Abstract
A major advantage of Virtual Organizations (VOs) is flexible membership and participation. VO members are able to join and leave VOs at will, and can change whom they collaborate with at any point in time. Such flexibility may make VOs more efficient in the completion of collaborative work than traditional organizations. However, efficiency is only one of several measures of organizational performance; and flexibility in a virtual organization includes both how VO structures may be more fluid and adaptive, and how VO leadership emerges and evolves throughout the VO lifecycle. The aim of this chapter is to: (1) define and quantitatively assess the actual flexibility of participation in VOs, through a social network index that we call structural fluidity; and (2) measure the relationship between fluidity and performance in the work carried out within the VO. These are essential insights for the development of theories to guide the formation, development and dissolution of VOs, and teams that emerge around VO work. To accomplish these aims, we will apply a methodological approach and ontology for the study of VOs that we have used in over a dozen published studies, and refer to as Group Informatics. Our approach enables a comprehensive, interdisciplinary inquiry into the relationship between structural fluidity and performance in diverse VOs. Specifically, we will examine VOs in software engineering, disaster relief, online learning and public discourse communities that emerge through social media. We will apply Group Informatics to the design, development and testing of empirically and theoretically grounded algorithms for measuring VO fluidity and performance in each context, which will result in new theoretical advances that enable sophisticated analysis of the resulting data.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Adar E, Ré C (2007) Managing uncertainty in social networks. IEEE Data Eng Bull 30(2):15–22
Arisholm E, Briand LC, Johannessen EB (2010) A systematic and comprehensive investigation of methods to build and evaluate fault prediction models. J Syst Softw 83(1):2–17
Blincoe K, Valetto G, Goggins S (2012) Leveraging task contexts for managing developers’ coordination. In: Proceedings of the 2012 ACM CSCW conference, ACM, New York, pp 1351–1360
Brown JS, Duguid P (1991) Organizational learning and communities-of-practice: toward a unified view of working, learning and innovation. Organ Sci 2(1):40–57
Brown JS, Duguid P (2000) The social life of information. Harvard Business School Press, Boston
Bryant SL, Forte A, Bruckman A (2005) Becoming Wikipedian: transformation of participation in a collaborative online encyclopedia. In: Proceedings of the 2005 international ACM SIGGROUP conference on supporting group work, ACM, New York, p 10
Bui T, Cho S, Sankaran S et al (2000) A framework for designing a global information network for multinational humanitarian assistance/disaster relief. Inf Syst Front 1(4):427–442
Burt RS (2004) Structural holes and good ideas. Am J Sociol 110(2):349–399
Cataldo M, Wagstrom PA, Herbsleb JD et al (2006) Identification of coordination requirements: implications for the design of collaboration and awareness tools. In: Proceedings of the CSCW 2006, Alberta
Child J (1972) Organizational structure, environment and performance: the role of strategic choice. Sociology 6(1):1–22
Chudoba KM, Wynn E, Lu M et al (2005) How virtual are we? Measuring virtuality and understanding its impact in a global organization. J Inf Syst 15:279–306
Crandall D, Cosley D, Huttenlocher D et al (2008) Feedback effects between similarity and social influence in online communities. In: Proceedings of the 14th ACM SIGKDD international conference on knowledge discovery and data mining, ACM, New York, pp 160–168
Crowston K, Howison J (2005) The social structure of free and open source software development. First Monday, p 10
Crowston K, Wei K, Howison J et al (2012) Free/Libre open source software development: what we know and what we do not know. ACM Comput Surv 44(2):7
Crowston K, Wei K, Li Q et al (2006) Core and periphery in Free/Libre and Open Source software team communications. In: HICSS ’06. Proceedings of the 39th Annual Hawaii international conference on system sciences, vol 6, Waikoloa, p 118
Crowston K, Wiggins A, Howison J (2010) Analyzing leadership dynamics in distributed group communication. In: HICSS ’10. Proceedings of the 43rd Annual Hawaii international conference on system sciences, pp 1–10
