interaction effects between leadership styles and media richness on task cohesion and cooperative climate, which in turn influence team performance in decision-making tasks. Results from a laboratory study suggest that transactional leadership behaviors improve task cohesion of the team, whereas transformational leadership behaviors improve cooperative climate within the team which, in turn, improves task cohesion. However, these effects of leadership depend on media richness. Specifically, they occur only when media richness is low. Our results also suggest that task cohesion leads to group consensus and members’ satisfaction with the discussion, whereas cooperative climate improves discussion satisfaction and reduces time spent on the task.     

The effects from technology-mediated interaction and openness in virtual team performance measures

As globalisation continues concurrent with mergers and acquisitions, transnational organisations are increasingly turning to the use of virtual teams in which members collaborate through technology-mediated interaction. Although collocated teams and virtual teams share many common characteristics including performance measures, the nature of the environments differ along several dimensions. In particular, members of virtual teams cooperate on global projects while resident in their home geographies and cultures and using various technologies to facilitate. From that context, this field study investigated virtual team performance using organisational culture as a framework.     

Genetic learning for combinational logic design

This paper investigates the effect of injection percentage on the performance of a case-injected genetic algorithm for combinational logic design. A case-injected genetic algorithm is a genetic algorithm augmented with a case-based memory of past problem solving attempts which learns to improve performance on sets of similar design problems. In this approach, rather than starting anew on each design, we periodically inject a genetic algorithms population with appropriate intermediate design solutions to similar, previously solved problems. Experimental results on a configuration design problem; the design of a parity checker, demonstrate the performance gains from our approach and show that our system learns to take less time to provide quality solutions to a new design problem as it gains experience from solving other similar design problems.See also the web page at http://www.ain-cbr.org/projects.html for a list of case-based design projects.This material is based in part upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 9624130 and in part upon work supported by the Office of Naval Research under Grant No. N00014-03-1-0104.     

Dynamic nature of trust in virtual teams

We empirically examine the dynamic nature of trust and the differences between high- and low-performing virtual teams in the changing patterns in cognition- and affect-based trust over time (early, middle, and late stages of project). Using data from 36, four-person MBA student teams from six universities competing in a web-based business simulation game over an 8-week period, we found that both high- and low-performing teams started with similar levels of trust in both cognitive and affective dimensions. However, high-performing teams were better at developing and maintaining the trust level throughout the project life. Moreover, virtual teams relied more on a cognitive than an affective element of trust. These findings provide a preliminary step toward understanding the dynamic nature and relative importance of cognition- and affect-based trust over time.     

Utilizing knowledge context in virtual collaborative work

The understanding of knowledge can be impaired if it is isolated from the proper context. Despite the importance of contextual information, there has been limited support for utilizing context in current knowledge management and collaborative systems. This paper presents a knowledge context model, called KC-V, which facilitates the use of contextual information in virtual collaborative work. Four benefits of using KC-V are suggested: evolutionary accumulation of knowledge aligned with collaborative activities, supporting the virtual team lifecycle, improved understanding by rich navigation paths, and searching for knowledge with similar context. A web-based collaboration system called VWSS is developed using KC-V.     

Teaching meta-heuristics within virtual learning environments

Modern education of operations research and management science (OR/MS) can greatly benefit from interactive learning methods in order to build and develop modeling and problem‐solving skills. In this paper we consider the teaching of meta‐heuristics as an important part of OR/MS with significant recent interest. We discuss possibilities of supporting the teaching of meta‐heuristics such as simulated annealing or tabu search through interactive learning. The paper also presents a survey of some relevant issues within VORMS (Virtual Operations Research/Management Science), a project currently undertaken at six universities within Germany, and provides a presentation of the advances regarding the teaching of meta‐heuristics within this project. Further ideas refer to incorporating hotframe, a heuristic optimization framework, into the virtual learning environment.     

The challenges of virtual partnerships: Critical success factors in the formation of inter-organisational teams

Virtual teams formed across organisational boundaries and organised around an opportunity are a relatively new area of research. A review of previous research shows that, although virtual teams have been well defined as a concept, only a few studies have contributed to the understanding of the processes of assembling and maintaining effective inter-organisational teams enabled by new modes of communication. By combining cross-disciplinary theoretical approaches, the reported study presents a conceptual overview for collective teaming in virtual settings. The findings of the study confirm that inter-organisational teams follow special development patterns, which can be described as cyclical self-energising processes.     

