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The use of visual templates has proven instrumental in supporting group meetings. The purpose of this paper is to explore whether visual templates enable culturally diverse groups to achieve greater task precision in face-to-face meetings.

Building on Adaptive Structuration Theory, it is argued that visual templates provide structuration for face-to-face meetings, even more so when they are embedded in computer-supported collaborative systems. In particular, it is hypothesized that the higher the degree of structuration imposed by visual templates, the higher the degree of task precision will be. It is also hypothesized that this relationship is positively moderated by group cultural diversity: higher cultural diversity will further sustain the positive effects of visual templates that provide higher structuration.

Results of an experiment with 229 managers from 49 countries confirm that facilitating groups with visual templates embedded in a computer-supported collaborative system significantly increases task precision at high levels of cultural diversity.

This study contributes to Positive Organizational Scholarship (POS) by investigating the use of visual templates as a contingency factor that increases performance – specifically task precision – of co-located, culturally diverse groups.

Results indicate that visual templates embedded in a computer-supported collaborative system are an effective method for increasing task precision in face-to-face meetings of culturally diverse groups.

Theories from information systems and visualization are integrated into cross-cultural management with a view to sustaining the effectiveness of culturally diverse groups. The study sample is characterized by highly culturally diverse groups interacting in face-to-face meetings.

In a collaborative learning environment there will be many learners with diverse cultures. These learners should be supported to communicate and collaborate among themselves. The variety of the communication and collaboration tools and modes available to each learner would depend on his/her personal cultural background. The purpose of this paper is to suggest the adaptation of the collaborative learning environment to the learner's cultural profile. So, first it aims to present learner's models with respect to his/her cultural characteristics. It also aims to present the various communication and collaboration tools and modes that would be available to the learners. Then, each learner has at his/her disposal the appropriate communication and collaboration tools and modes according to his/her cultural characteristics.

The cultural models of Trompenaars and Hampden‐Turner, as well Hofsted are modified relaxing the dualism of their dimensions. The modified models are used in a collaborative learning environment. The various attributes and types of communication and collaboration among learners and teachers in a collaborative learning environment are also identified.

This paper presents learner's cultural models across several cultural dimensions. Each cultural dimension weights differently. Also, a learner may not belong strictly to a cultural extreme of a dimension, but he/she may have characteristics from both cultural extremes of each dimension. Based on a learner's cultural profile, different communication and collaboration tools would be available to the learner.

Based on the learner's profile, either the adaptation engine, or the teacher, or the learner him/herself may select the appropriate communication and collaboration tools and modes for the particular learner. Designers, developers and evaluators of collaborative learning systems may benefit from these learners' cultural models and the communication and collaboration attributes. For example, they may create collaborative learning systems with flexible communication and collaboration attributes that provide to each learner personalized communication and collaboration tools according to his cultural profile.

This paper proposes the adaptation of the collaborative learning environment to the cultural characteristics of the learner. Future research may assign the specific communication and collaboration tools to each particular learner's cultural profile.

This paper proposes the adaptation of the communication and collaboration tools and modes that are used by a learner in a collaborative learning environment to the learner's cultural characteristics. First, the paper presents new cultural models of a learner. Then, it presents the communication and collaboration attributes and types that would be used by the learners in a collaborative learning environment. A learner would have at disposal the appropriate personalized communication and collaboration tools.

The number of approaches, researchers and practitioners in Systems Thinking has been growing over the last decades and particularly in recent years. This wide and deep evolution within the systems community that is a sign of vitality has also increased the communication difficulties among its components. If the systems community wants to overcome these difficulties and help cross fertilisation, adequate structures are needed to facilitate the communication processes. In this work, we present a communication and exchange of information system specifically designed for this aim. It tries to use the possibilities offered by Internet to create a systems thinkers/practitioners virtual community with the capacity to facilitate the creation of as many new partial communities as the members of the systems community wish. The design of the network system is based on Beer's viable system model and his recursive conception of viable systems.

To report on a study testing training methods to improve communications among virtual team members.

Training methods for improving virtual team communications were developed and administered to 12 virtual teams. Surveys tracking cohesiveness, perceptions of the process and satisfaction with the outcomes were administered before, during and after teams working on a series of projects. These results were compared with similar teams working on the same projects who did not receive training.

Results indicated that teams receiving training showed more cohesiveness, perceptions of the process and satisfaction. These factors have been shown to increase team members' ability to exchange information and to positively affect the group's performance.

