Youngjin Yoo

Media and group cohesion: relative influences on social presence, task participation, and group consensus

Organizations deploy advanced communication media such as audio and videoconferencing to enhance and extend group communication interactions. However, established groups (i.e., groups with a history of working together) can view and use the same technology differently from groups without any past experiences of working together. This study examines the relative influences of media condition and group cohesion on social presence, task participation, and group consensus. Results from a controlled laboratory experiment with 45 triads of college students working on a decision-making task showed that media condition (audio conferencing vs. desktop videoconferencing) has significantly smaller influences on social presence and task participation than group cohesion in established groups. The study found that influence of group cohesion over social presence is additive, rather than substitutive, to that of media condition. The study also established that task participation played a more important role than social presence in determining the degree of consensus among group members in computer-mediated communication environments.

Research Commentary: The Next Wave of Nomadic Computing

A nomadic information environment is a heterogeneous assemblage of interconnected technological, and social, and organizational elements that enable the physical and social mobility of computing and communication services between organizational actors both within and across organizational borders. We analyze such environments based on their prevalent features of mobility, digital convergence, and mass scale, along with their mutual interdependencies. By using a framework that organizes research topics in nomadic information environments at the individual, team, organizational, and inter organizational levels and is comprised of both service and infrastructure development, we assess the opportunities and challenges for IS research. These deal with the design, use, adoption, and impacts of nomadic information environments. We conclude by discussing research challenges posed by nomadic information environments for information systems research skills and methods. These deal with the need to invent novel research methods and shift our research focus, the necessity to question the divide between the technical and the social, and the need to better integrate developmental and behavioral (empirical) research modes.

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.

It's all about attitude: revisiting the technology acceptance model

We expanded Davis et al.s technology acceptance model (TAM) by considering both the affective and the cognitive dimensions of attitude and the hypothesized internal hierarchy among beliefs, cognitive attitude, affective attitude and information systems (IS) use. While many of the earlier findings in TAM research were confirmed, the mediating role of affective attitude between cognitive attitude and IS use was not supported. Our results cast doubts on the use of the affective attitude construct in explaining IS use. Meanwhile, we found that cognitive attitude is an important variable to consider in explaining IS usage behaviors. Our results suggest that attitude deserves more attention in IS research for its considerable influence on the individual and organizational usage of IS.

Using Information Technology to Add Value to Management Education

This article describes the design and delivery of a graduate-level course in management at two universities via advanced information technology, which was used to enable collaborative learning, tea...

Emergent leadership in virtual teams: what do emergent leaders do?

Abstract We conducted an exploratory study to examine the behaviors and roles that are enacted by emergent leaders in virtual team settings. Specifically, we analyzed quantitative and qualitative data to identify differences between team members who emerged as leaders and as non-leaders in terms of their behavior as manifested in their electronic mail messages. The longitudinal study involved seven ad hoc and temporary virtual teams composed of senior executives of a US federal government agency who participated in an executive development program at a university. The study indicated that overall, the emergent leaders sent more and longer email messages than their team members did. The number of task-oriented messages, particularly those that were related to logistics coordination, sent by emergent leaders was higher than that of non-leaders. However, there were no differences between emergent leaders and non-leaders in terms of expertise-related messages. No significant differences in relationship-oriented and technology management messages between emergent leaders and other team members existed. Furthermore, the emergent leaders enacted three roles: initiator, scheduler, and integrator. These findings are discussed and their implications for research and practice are described in the paper.

The role of standards in innovation and diffusion of broadband mobile services: The case of South Korea

Abstract We explore the evolution of the mobile infrastructure in South Korea through the lens of actor network theory. In particular, we analyze the roles of standards in promoting, enabling and constraining innovation in broadband mobile services over a 10-year period. During this period, Korea moved from the position of a follower to the forefront of the mobile computing revolution by erecting one of the worlds most advanced broadband mobile infrastructures. Our study shows how CDMA standards shaped specific configurations of actor networks that enabled the fast and aggressive development and deployment of 2G mobile infrastructures and a rapid transition to 3G services. These actor networks span three separate and critical realms of activities: the regulatory regime, the innovation system, and the market place. Our in-depth case analysis shows how specific connections and events across these three realms promoted the rapid expansion and deployment of mobile services in Korea. Our study suggests that successful innovation and diffusion of broadband mobile services are collective achievements and firms need to deploy strategies that enable them to mobilize broad socio-technical networks that include technological, institutional, political and financial resources. At the heart of such strategies, standards play critical roles as they mediate different interests and motivations among participating actors.