Organizational change and virtual teams: strategic and operational integration

Abstract. This paper focuses on the challenges involved in integrating virtual teams strategically and operationally into organizational systems. It argues that an understanding of virtual team integration must consider both the context within which virtual teams are being introduced and processes involved in their implementation. Such an approach demands that we consider the strategic rationales involved in teamworking generally, and virtual teams in particular. By looking at change processes, attention is drawn to the social, cultural and political dynamics that affect the implementation and operation of virtual teams. This analysis is used to suggest further avenues for research on virtual teams, as well as pointing to practical considerations     

Virtual team meetings: An analysis of communication and context

We report a simulation study of virtual team meetings. Participants role-played companies collaborating on a design problem while supported by a range of IT tools, such as videoconferencing and shared applications. Meetings were analysed to investigate how sharing computing facilities, operating the technology, and company status, influenced communications. Significantly more talk occurred in larger teams where participants shared I.T. facilities BUT this extra talk was restricted to talk within a single location. No extra talk was shared across the virtual team via the communications link. Where facilities were shared, technology controllers dominated cross-site talk. To encourage free communication across distributed virtual teams we recommend providing each participant with their own communications facility even if this is technologically less advanced than if technology support were shared.     

Human-systems interaction for virtual environment team training

Virtual environments are increasingly used to support collaborative activities and distance learning. However, few are designed to support students, instructors and simulations in multi-participant team training. This paper describes the Training Studio, a system for authoring, delivering and evaluating multi-participant team training in an immersed virtual environment. The Training Studio focuses on human-systems interaction, allowing multiple students to learn and perform team tasks. The Training Studio supports collaborative learning for either single or multi-participant activity. This is accomplished through the use of agents which are assigned to students to act as personal mentors or missing team members. Conducting team training within a virtual environment introduces complexities and issues unique to team training and multiple-participant virtual environments. This paper describes our approach to virtual environment team training, discussing issues confronted and resulting design considerations and implementations.     

Optimization based on a team of automata with binary outputs

This paper presents an algorithm for optimization of a multimodal scalar-argument function based on a team of learning stochastic automata with binary actions (outputs) 0 or 1. The action of the team of automata consists of a digital number which represents the environment input. The probability distribution associated with each automaton is adjusted using a modified version of the Bush-Mosteller reinforcement scheme with a continuous environment response and a time-varying correction factor. The asymptotic properties of this optimization algorithm are presented. An example illustrates the feasibility of this optimization algorithm.     

基于遗传算法的进化压力的研究

为了解影响进化压力的因素,在群体大小的选择、选择运算（Selection）、交叉运算（Crossover）三个方面进行了详细的分析。通过在遗传算法的三个阶段,选取不同的方案来解决复杂的函数优化问题的实验方法,得出了不同方案对进化压力的影响差异。时差异进行了比较分析,并对实际运用中方案的选择提出了一些建议。     

Process and technology challenges in swift-starting virtual teams

Virtual teams often face tight schedules and a need to start quickly and perform instantly. The goal of our study was to enhance understanding of the challenges faced by such teams. We used time–interaction–performance theory as the framework for following the processes and functions within virtual teams working on a systems development task. Our study provided a detailed examination of the group process, applied to virtual teams working under time pressure. The challenges faced by virtual teams in such settings showed that teams must work to enhance their effectiveness in multiple dimensions.     

Exploring factors of media characteristic influencing flow in learning through virtual worlds

This study aims to find out factors of media characteristic which are considered to influence flow in learning through virtual worlds. One hundred ninety eight elementary students who are eleven to twelve years old participated in this study. After the exploratory factor analysis, to extract media characteristics of virtual worlds, seventy-eight elementary students who are eleven years old were used in the analysis of exploring relationships between factors influencing flow.     

India network-the first case study of a virtual community

In this paper, we describe the historical development of a virtual community of Asian Indians and how the Internet helped create such a network. The Indian Network is the oldest e-mail network serving the Asian Indian community around the world. Although it is physically located in the United States, it serves members in more than 75 countries, providing them with news, information and advice. A detailed discussion on problems and issues in establishing an Internet-based network is provided in the paper. In addition, the advantages of the Internet in building a virtual community of immigrant populations separated by thousands of miles physically, but just an e-mail away are outlined. This paper will be of use to those interested in developing community networks for other communities. It will also help experts in computer science and information technology develop software tools to meet the challenges in aiding development of virtual communities. Another important contribution of these specialized lists is our ability to reach the community for research purposes which otherwise would be impossible. The credit card usage study and membership survey results are discussed towards the end of the paper.     

Software segmented virtual memory

The techniques of paged virtual memory, commonly employed only in large operating systems, can be provided at the software level by a small collection of primitive procedures. This paper defines the primitives and their implementation. The techniques of applying software virtual memory are also discussed, and these techniques are useful for compilers, database systems, and other applications in which large amounts of random access memory are required. Other benefits of using software virtual memory are transportability, modularity in program design, implementation on mini and microcomputers, and improved speed performance over alternative approaches.