Artificial Intelligence Lab, Department of MIS, University of Arizona / This paper describes a study to explore the integration of Group Support Systems (GSS) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology to provide solicitation, analytical, visualization and sense-making support for attitudes from large distributed marketing focus groups. The paper describes two experiments and the concomitant evolutionary design and development of an attitude analysis process and the MindMine Comment Analysis Tool. The analysis process circumvents many of the problems associated with traditional data gathering via closed-ended questionnaires and potentially biased interviews by providing support for online free response evaluative comments. MindMine allows teams of raters to analyze comments from any source, including electronic meetings, discussion groups or surveys, whether they are Web-based or same-place. The analysis results are then displayed as visualizations that enable the team quickly to make sense of attitudes reflected in the comment set, which we believe provide richer information and a more detailed understanding of attitudes.

The implementation of global virtual teams presents modern organizations with significant challenges, such as a multicultural workforce and the use of information and communication technology. Cultural diversity increases teamwork complexity and may weaken a team's effectiveness and jeopardize its viability. Selection and implementation of appropriate information technology may facilitate group processes and overcome potential barriers created by team heterogeneity. This study illustrates how e-mail mitigates intercultural miscommunication. Interviews with 41 global virtual team members in nine countries, who were employed by a multinational corporation, were transcribed and analyzed. The use of e-mail improves language accuracy, mitigates intercultural miscommunication resulting from verbal differences among team members, and eliminates nonverbal differences. Only future studies can determine the extent of this mitigation.

In this thesis I inquire how an interdependent relationship is perceived to affect virtual team member’s interaction and the process of developing knowledge in the team. In order to explore these issues a qualitative case study was conducted and data gathered through the subjective experiences of team members constituting a virtual team in Statoil through the following research question: How is the interdependent relationship between virtual team members perceived to affect interaction and the process of developing knowledge in the team? In this thesis an interdependent relationship is understood as team members relating to each other as individuals that are mutually dependent on and responsible for the team’s actions. This interdependent relationship is the fundament for interaction in which team members build on and refine each other’s ideas and knowledge in order to reach their common goals and objectives. Principles from dialogue techniques, by the concepts of perspective making and perspective taking, are elaborated as a means to support interdependent interaction and knowledge creation in the virtual team. The empirical findings in this particular case study suggest that the informants perceive their interdependent and technologically mediated relationship to represent both challenges and possibilities in relation to their interaction and the process of developing knowledge within the team. Further, acknowledging this interdependent relationship and having the capacity to take the other’s perspective, seems decisive in order to develop shared understanding, complementary knowledge and high-quality decisions in the virtual team. The main findings in this study are: The interdependent relationship between the virtual team members is perceived characterized by involvement, vulnerability, power and shared responsibility Trust is seen as a vital precondition for interaction between the interdependent virtual team members Developing a shared situational understanding through listening to other’s perspectives seems crucial in order to utilize the potential for developing knowledge in the virtual team

In many instances of virtual machine deployments today, virtual machine instances are created to support a single application. Traditional operating systems provide an extensive framework for protecting one process from another. In such deployments, this protection layer becomes an additional source of overhead as isolation between services is provided at an operating system level and each instance of an operating system supports only one service. This makes the operating system the equivalent of a process from the traditional operating system perspective. Isolation between these operating systems and indirectly the services they support, is ensured by the virtual machine monitor in these deployments. In these scenarios the process protection provided by the operating system becomes redundant and a source of additional overhead. We propose a new model for these scenarios with operating systems that bypass this redundant protection offered by the traditional operating systems. We prototyped such an operating system by executing parts of the operating system in the same protection ring as user applications. This gives processes more power and access to kernel memory bypassing the need to copy data from user to kernel and vice versa as is required when the traditional ring protection layer is enforced. This allows us to save the system call trap overhead and allows application program mers to directly call kernel functions exposing the rich kernel library. This does not compromise security on the other virtual machines running on the same physical machine, as they are protected by the VMM. We illustrate the design and implementation of such a system with the Xen hypervisor and the XenoLinux kernel.