Dourish P (2004) What we talk about when we talk about context. Pers Ubiquit Comput 8:19–30
English R, Schweik CM (2007) Identifying success and tragedy of FLOSS commons: a preliminary classification of Sourceforge.net projects. In: FLOSS ’07. First international workshop on emerging trends in FLOSS research and development, Minneapolis
Fine GA, Harrington B (2004) Tiny publics: small groups and civil society. Sociol Theory 22(3):341–356
Fleming L, Waguespack DM (2007) Brokerage, boundary spanning, and leadership in open innovation communities. Organ Sci 18(2):165
Freeman LC (1979) Centrality in social networks conceptual clarification. Soc Networks 1(3):215–239
Geiger RS, Ribes D (2011) Trace ethnography: following coordination through documentary practices. In: Proceedings of the 2011 44th Hawaii international conference on system sciences, IEEE Computer Society, Washington, DC, pp 1–10. doi:10.1109/HICSS.2011.455
Goggins SP, Gallagher M, Laffey J (2011) Completely online group formation and development: small groups as socio-technical systems. Inform Technol People 24(2):104–133. doi:10.1108/09593841111137322
Goggins SP, Laffey J, Amelung C (2011) Context aware CSCL: moving toward contextualized analysis. In: CSCL 2011, Hong Kong
Goggins SP, Laffey J, Amelung C et al (2010) Social intelligence in completely online groups. In: IEEE international conference on social computing, Minnesota, 20–22 August 2010, pp 500–507
Goggins SP, Mascaro C, Valetto G (2013) Group informatics: a methodological approach and ontology for socio-technical group research. J Assoc Inform Sci Technol 64(3):516–539
Goggins SP, Valetto G, Mascaro C et al (2013) Creating a model of the dynamics of socio-technical groups using electronic trace data. User Model User-Adap Inter 23(4):345–379
Goggins S, Mascaro C, Mascaro S (2012) Relief after the 2010 Haiti Earthquake: participation and leadership in an Online Resource Coordination Network. In: Proceedings from ACM conference on computer supported cooperative work, Seattle, pp 57–66
Goggins S, Mascaro C, Valetto G (2012) Group informatics: a methodological approach and ontology for understanding socio-technical groups. J Assoc Inform Sci Technol 64(3):516–539
Goggins S, Valetto P, Mascaro C et al (2012) Creating a model of the dynamics of socio-technical groups. User Model User-Adap Interact J Pers Res 23(4):345–379
Gong L, Teng CY, Eecs AL et al (2011) Coevolution of network structure and content. WebSci~’12. In: Proceedings of the 3rd annual ACM web science conference, Illinois, Evanston, 22–24 June 2012
Gross T, Stary C, Totter A (2005) User-centered awareness in computer supported cooperative work systems: structured embedding of findings from social sciences. Int J Hum Comput Interact 18(3):323–360
Healy PGT, White G, Eshghi A et al (2007) Communication spaces. Comput Supported Coop Work 16
Howison J, Wiggins A, Crowston K (2012) Validity issues in the use of social network analysis with digital trace data. J Assoc Inform Syst 12(2):767–797
Howley I, Mayfield E, Rosé CP (2012) Linguistic analysis methods for studying small groups. Routledge, London
Huffaker DA, Teng CY, Simmons MP et al (2011) Group membership and diffusion in virtual worlds. In: IEEE ’11, Massachusetts, Boston, 9–11 October 2011
Kiesler S, Boh WF, Ren Y et al (2005) Virtual Teams and the geographically dispersed professional organization. In: Extending the contributions of Professor Rob Kling to the analysis of computerization movements California, Irvine, 11–12 March 2005
King G (2011) Ensuring the data-rich future of the social sciences. Science 331(6018):719–721. doi:10.1126/science.1197872
Kittur A, Chi EH, Pendelton BA et al (2007) Power of the few vs. wisdom of the crowd: Wikipedia and the rise of the bourgeoisie. In: CHI ‘07: 25th annual ACM conference on human factors in computing systems. California, San Jose, April 28-May 3 2007
Kobsa A (2001) Generic user modeling systems. User Model User-Adap Inter 11(1):49–63
Lee CP (2007) Boundary negotiating artifacts: unbinding routine of boundary objects and embracing chaos in collaborative work. Comput Supported Coop Work 16:307–339
Livne A, Simmons MP, Adar E et al (2011) The party is over here: structure and content in the 2010 election. In: Fifth international AAAI conference on weblogs and social media, Barcelona
