Social loafing is a growing concern for modern organizations. With advancement in computer technology, virtual tools are used more frequently to communicate, which may allow social loafing to occur in new and unfamiliar forms. The intent of this thesis is to examine social loafing through the use of virtual tools, and to analyze whether collective orientation has a moderating influence on the relationship between social loafing and virtuality. 30 teams, each containing four participants, were randomly assigned to a condition of virtuality (i.e., instant messaging or videoconferencing). Participants then completed a computer simulation task in which social loafing, collective orientation of the team, and team performance were measured.

Multiteam systems are an integral part of our daily lives. We witness these entities in natural disaster responses teams, such as the PB Oil Spill and Hurricane Katrina, governmental agencies, such as the CIA and FBI, working behind the scenes to preemptively disarm terrorist attacks, within branches of the Armed Forces, within our organizations, and in science teams aiming to find a cure for cancer (Goodwin, Essens, & Smith, 2012; Marks & Luvison, 2012). Two key features of the collaborative efforts of multiteam systems are the exchange of information both within and across component team boundaries as well as the virtual tools employed to transfer information between teams (Keyton, Ford, & Smith, 2012; Zaccaro, Marks, & DeChurch, 2012). The goal of this dissertation was to shed light on enabling the effectiveness of multiteam systems. One means of targeting this concern was to provide insight on the underpinnings of MTS mechanism and how they evolve. The past 20 years of research on teams supports the central role of motivational and affective states (Kozlowski & Ilgen, 2006; and Mathieu, Maynard, Rapp, & Gibson, 2008) as critical drivers of performance. Therefore it was my interest to understand how these critical team mechanisms unravel at the multiteam system level and understanding how they influence the development of other important multiteam system processes and emergent states. Specifically, this dissertation focused on the influence motivational and affective emergent states (such as multiteam efficacy and multiteam trust) have on shaping behavioral processes (such as information sharing-unique and open) and cognitive emergent states (such as Transactive memory systems and shared mental models). Findings from iv this dissertation suggest that multiteam efficacy is a driver of open information sharing in multiteam systems and both types of cognitive emergent states (transactive memory systems and shared mental models). Multiteam trust was also found to be a critical driver of open information sharing and the cognitive emergent state transactive memory systems. Understanding that these mechanisms do not evolve in isolation, it was my interest to study them under a growing contextual state that is continuously infiltrating our work lives today, under virtual collaboration. This dissertation sought to uncover how the use of distinct forms of virtual tools, media rich tools and media retrievability tools, enable multiteam systems to develop needed behavioral processes and cognitive emergent states. Findings suggest that the use of media retrievability tools interacted with the task mental models in promoting the exchange of unique information both between and within component teams of a multiteam system. The implications of these findings are twofold. First, since both motivational and affective emergent states of members within multiteam systems are critical drivers of behavioral processes, cognitive emergent states, and in turnmultiteam system performance; future research should explore how we can diagnose as well as target the development of multiteam system level efficacy and trust. Second, the virtual communication tools that providemultiteam systems members the ability to review discussed materials at a later point in time are critical for sharing information both within and across component teams depending on the level of shared cognition that multiteam system members possess of the task.Therefore the ability to encourage the use and provide such tools for collaborative purposes is beneficial for the successful collaboration of multiteam systems.

No description available.

This thesis investigates the role of the term plot in mediating relations between architecture and narrativity. Examining organisational strategies in the creation of real and virtual spaces, it identifies literary works by novelists who have resisted, or subverted, plot conventions in fiction (Joris-Karl Huysmans, Edmond de Goncourt, Xavier de Maistre and Neal Stephenson), and introduces architectural spaces such as Thomas Edison’s film-studio Black Maria, and the plotless productions of early cinematography, to juxtapose concepts of plot and spatiality in a study of the production and consumption of pre-digital virtual spaces. Plot here relates therefore both to narrative sequentiality and spatial organisation – from "storyline" to "ground plan". The "plotless" narrative structure of Huysmans, Goncourt and de Maistre focuses on the interaction between man – the "writerin- residence" – and his domestic interior, functioning as an excitant or stimulant for the production of both material and imagined spaces. The media culture of late 19th century society saw the first significant attempts at moving image technology and its related spatialities – the Black Maria, the kinetoscope, the kinetograph, and the films produced by these, which had yet to find a narrative form. The architecture of the plotless novels and the proto-cinematic experiments of the late 19th century modulate between physical reality and fiction. They are ripe in their descriptive narrativity, expanding in the imagination of the consumer. Stephenson’s imaginative transposition of book media into a "Primer" – a new form of narrative media that develops its narrative content directly from the environmental context of its reader – concludes the discussion of the thesis, highlighting interrelations between fictive and real space, influencing both writer and reader. The refusal of narrative plot deprives the reader of causality, but emphasises the fictitious spatial creation in which the reader becomes immersed. These spaces, by virtue of their disengagement from plot, allow us to revisit the possibilities of virtual space without common preconceptions concerning the creation or experience of digital mediating technology.

