One-hundred days in an activity-centric collaboration environment based on shared objects
Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
Patterns of media use in an activity-centric collaborative environment
Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
OCSC'11 Proceedings of the 4th international conference on Online communities and social computing
Discovery and analysis of e-mail-driven business processes
Information Systems
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This paper explores the critical role of conversational threads in facilitating the ongoing, distributed work of one virtual organization. In studying the electronic mail exchanges of organizational members during one year, we found that they engaged in a range of threading activity to establish and maintain continuity, coherence, and coordination in their collaborative work over time. In particular, we found that organizational members relied on simple threads to focus their attention and action on a particular topic over a short period of time, concurrentthreads to enable their participation in multiple topics at the same time, and compound threads to allow provisional settlement of key issues that were subsequently revisited over extended periods of time. We conclude by discussing the implications of conversational threads for research and practice of virtual organizing.