Mascaro C, Goggins S (2011) Brewing up citizen engagement: the coffee party on Facebook. In: Proceedings of the communities and technologies, ACM, Brisbane
Mcculloh I (2009) Detecting changes in a dynamic social network. ProQuest, Ann Arbor
Mockus A, Fielding RT, Herbsleb JD (2002) Two case studies of open source software development: Apache and Mozilla. ACM Trans Softw Eng Methodol 11(3):309–346
Newman MEJ (2004) Analysis of weighted networks. Phys Rev E 70(5):056131
O’Leary M, Orlikowski W, Yates J (2002) Distributed work over the centuries: trust and control in the Hudson’s Bay Company, 1670–1826. Distributed Work, 27–54
Olson G, Herbsleb J, Rueter H (1994) Characterizing the sequential structure of interactive behaviors through statistical and grammatical techniques. Hum Comput Interact 9(4):427–472
Orlikowski W (2002) Knowing in practice: enacting a collective capability in distributed organizing. Organ Sci 13:249–273
Palen L, Anderson K M, Mark G et al (2010) A vision for technology-mediated support for public participation & assistance in mass emergencies & disasters. In: Proceedings of the 2010 ACM-BCS visions of computer science conference, Edinburgh, 13–16 April 2010
Petrinja E, Sillitti A, Succi G (2010) Comparing OpenBRR, QSOS, and OMM assessment models. Open Source Software, New Horizons, pp 224–238
Powell A, Piccoli G, Ives B (2004) Virtual teams: a review of current literature and directions for future research. Data Base Adv Inform Syst 35(1):6–36
Stahl G (2006) Group cognition: computer support for building collaborative knowledge. MIT Press, Boston
Star SL, Griesemer JR (1989) Institutional ecology, ‘translations’ and boundary objects: amateurs and professionals in Berkeley’s museum of vertebrate zoology, 1907–39. Soc Stud Sci 19(3):87–420
Strijbos JW, De Laat M, Martens RL et al (2005) Functional versus spontaneous roles during CSCL. In: CSCL 2005, pp 647–657
Teng CY, Gong L, Livne A et al (2011) Coevolution of network structure and content. In: Proceedings of the 3rd annual ACM web science conference, ACM, New York, pp 288–297
Terveen L, McDonald DW (2005) Social matching: a framework and research agenda. ACM Trans Comput Hum Interact 12(3):401–434
Twidale MB (2005) Over the shoulder learning: supporting brief informal learning. Comput Support Coop Work (CSCW) 14(6):505–547. doi:10.1007/s10606-005-9007-7
Watson-Manheim MB, Chudoba KM, Crowston K (2002) Discontinuities and continuities: a new way to understand virtual work. Inform Technol People 15(3):191–209. doi:10.1108/09593840210444746
Wenger E (1998) Communities of practice: learning, meaning and identity. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Wiggins A, Crowston K (2010) Reclassifying success and tragedy in FLOSS projects. Open Source Software, New Horizons, pp 294–307
Wu J, Goh KY (2009) Evaluating longitudinal success of open source software projects: a social network perspective. system sciences. In: HICSS ’09: 42nd Hawaii international conference, Hawaii
Zanetti MS, Scholtes I, Tessone CJ et al (2013) Categorizing bugs with social networks: a case study on four open source software communities. In: Proceedings of the 35th international conference on software engineering, San Francisco, pp 1032–1041, 18–26 May 2013
Zanetti MS, Scholtes I, Tessone CJ, Schweitzer F (2013) The rise and fall of a central contributor: dynamics of social organization and performance in the GENTOO community, In: Proceedings of the international workshop on cooperative and human aspects of software engineering, San Francisco, pp 49–56
Zhou M, Mockus A (2012) What make long term contributors: willingness and opportunity in OSS community. In: Proceedings of the 34th ICSE. Zurich, pp 518–528, 2–9 June 2012
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2014 Springer International Publishing Switzerland
About this paper
Cite this paper
Goggins, S.P., Valetto, G. (2014). Assessing the Structural Fluidity of Virtual Organizations and Its Effects. In: Zweig, K., Neuser, W., Pipek, V., Rohde, M., Scholtes, I. (eds) Socioinformatics - The Social Impact of Interactions between Humans and IT. Springer Proceedings in Complexity. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-09378-9_8
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-09378-9_8
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-09377-2
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-09378-9
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)