In today's global competitive environment, many organizations utilize virtual workgroups to overcome geographic and organizational boundaries. Research into their dynamics has received the attention of scholars within multiple disciplines, and the potential for an integrative approach to the study of virtual workgroups exists. This dissertation is a first step towards such an approach. The primary aim of this research is to examine antecedent and contextual factors that affect the emergence and effectiveness of leaders in virtual workgroups. To achieve this aim, an integrative model assembled from theory and empirical findings in leadership, management, social identity, and communications research is posited. Hypothesized relationships depicted in the model identify key dispositional and contextual variables linked to leader emergence, member behavior, and leader effectiveness within virtual workgroups. This study employed a nonexperimental research design, in which leader emergence and social identity manifest as naturally occurring phenomena. Data collection occurred via two web-based surveys administered at different points in time. Hypothesized relationships were tested utilizing correlational and hierarchical moderated multiple regression analyses. The findings of this dissertation suggest that traits, such as personality and cognitive ability, are not associated with leader emergence in virtual workgroups. In addition, the results indicate that the exhibition of relationship-oriented leader behaviors enhances group identity. In turn, identification is associated with increases in perceptions of leader effectiveness and decreases in counterproductive behavior exhibited by group members. This dissertation exposes an important limitation to the application of trait leadership theory. It also demonstrates the importance of relationship-oriented behavior and social identity in virtual contexts. Further, it advances an integrative theoretical model for the study of virtual workgroup phenomena. These contributions should assist and inform other researchers, as well as practitioners, interested in leadership and group member behavior in virtual workgroups.

Knowledge-sharing practices are all the actions aimed at improving the internal flow and use of knowledge within a virtual team. The collective knowledge of team members only becomes powerful if it is shared among those who possess common goals. The main purpose of this study was to explore the knowledge-sharing practices of Hogan Lovells’ virtual team of legal information professionals and establish how these practices could be enhanced in order to provide a superior information service to the firm’s lawyers. Hogan Lovells is a multinational law firm with offices in South Africa and England, and its virtual team of legal information professionals were experiencing challenges in sharing knowledge. The study adopted a qualitative methodology and a case-study research design. Interview guides were used to collect qualitative data from study Participants. Out of the 23 potential interviewees from the London and Johannesburg team who were purposively selected as the target population for the study, the researcher interviewed 14 on reaching the point of saturation. The Participants interviewed were in possession of suitable information related to the objectives of the study. Qualitative data collected were analysed using content analysis; findings were then made from the completed analysis. From the findings, it emerged that there were several gaps in the knowledge-sharing practices. Several enablers to the knowledge-sharing practices by legal information professionals were identified. The study recommended several ways by which the knowledge-sharing practices at Hogan Lovells’ virtual team of legal information professionals may be enhanced, amongst which are: formalising team meetings as a virtual community of practice, stimulating informal peer mentoring, valuing storytelling and regularly conducting After-Action Reviews. In addition to this, the virtual team should use other knowledge-sharing practices, such as brainstorming, subject-matter experts, and face-to-face virtual meetings. The study suggested that additional studies, particularly surveys and quantitative studies, be conducted on other virtual teams of legal information professionals in South Africa in order to explore their knowledge-sharing practices. / Information Science / M. A. (Information Science)

O Design Participativo (DP) originou-se na Escandinávia em meados dos anos 70, em um momento em que os trabalhadores, por meio de sindicatos trabalhistas, reivindicavam um maior empoderamento no processo de tomada de decisão para a adoção da tecnologia em seu ambiente de trabalho. O DP tornou-se uma metodologia que aborda o envolvimento de designers e não designers trabalhando em conjunto nas atividades de design de um projeto por meio de práticas participativas. Tais práticas de DP são comumente exploradas de forma presencial, que por sua vez, utilizam técnicas de DP que auxiliam a mediá-las. Justificado pela carência de práticas de Design Participativo Distribuído (DPD), em que os stakeholders envolvidos estão dispersos geograficamente, esta dissertação de mestrado apresenta os benefícios, limitações e adaptações necessárias para adoção de técnicas de DP em práticas de DPD por meio de sistemas colaborativos. Escolheu-se a técnica de BrainDraw para ser investigada no escopo deste estudo e buscar respostas para as questões desta pesquisa. Os resultados desta dissertação envolvem uma analogia entre as fases da metodologia de DP definida por Spinuzzi e o estudo sobre práticas de DP no ciclo de vida do desenvolvimento de software de Muller, Hallewell e Dayton, que propicia condições para que pesquisadores e desenvolvedores decidam sobre quais técnicas de DP são mais indicadas para serem empregadas em contextos distribuídos. Também foi realizada a análise de requisitos, por meio de oficinas participativas, para um sistema colaborativo denominado de Sistema DEA (Design Participativo em Ação), para adoção de práticas de BrainDraw em contexto distribuído. O desenvolvimento do protótipo do Sistema DEA e a avaliação empírica e participativa do mesmo foram realizadas com o propósito de buscar respostas para o objetivo desta pesquisa. A partir dos resultados coletados durante a avaliação, apresenta-se os benefícios, diferenças e adaptações para a adoção do BrainDraw por meio de sistemas colaborativos. Por fim, detalhe-se também as principais contribuições desta pesquisa para a computação e para a sociedade, além de discussões sobre suas respectivas limitações e trabalhos futuros. / Participatory Design (PD) originated in Scandinavia in the mid-1970s, in a period that workers, through labor unions, were requesting more empowerment in the decision-making process related to adoption of technology in the workplace. PD became a methodology that addresses involvement of designers and non-designers working together in design activities of a project through participatory practices. Those PD’s practices are commonly explored with co-located participants, using PD’s techniques to support and mediate interaction across participants. Justified by absence of Distributed Participatory Design’s practices (DPD), which stakeholders are located in different geographic spaces, this master’s thesis presents the benefits, limitations and adaptations necessary to adopt PD’s techniques in DPD’s practices through collaborative systems. The BrainDraw technique was chosen to be investigated in the scope of this study and to help finding answers for this research questions. The results of this research involve an analogy between the phases of the PD methodology defined by Spinuzzi and PD practices in the software development life cycle by Muller, Hallewell and Dayton, that helps researchers and developers to decide about which technique of PD is more suitable to be used in distributed contexts. It also presents three participatory workshops for requirements analysis of a collaborative system called DEA System (Participatory Design in Action) to adopt practices of BrainDraw in a distributed context. The development and empirical and participatory evaluation of DEA System were conducted with the purpose of seeking answers to the objective of this research. Based on this research’s results, we present benefits, differences and necessary adaptations identified to conduct BrainDraw practices in distributed contexts through collaborative systems. Finally, we present the contributions of this research to Computer Science area and to society, and also some discussions about its limitations and future works.

This project extended COLLDESIGN, an interactive collaborative modeling tool that was developed by Mr. Hara Totapally. The initial version included a collaborative framework comprised of configurable client and server components. This project accomplished a complete implementation of the Class Diagram view. In addition, extending the framework, text messaging and audio conferencing features have been implemented to allow for real-time textual and audio communication between team members working on a particular project. VideoClient is the GUI of the application.

The purpose of this project is to use Java technology to create an instant messenger application that could be used by any person who has the basic knowledge of working with a graphical user interface. The goal here is to develop an application that provides communication to users running different operating systems.

No description available.

In this project a collaboration multimedia toolkit, JSCMT (Java Synchronized Collaborative Multimedia Toolkit) was developed which is intended to connect a group of people located in different geographical locations who are working on the same project.