This diploma thesis is outlining the topic of virtual teams in the work context dealing with cooperation in virtual teams. In this frame it focuses mainly on communication, trust, motivation and performance. The theoretical part is devoted to the differences between the working group and a team, group cooperation in the work environment and multicultural cooperation specifics. It defines the social psychological work aspects in the context of virtuality and draws nearer up-to date findings of the vitual teamwork area. The leadership and coordination of virtual teams and the role of a leader are also touched. The empirical part of the thesis introduces a research of mapping the topic of cooperation within virtual teams using the methodological triangulation. The issue of virtual teams is seen in the organizational context from virtual team leaders' point of view. A point of view of other team members is also noticed. In the mapping study are investigated the most frequently occuring themes of communication, trust, motivation and performance or virtual teams leadership, respectively. This study also indicates the possible advantages offered by this way of work organization and similarly, it presents possible risks, which may be encountered when working with geographically distributed teams. Keywords...

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-25T19:20:33Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Welliton Rogerio Barros Moraes.pdf: 5836589 bytes, checksum: f19f3046b3e3787f337a5a9a6fc114e1 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2014-11-27 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / This dissertation aims to establish correlations between virtuality technology, promoted by computer systems, and the symbolic universe, created by religious affiliation in which the phenomenon of trance exerts primary function. The prerogative postulated for this work is that the expansion and multiplication of realities arising from the intensification of the current use of technology gives the individual communication skills beyond their biological capacity, which in parallel pathways dialogues with religious experiences that involve contacts with extraordinary universes. This argument is unsubstantiated by theorists who have studied the subject and supported by individuals who make religious use of ayahuasca for at least five years, who were subject of case study in this research / Essa dissertação objetiva estabelecer correlações entre a virtualidade tecnológica, promovida pelos sistemas computacionais, e o universo simbólico, criado pelas pertenças religiosas nas quais o fenômeno do transe exerce função primordial. A prerrogativa postulada por esse trabalho é de que a expansão e a multiplicação das realidades decorrentes da atual intensificação do uso da tecnologia conferem ao indivíduo habilidades de comunicação além da sua capacidade biológica, o que por vias paralelas dialoga com experiências religiosas que pressupõem contatos com universos extraordinários. Essa argumentação é substanciada por teóricos que se debruçaram sobre o tema e corroborada por indivíduos que fazem uso religioso da ayahuasca há pelo menos cinco anos, que foram objeto de estudo de caso nessa pesquisa

This PhD provides insight into designing. It offers a view on the nature and structures of design research proposing that design research occurs within the activity of designing. As a case study, the PhD provides an internal view of the emergent design process of a collaborative architecture design practice terroir. It proposes a way, (the 'design-place'), in which design by collaboration operates within complex and often contradictory contexts. The thesis deals with questions of design in a contemporary, cosmopolitan condition and proposes that within such a condition design is an ethical endeavour. A key underlying proposition of the thesis is that architecture is fundamentally a critical activity. The PhD concludes by demonstrating through design projects how terroir has explored these questions in producing designs that operate at the level of personal and subjective experience in opening up a public, cosmopolitan realm.

Sexual difference has emerged in the last three decades as an enduring question for feminism. Drawing attention to the embodied nature of subjectivity, it enables feminists to counter the more insidious presumptions of universality and the phallocentric economy of knowledge production, and makes possible feminine expressions of subjectivity. At the same time, engaging the nature of difference has opened the way to a more detailed interrogation of identity, specifically the identity of ' woman' and 'the feminine' as categories of feminist analysis. However, tensions have emerged within this field over the concept of community, and how to motivate for political change on the basis of a common identity when the identity of woman is itself contested. In tracing these arguments, this thesis raises a number of considerations about the way difference is understood. It finds that a conceptual commitment to the specificity of the body as properly constitutive of the political can run the risk of sidelining, denigrating and presuming to excise what appears as universal, masculine, or phallocentric. In doing so, it potentially leaves aside a full political engagement with the generative and implicated nature of these terms in the formation of all identity. Consequently, questions around thought, universality, virtuality, and disembodiment may not be given full consideration, with the outcome that feminism may be foreclosing its political domain from important formative concerns. The primary aim of this thesis is to open these categories of analysis to question, to understand how they have been constructed in debates around difference, and to bring to light some of the assumptions which remain axiological to what properly constitutes feminist politics. Engaging Luce Irigaray's reading of divinity for community and identity, this thesis argues that if the implicated nature of identity is taken seriously then the organising categories fundamental to notions of political action and community become a general field of difference which exceeds the reach of feminist politics as it currently stands.

Research pertaining to the role of active online internationalization (AOI) in the context of Born Globals has been shown to be an under-researched area of study. This compelled us to explore the possible benefits and challenges that may come from pursuing AOI for Swedish Born Globals. Our theoretical framework combined literature concerning Born Globals and their rapid internationalization with the notion of learning advantages of newness and literature regarding AOI into a theoretical model. Our theoretical investigation displayed a lack of research dealing with the potential challenges of AOI; with the virtuality trap of Yamin and Sinkovics (2006) being the exception. Through abductively analyzing qualitative data collected from four Swedish Born Globals with our theoretical model, we arrived at a number of empirically testable propositions that highlight the effects of using AOI for Swedish Born Globals. Our analysis leads to the conclusion that there are more challenges for Swedish Born Globals pursuing AOI than previously identified by present literature.

The thesis investigates alternative visions of democracy through a design project that allows different public groups and individuals to more actively participate in the political realm. The site for the proposed project is the UN Headquarters in New York City, chosen for its juxtaposition of old and new world orders. The project manifests its vision through an architectural representation intended as a platform of multiplicities. Using tools from the backdrop of everyday life: security needs and communication, it attempts to break the static nature of the UN by making it more interactive--like the borderless, virtual world of the Internet we increasingly inhabit today-- and through its new architectural framework to create a self-perpetuating system for social justice.