Intellectual Teamwork: Social and Technological Foundations of Cooperative Work [Paperback]

This book seeks to establish an interdisciplinary, applied social scientific model for researchers and students that advocates a cooperative effort between machines and people. After showing that basic research on social processes offers much needed guidance for those creating technology and designing tools for group work, its papers demonstrate the mutual relevance of social science and information system design, and encourage better integration of these disciplines.

This comprehensive collection closely examines the variety of electronic tools being deployed to solve traditional problems in communication and coordination. Unfortunately, research shows that these tools have not been as successful as their designers had envisioned, partially because they were not always produced with the needs and goals of their human users in mind. The editors' goal is to entice more social scientists to orient their research around questions of practical interest to information system designers and to convince designers to search for the knowledge about social and organizational behavior that would make their tools more useful.
Contents: J. Galegher, R.E. Kraut, Technology for Intellectual Teamwork: Perspectives on Research and Design. Part I:Basic Social Processes. J.E. McGrath, Time Matters in Groups. B.A. Gutek, Work Group Structure and Information Technology: A Structural Contingency Approach. J.J. Gabarro, The Development of Working Relationships. R.M. Krauss, S.R. Fussell, Mutual Knowledge and Communicative Effectiveness. Part II:Field Studies of Collaborative Work. R.E. Kraut, C. Egido, J. Galegher, Patterns of Contact and Communication in Scientific Research Collaborations. D.G. Ancona, D.F. Caldwell, Information Technology and Work Groupl“-