Virtuality and Virtualization (IFIP Advances in Information and Communication Technology #236)

In today's rapidly changing global work environment, all workers experience increased organizational complexity. Companies are functionally distributed, many across the globe. Intense competition for markets and margins makes adaptiveness and innovation imperative. Information and communication technologies are pervasive and fundamental infrastructures, their use deeply integrated into work processes. Workers collaborate electronically with co-workers or with employees of other companies. New boundaries of time, space, business unit, culture, company partnerships, and software tools are driving the adoption of novel organizational forms. On a macro level, these changes have started to reshape society.

This book considers possible frameworks for understanding virtuality and virtualization; ways of analyzing virtual work in terms of work processes; group processes within virtual teams; the role of knowledge in virtual settings and other implications of the role of fiction in structuring virtuality.