The Next Wave of Digital Innovation: Opportunities and Challenges: A Report on the Research Workshop 'Digital Challenges in Innovation Research'

The turn of the millennium is marked by rapid developments in digital technologies. The ubiquity of digitalization is one of the primary forces behind innovations across a wide range of product and service categories. In order to create an initial forum for scholars from different fields, and to establish a preliminary theoretical framework that can guide future scholarly research on digital innovations, we organized an interdisciplinary research workshop, entitled “Digital Challenges in Innovation Research”, held on October 18 – 20, 2008 at Temple University. This report documents major themes from the workshop, highlighting the new opportunities and challenges associated with digital innovation. The workshop participants identified three design characteristics of digital technology that play pivotal roles in facilitating digital innovations: (1) the homogenization of digital data, (2) the programmable digital computing architecture, and (3) the self-referential nature of digital technologies. Furthermore, the participants saw digitalized products as having seven material properties: programmability, addressability, senesability, memorability, communicability, traceability, and associability, which lead to the emergence of loose coupling across the four layers of a digital service architecture, which includes devices, networks, services and contents. The main challenges and opportunities for innovation outcomes emerge primarily from convergence and digital materiality. First, new research opportunities lie in understanding different forms and capabilities of ongoing digital convergence. Second, another set of research issues are associated with new entrepreneurial opportunities that emerge from embedding digital capabilities into non-digital products and services. Finally, the increased use of digital tools and the interpenetration of digital and physical materiality in work practices offer new sets of challenges and opportunities that need to be carefully investigated. The primary factors that affect innovation processes are heterogeneity, generativity, locus of innovation and pace. First, the combination of heterogeneity, generativity, and distributed locus of innovation leads to the emergence of dynamic, non-linear patterns of digital innovation. Developing and validating analytic models to understand how heterogeneous actors at the periphery of digital innovation networks are related to innovation patterns will be an important challenge for innovation scholars. Second, understanding the temporal dynamics of digital innovations provides another important opportunity for future innovation research. Finally, future research should investigate the multi-layered nature of organizational transformations that are associated with the digitalization of products. The report concludes with six broad recommendations for future research: multi-disciplinary research, design scholarship, multi-methods approach, taking data seriously, understanding infrastructure, and theorizing digital technology.

Editorial: Social impacts of ubiquitous computing: Exploring critical interactions between mobility, context and technology

Computing is becoming ubiquitous. A knowledge worker s use of computing and communication services is less limited to solitary moments at an office desk. Instead, it is extending in multifaceted ways to all aspects of her life, both public and private. Much of the organizational processes and tasks are mediated through embedded computing devices that form part of the physical environment or move around with the workers, physical objects and products. Consequently, managing and organizing in the future will involve multifaceted engagements with an intelligent computing environment through a rich array of interaction methods including desk-top devices, mobile communicators, digital assistants, wrist-watches, play-consoles, clothing, RFIDs and motes, just to name a few. These engagements amplify digitization of all types of information leading to new forms of service, organization and strategy based on anytime, any place computing. As shown in Fig. 1, three distinct, yet interrelated, elements – mobility, context and technology – underpin the everyday socio-technical experience of ubiquitous computing. The dynamic composition and interplay of these elements define ubiquitous computing experience which makes it different from traditional computing experience where relationships among these elements are more predictable and assumed to be stable. Mobility covers all facets of moving or being moved across time and space including people, objects or services. Context refers to the physical and social situation in which computing services are embedded and experienced. Technologies deal with capabilities and their diversification at hand in a context that allows users to deploy a rich array of services while they move. As users move, the context in which computing service is rendered and experienced changes. Each of these three elements also involves inherent complexity and multiplicity. Past studies on mobility suggest that mobility need to be understood at multiple

Socio-Technical Studies of Mobility and Ubiquity

represents the first IFIP Working Group 8.2 conferencededicated to mobile and ubiquitous computing. It is, furthermore, only the third timean IFIP 8.2 Working Conference has been organized around an emerging informationtechnology. In 1989, the working conference was dedicated to the technology of thattime: desktop information technology. In 1992, the conference investigated the prac-tices of using computer-aided software engi neering (CASE) tools for software develop-ment. The 2005 conference is related to the 1989 conference in that the maturity ofubiquitous computing today is at about the same level as desktop computing technologywas in 1989. In 2004, IFIP Working Group 8.2 marked the 20