Designing an 'electronic village' of local interest on tourism: The eKoNES framework

Abstract

This paper presents the baseline of a framework for building electronic villages of local interest as communities of practice. In this context, an electronic village is considered as a multi-sector virtual organization in which electronic squads are formed as coalitions of representatives from different sectors to work together for a period of time to realize a common mission. We assume tight coupling between the virtual organization and a physical space to differentiate the electronic village of local interest from the notion of the global electronic village. In light of the above, the paper focuses on two primary issues: namely, the stimulation and organization of collaborative work by virtual teams/squads and the design of 'collective' artifacts in an exemplar case in the context of eKoNES-Tourism - a pilot electronic village on regional tourism.