Banyan Work Health Solutions is a national provider of rehabilitation case management services. Banyan's workforce are mainly independent contractors, and its structure is virtual. In 2012, Banyan experienced its highest growth ever, and also set ambitious targets for the next five years. Banyan assumed that high engagement would lead to high results, and wanted to understand what factors promoted high engagement in its top-performing Work Health Consultants. Through the use of action research, and specifically through the deployment of an engagement survey and focus groups, this inquiry identified factors promoting engagement in that community. Research sub-questions related to determining the current state of engagement and actions Banyan could take to enhance engagement. Findings confirmed high engagement in general, but low engagement in lower-tenure consultants. Recommendations suggested Banyan's leadership continue to focus on effective practices, and supplement these with specific initiatives for new consultants. This study was of minimal risk and adhered to RRU Ethical Guidelines.

As the technology develops, the communication infrastructure continues to innovate and increase competitiveness. For companies in a country such as Brazil, communicating virtually may be very beneficial in order to become more efficient, as well as more global. Due to today’s technological development and globalization, virtual teamwork has increased. For virtual teamwork to be successful, the importance of virtual leadership needs to be addressed by the organizations. Thus, the purpose of this study is to investigate leadership in a virtual context with focus on its effect on teamwork in culturally diverse teams. Furthermore, due to its emerging market and economic relevance, this study will examine virtual leaders of multinational companies in Brazil. From our dialogues we found that there is a lack of technological infrastructure, education, and positive attitude for virtual communication and virtual leadership within multinational companies in Brazil. Brazil as a country, as well as companies in Brazil, needs to provide opportunities and possibilities for excellent virtual communication and leadership. For instance, facetual communication and attication are important concepts on the way for companies of becoming virtualized.

The problems of maintaining software systems are well documented. The increasing size and complexity of modern software serves only to worsen matters. Software maintainers are typically confronted with very large and very complex software systems, of which they may have little or no prior knowledge. At this stage they will normally have some maintenance task to perform, though possibly little indication of where or how to start. They need to investigate and understand the software to some extent in order to begin maintenance. This understanding process is termed program comprehension. There are various theories on program comprehension, many of which put emphasis on the construction of a mental model of the software within the mind of the maintainor. These same theories hypothesise a number of techniques employed by the maintainer for the creation and revision of this mental model. Software visualisation attempts to provide tool support for generating, supplementing and verifying the maintainer’s mental model. The majority of software visualisations to date have concentrated on producing two dimensional representations and animations of various aspects of a software system. Very little work has been performed previously regarding the issues involved in visualising software within a virtual reality environment. This research represents a significant first step into this exciting field and offers insight into the problems posed by this new media. This thesis provides an identification of the possibilities afforded byU3D graphics for software visualisation and program comprehension. It begins by defining seven key areas of 3D software visualisation, followed by the definition of two terms, visualisation and representation. These two terms provide a conceptual division between a visualisation and the elements of which it is comprised. This division enables improved discussion of the properties of a 3D visualisation and particularly the idenfification of properties that are desirable for a successful visualisation. A number of such desirable properties are suggested for both visualisations and representations, providing support for the design and evaluation of a 3D software visualisation system. Also presented are a number of prototype visualisations, each providing a different approach to the visualisation of a software system. The prototypes help demonstrate the practicalities and feasibility of 3D software visualisation. Evaluation of these prototypes is performed using a variety of techniques, the results of which emphasise the fact that there is substantial potential for the application of 3D graphics and virtual reality to software visualisation.

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Typescript. / Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hawaii at Manoa, 1975. / Bibliography: leaves 226-230. / x, 230 leaves ill

Tesis (Master in Science in Information Technology) -- Tecnológico de Monterrey, Campus Monterrey. / Título tomado de la pantalla de presentación [como fue visto el 30 de agosto de 2006] Incluye referencias bibliográficas. También disponible en formato impreso.