Virtual teams and human work interaction design - Learning to work in and designing for virtual teams

Abstract

The boundaries and work processes for how virtual teams interact are undergoing changes, from a tool and stand-alone application orientation, to the use of multiple generic platforms chosen and redesigned to the specific context. These are often at the same time designed both by professional software developers and the individual members of the virtual teams, rather than determined on a single organizational level. There may be no impact of the technology per se on individuals, groups or organizations, as the technology for virtual teams rather enhance situation ambiguity and disrupt existing task-artifact cycles. This ambiguous situation calls for new methods for empirical work analysis and interaction design that can help us understand how organizations, teams and individuals learn to organize, design and work in virtual teams in various networked contexts. © 2009 Springer Berlin Heidelberg.