La théorie socio-cognitive adopte une perspective d’action pour ce qui est du développement, de l’adaptation et du changement humains. Cette théorie distingue trois types d’action: l’action personnelle exercée individuellement, l’action par procuration où l’on s’assure de bénéfices désirés en incitant autrui a intervenir en sa faveur, et l’action collective où les gens agissent ensemble pour construire leur avenir. Des dichotomies conflictuelles parsèment notre domaine, opposant l’autonomie et l’interdépendance, l’individualisme et le collectivisme. Les déterminants et les doses d’action individuelle, par procuration et collective varient culturellement. Mais tous les modes d’action sont nécessaires pour parvenir á ses fins quel que soit le contexte culturel. Les cultures sont diverses et dynamiques, ce ne sont pas des monolithes statiques. La diversité intraculturelle et les écarts dans les orientations psychosociales mettent en évidence la dynamique aux multiples facettes des cultures. La globalisation croissante, la pluralité des sociétés et l’immersion dans un monde virtuel qui se joue du temps, des distances, des lieux et des frontières incitent

Advances in information technology, coupled with competitive pressures, have led to the increasing use of virtual teams in organizations. Their growing popularity has attracted the attention of researchers in both information systems and organizational behaviour. Despite the fact that research on this topic is blooming, our understanding of the virtual team phenomenon is still at an embryonic stage and there is much to learn about such teams before we can fully reap their potential benefits. In our view, a preliminary but necessary step is to investigate the multifaceted nature of virtual teams, so as to better define the true object of our investigations. Therefore, this paper first explores a basic definition of what a virtual team truly is and differentiates it from other related concepts such as virtua l group, virtual organization, virtual community, and telecommuting. In a second step, we identify those key characteristics that 1) differentiate virtual teams from conventional ones and 2) distinguish alternative configurations of virtual teams. Lastly, we illustrate how different configurations of virtual teams may raise different challenges and how management strategies must be chosen accordingly to ensure success. Implications for both practice and research are discussed in the conclusion section.

Distributed teams are increasingly common in today's workplace. For these teams, face-to-face meetings where members can most easily build trust are rare and often costprohibitive. 3D virtual worlds and games may provide an alternate means for encouraging team development due to their affordances for facile communication, emotional engagement, and social interaction among participants. Using principles derived from social psychological theory, we have designed and built a collection of team-building games within the popular virtual world Second Life. We detail here the design decisions made in the creation of these games and discuss how they evolved based on early participant observations. Categories and Subject Descriptors

The extraordinary advances in electronic technologies and global human interconnectedness present novel adaptational challenges and expanded opportunities for people to shape their social future and national life. The present article analyzes these pervasive transformational changes from an agentic theoretical perspective rooted in the exercise of perceived per-sonal and collective efficacy. By acting on their efficacy beliefs, people ply the enabling functions of electronic systems to promote their education,

Although many consulting companies have introduced IT-supported knowledge-management systems, and proponents of the literature continue to advocate knowledge management as a key to competitive advantage in consultancies, many knowledge management systems have fallen short of expectation in companies that have adopted them. However, empirical studies regarding the performance implications of these systems are missing. This paper reports such an empirical, explorative study identifying the extent as well as impediments of the utilization of an IT-supported knowledge management system in a large, global consulting company. The main findings are that the majority of the IT users are not familiar with the knowledge management framework of the company; still the knowledge management system is used by 3/4 of all respondents, but mainly to search for general information, much less to participate in competence networks to develop shared knowledge assets. The knowledge management system is not used as the primary repository and communication media for knowledge assets. The limited use is explained by the practitioners as being caused by lack of time and their perception of the system as a slow and poorly structured technical infrastructure. These and other findings are discussed with regard to the current understanding of knowledge management as presented by the literature, and important issues with regard to future research integrating individual, organisational, technical and economical perspectives of knowledge management are raised.

In this paper we present an overview of the field of distributed development of software systems and applications (DD). Based on an analysis of the published literature, we consider threats to communication, coordination and control in DD caused by Temporal Distance, Geographical Distance, and Socio-Cultural Distance. The analysis results in a more complete framework for reasoning in the DD domain which should be a useful resource for both academic researchers and practitioners. 1.

Knowledge management (KM) remains an anomaly in most corporations today. Critics call KM a fad of the 1990s, whereas supporters claim KM is actively evolving. Our work examines the disciplinary rhetoric of KM: how is it that practitioners of KM seek to legitimize their field in the corporate world? We focus on practitioners in the aerospace industry and their forum. We argue that this forum serves as a hub for constructing KM’s legitimacy. Our two year ethnography traces the rhetorical strategies utilized by informants in and out of a professional community to legitimize KM as discipline in the aerospace industry.

The aims of this study are: (1) to examine to what extent critical care and advanced practice nurses’ participation in an online listserv constituted a community of practice, and (2) to explore how the nurses use electronic media to communicate with one another. Findings suggest that the online listserv environment, as a whole, did function as an online community of practice, where participation not only served as an avenue for knowledge sharing situated in the actual context of the nurses ’ everyday work experience, but also helped to reinforce identity of the nursing practice itself. Motivations to participate included a way to network with others who shared a similar working situation, and an opportunity to learn new knowledge and work practices. The most common type of messages posted was “Sharing knowledge”, followed by “Solicitation”. Regarding the types of knowledge shared, the most common ones were “Institutional Practice ” and “Personal Opinion”.

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This chapter attempts to address the need for more research on virtual team effectiveness and outlines an ecological theoretical framework that is applicable to virtual learning environments (VLE). Prior empirical studies on virtual team effectiveness used frameworks of traditional team effectiveness and mainly followed Hackman's normative model (input-process-output). We propose an ecological approach for virtual team effectiveness that accounts for team boundaries management, technology use, and external environment in VLE, properties which were previously either non-existent or contextual. The ecological framework suggests that three components, external environment, internal environment, and boundary management, reciprocally interact with effectiveness. The significance of the proposed framework is a holistic perspective that takes into account the complexity of the external and internal environment of the team. Furthermore, we address the needs for new pedagogical approaches in VLE.