Pnina Shachaf

Cultural diversity and information and communication technology impacts on global virtual teams: An exploratory study

Modern organizations face many significant challenges because of turbulent environments and a competitive global economy. Among these challenges are the use of information and communication technology (ICT), a multicultural workforce, and organizational designs that involve global virtual teams. Ad hoc teams create both opportunities and challenges for organizations and many organizations are trying to understand how the virtual environment affects team effectiveness. Our exploratory study focused on the effects of cultural diversity and ICT on team effectiveness. Interviews with 41 team members from nine countries employed by a Fortune 500 corporation were analyzed. Results suggested that cultural diversity had a positive influence on decision-making and a negative influence on communication. ICT mitigated the negative impact on intercultural communication and supported the positive impact on decision-making. Effective technologies for intercultural communication included e-mail, teleconferencing combined with e-Meetings, and team rooms. Cultural diversity influenced selection of the communication media.

Beyond vandalism: Wikipedia trolls

Research on trolls is scarce, but their activities challenge online communities; one of the main challenges of the Wikipedia community is to fight against vandalism and trolls. This study identifies Wikipedia trolls’ behaviours and motivations, and compares and contrasts hackers with trolls; it extends our knowledge about this type of vandalism and concludes that Wikipedia trolls are one type of hacker. This study reports that boredom, attention seeking, and revenge motivate trolls; they regard Wikipedia as an entertainment venue, and find pleasure from causing damage to the community and other people. Findings also suggest that trolls’ behaviours are characterized as repetitive, intentional, and harmful actions that are undertaken in isolation and under hidden virtual identities, involving violations of Wikipedia policies, and consisting of destructive participation in the community.

The paradox of expertise: is the Wikipedia Reference Desk as good as your library?

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the quality of answers on the Wikipedia Reference Desk, and to compare it with library reference services. It aims to examine whether Wikipedia volunteers outperform expert reference librarians and exemplify the paradox of expertise.Design/methodology/approach – The study applied content analysis to a sample of 434 messages (77 questions and 357 responses) from the Wikipedia Reference Desk and focused on three SERVQUAL quality variables: reliability (accuracy, completeness, verifiability), responsiveness, and assurance.Findings – The study reports that on all three SERVQUAL measures quality of answers produced by the Wikipedia Reference Desk is comparable with that of library reference services.Research limitations/implications – The collaborative social reference model matched or outperformed the dyadic reference interview and should be further examined theoretically and empirically. The generalizability of the findings to other similar sites is questiona...

Bridging cultural diversity through e-mail

Abstract 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 teams 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.

Online communities of practice typology revisited

This paper outlines a typology for online communities of practice. The typology is based on findings from observations of three online communities of practice, a content analysis of messages, and a review of the existing literature. The three examples of communities of practice are of electronic discussion lists that cover topics of interest to university webmasters, librarians, and educators. This work expands on a typology that consolidated prior research and focused on online communities of practice within organizational settings by extending it to be inclusive of open online communities of practice that are not constrained by any organizational context. Characterizing communities of practice in this manner enables various aspects of them to be analysed, which can illuminate ways to support the implementation of effective online communities of practice for specific purposes.

Behavioral complexity theory of media selection: a proposed theory for global virtual teams

This study proposes a behavioral complexity theory for media selection in global virtual teams. This theory captures multiple contingencies into one holistic approach to media selection. Unlike existing linear and mechanistic theories of media selection, this heuristic theory moves away from the universal models that were previously proposed. The behavioral complexity theory assumes ambiguity and complexity of the media selection process in a nonlinear, organic, and holistic way. Behavioral complexity theory of media selection emphasizes the role of media repertoire, the ability of individuals to differentiate situations according to multiple contingencies, and their flexibility to effectively use multiple media in any particular situation. This theory is examined in the context of an exploratory case study of global virtual teams’ media selection in one of the leading Fortune 500 corporations.

E-Quality and E-Service Equality

Research is divided about the potential of e-service to bridge communication gaps, particularly to diverse user groups. According to the existing body of literature, e-service may increase or decrease the quality of service received. This study analyzes the level of service received by different genders and ethnic groups when public librarians answer online reference queries. Quality of e-service was evaluated along three dimensions: responsiveness, reliability, and courtesy. This study found no significant differences among different user groups along any of these dimensions, supporting the argument that the virtual environment facilitates equitable service and may overcome some challenges of diverse user groups

Knowledge sharing in online communities of practice: Digital trends

With the advent of the Internet, there has been an increase in interest in examining how information and communication technologies might support distributed communities of practice (Wenger, 2001). However, empirical studies of online communities of practice (CoPs) are sparse. Moreover, the majority of these studies are conducted within organizational context and only a few recent studies of CoPs crosses organizational boundaries. To address this disparity, this panel will compare and contrast different types of online CoPs that cross organizational boundaries. The panelists will present four case studies of online CoPs: College students, frequent flyer mileage collectors, virtual reference librarians, webmasters, and open source software developers. Each presenter will share findings from their empirical studies of specific online CoPs and will discuss implications and challenges for research and practice. Noriko Hara and Pnina Shachaf will aim to empirically ground a typology of online CoPs (Debe, Bourhis, & Jacob, 2003), which was used to analyze leadership in online CoPs (Bourhis, Debe, & Jacob, 2005). They will use this typology to analyze variations of each of the dimensions of two online CoPs. Thomas Haigh will present a study of frequent flyer online communities and how they share informal knowledge and empower themselves. Thomas Mackey will present a study of students using blogs in a class setting and discuss the impact of social software on authorship and collaboration in online communities. Robert Sandusky will present a study of knowledge sharing in an open-source software projects bug report repository. The panel moderator, Elisabeth Davenport, is an expert in social informatics and has published in the area of online communities of practice. The panel as a whole will demonstrate how the five cases that are described in the four presentations represent variations of formality of CoPs-how formal and informal CoPs are created and institutionalized. In addition, the panelists will discuss how a typology of CoP is influenced by formality and sources of power.

Social reference and digital reference: Online question answering practices in two diverse communities

This panel brings together researchers who focus on Q A sites, those that focus on digital reference, and those who bridge between the two, into what we believe will be a lively discussion.

The moral legitimacy of intellectual property and copyright as policy and code: Librarians, pirates, and the myth of the intellectual commons

Purely intra-disciplinary discussions about the legitimacy of intellectual property rights (e.g., a purely legal discussion or a theoretical discussion from within just one discipline) tend to provide an incomplete picture of the current research on this important ethical issue. This panel will address both research and practice by showcasing a triangulated approach to current thoughts on ethical issues of intellectual property rights. One approach, from philosophy, critiques the argument that intellectual property rights are illegitimate because they deplete the information commons and finds this view wanting. A second approach addresses the ethics of intellectual property infringement from the point of view of the digital pirate, asking if an ethic exists for virtual property. The third member of the panel surveys libraries and library association ethics codes that actually reference copyright and intellectual property responsibilities for the librarian. The final presentation illustrates a practitioners approach of technical writers and web designers to intellectual property. These four views in conjunction present a holistic picture of research and practice of the ethics of intellectual property policies from philosophical, legal, and professional communities.