Working anywhere, anytime and with anyone

Article type: Research Article

Authors: Walden, Pirkko^{a; b} | Turban, Efraim^c

Affiliations: [a] Institute for Advanced Management Systems Research, Abo Akademi University, FIN-20520 Abo, Finland. E-mail: pwalden@abo.fi | [b] Pori School of Technology and Economics, Tampere University of Technology, FIN-28101 Pori, Finland. E-mail: pwalden@pori.tut.fi | [c] Department of Information Systems, City University of Hong Kong, Kowloon, Hong Kong. E-mail: isturban@is.cityu.edu.hk

Abstract: Ten teams of 2–3 full time undergraduate business students, at Abo Akademi University in Finland were to collaborate with a corresponding team of 3–4 part time MBA students at California State University, Long Beach in the USA. A 10-hour time difference, as well as different cultural backgrounds separated the teams. Students were challenged to push the limits of Internet by collaborating on a joint task on electronic commerce with people they never met face-to-face. The teams co-operated with ten Finnish companies, and the study was taken all the way to an implementable plan for companies doing business on the Internet. This paper confirms several observations of previous researchers and identifies several new issues related to distributed groupwork.

Keywords: Virtual teams, electronic commerce, groupwork, collaborative work

DOI: 10.3233/HSM-2000-19308

Journal: Human Systems Management, vol. 19, no. 3, pp. 213-222, 2000