Relational link training seems beneficial for virtual teams as the teams in this study that had relational link training showed higher levels of group cohesiveness, satisfaction with their group's outcome, and had a better impression of the group's virtual meeting process. Relational link training may have a benefit of establishing and managing expectations for how groups work together. This is especially true in its mitigating negative impacts on group cohesiveness. It is important to measure the impact of any training program, relational link or otherwise, over multiple periods, as the true impact may not become evident except over longer periods of time.

Provides information on improving communication among virtual team members.

The purpose of this paper is to present the design and first results of the integration of a web‐based system person‐centred group‐activity support system (PEGASUS) in university instruction, as a means for advancing person‐centred learning by supporting group activity. The PEGASUS is expected to help students and teachers in two distinct objectives: enhancing metacognition (students and teachers are supported to identify their learning and teaching preferences, which in turn is used as a framework for reflection), and group formation (the system suggests homogeneous or heterogeneous workgroups, supporting also teacher‐students negotiations of the final group synthesis).

First, a theoretical framework is built to reflect the process of transforming the principles for learner‐centred learning into a pedagogical model which becomes the basis for defining the PEGASUS specifications. Then, qualitative field evidence is provided from the initial integration of the system into the teaching process to support students' group activity.

From the pilot testing of PEGASUS it is evident that learning style‐based group formation might not be acceptable to all students in the typical classroom setting where students already know each other. The early implementation data indicate that not every student might accept the theory‐based grouping suggestions of the instructor.

The research is limited to qualitative and preliminary results from undergraduate as well as postgraduate students.

Systems like PEGASUS can initiate fruitful discussions among students and teachers on the role of learning styles in learning. However, group activity is a complex socio‐cognitive phenomenon that cannot be approached simply on the basis of students' learning styles. Still, such a system can help identify how students' learning styles can be of significance under certain conditions.

The paper describes the development of a web‐based system for personalised learning and system integration in everyday teaching.

Discusses the use of information technology to facilitate communication and collaboration. In this action research project a groupware product called Lotus Notes^TM was implemented to facilitate communication and collaboration amongst the senior management team. Although there was a real need for change, and the project received strong support from senior management on the basis that it would enable radical changes in coordination within the workgroup, these radical changes did not occur. The authors analyse the reasons for failure, and suggest that the project failed because of institutional forces which inhibited dramatic changes in work habits.

The design, manufacture and delivery of a product requires ever‐higher levels of knowledge and expertise within the supply chain. If concurrent engineering (CE) in tiered supply chains is to be fully implemented, a practical CE strategy needs to recognise that successful, concurrent designs are built on rich relationships amongst all parties. Virtual teaming is the most appropriate framework and mechanism in which to examine how such relationships can be created across a distributed supply chain, with members separated geographically. In principle, virtual teaming could allow joint commitment, feelings of mutuality, trust and creativity, and rapid decision making to operate within a supply chain. For this to be possible, a virtual team needs to be built by concentrating on process, teaming and technology factors. However, experience from other IT‐based initiatives is that technology will be concentrated on to the exclusion of other factors. Data from the two sources support this contention.

The information systems discipline is developing at a tremendous pace, producing right things but also wrong ones — even modernisms. In want of more structure it is on the look‐out for identity. Let us take stock of the situation in some important areas:

The twenty‐first century is now seen as the time for the construction industry to embrace new ways of working if it is to continue to be competitive and meet the needs of its ever demanding clients. Collaborative working is considered by many to be essential if design and construction teams are to consider the whole lifecycle of the construction process. Much of the recent work undertaken on collaborative working has focused on the delivery of technological solutions with a focus on web (extranets), CAD (visualisation), and knowledge management technologies. However, it is now recognised that good collaboration does not result from the implementation of information technology solutions alone, the organisational and people issues, which are not readily solved by pure technical systems, need also to be resolved. This paper aims to address this issue.

Work discussed in this paper brings together the benefits provided by technology, with organisational issues, and people issues, in developing a framework to implement effective collaboration. The research uses a literature search, semi‐structured interviews and a questionnaire to gain the industry's requirements for effective collaboration in the construction sector. From these requirements a develop‐test‐refine approach was taken to develop the methodology for effective collaborative working for construction.

The findings reported in this paper are a summary of the results from the semi‐structured interviews and questionnaire used to gain the industry's requirements. They show that a focus on the “softer” issues (business process and an organisations' people) rather than a technology focus is needed to plan and implement collaborative working more effectively in projects. An initial approach is discussed in this paper concerning a structured approach to be developed further in the research to highlight to the industry the issues associated with the planning and implementation of effective collaborative working in projects.

This paper uses a socio‐technical approach to the planning and implementation of effective collaborative working in construction. It combines technology with the people and business aspects of collaborative working to provide an approach which can enable stakeholders in a project to benefit fully from having a collaborative working approach to their projects.