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In an environment of constant technological change, the use of virtual teams (VTs) has become commonplace for many organizations. VTs bring together dispersed individuals with varying knowledge and skill sets to accomplish tasks. VTs rely heavily on information technology (IT) as the medium for communication and coordination of work. The issue of establishing and maintaining trust in VTs poses challenges for these dispersed workers. Previous research has established that higher trusting teams have better cooperation and experience improved outcomes. The authors hope to contribute to the literature on trust in VTs by exploring how technology can facilitate high trusting teams. Specifically, the purpose of this paper is to report the results of the research addressing the following question: how does the use of technology capabilities (TCs) afforded by virtual worlds (VWs) affect the development of trust in VTs?

A multiple case-study approach was used as the primary research design. Each case spanned a two-week period allowing for longitudinal data collection. The research was conducted within a VW setting with an emphasis on IT capabilities that are unique to three-dimensional VWs. Both qualitative and quantitative data collected during this process were analyzed at the group level.

The authors found that communication, rendering and interaction TCs allowed participants to use the technology to assess individual capabilities. While this paper answers some questions about how TCs can help develop trust in VTs, it also raises many questions. This study offers a model and framework for further work on this topic and encourages researchers to investigate other social and behavioral issues faced by VTs in a VW setting.

While this paper answers some questions about how various TCs can help develop trust in VTs, it also raises many questions. The study results may not be generalizable if the respondents who visit an immersive VW are different from those who do not have sufficient VW experience. However, the authors believe that the relationships between the constructs would remain. Another potential limitation has to do with how often trustfulness/trustworthiness were measured in the study. Measuring trustfulness/trustworthiness at additional points in the study would help determine specific points where these constructs changed. Finally, the study suffers from the common criticisms of case study research. Case research requires direct observation which includes cost, time and access hurdles. However, many of these challenges were addressed by using various data collection methods. Another difficulty is the need for multiple methods for triangulation and lack of controls. Again, the study addressed these difficulties by combining qualitative and quantitative data sources.

This research provides deeper insight for organizations using VTs in terms of how TCs can be used to engender trust. This has implications for how we design collaboration technologies.

The fundamental societal implication of this research is the conclusion that human behavior in the present world can potentially carry over in the VW and that TCs can be adapted and used to influence trust in VTs. This has implications for how we design collaboration technologies.

This paper offers practical implications for developing trust in VTs, specifically, how the use of TCs can facilitate trust development. The goal was not to recommend a specific technology platform, but rather explore how unique TCs impact behaviors in VTs. The study identified interesting findings relating to how people use TCs to complete tasks and collaborate on a team. These findings may be used to help develop guidelines and recommendations for using technology to enhance work practices in VTs.

This paper describes the concept of mutual knowledge and its potential impact on virtual team performance. Based on an analysis of extant literature, we argue that there is a gap in our understanding of what is known about mutual knowledge as it impacts team dynamics and virtual team performance. Supporting literature, anecdotes, and case studies are used to discuss the importance of mutual knowledge for virtual team performance and the research issues that need to be addressed in the future.

Group Support Systems (GSS) have been used and studied in the support of facilitated ideation sessions for years. The norm for these sessions has been for participants to work individually at GSS workstations. A review of applicable literature suggests that pairing participants at GSS workstations could result in higher quality ideas and participant satisfaction. This paper reports the results of a lab experiment that tested for differences between paired and unpaired facilitated GSS sessions. These results suggest that pairing participants can yield higher quality ideas from facilitated ideation without negative consequences.

This study extends previous literature on social exchange by investigating the mediating effects of leader‐member exchange on the relationship between procedural justice, job attitudes and turnover in a unionized setting. Past research has shown that procedural justice and subordinate/supervisor exchanges are related to job attitudes and turnover. These relationships have normally been studied in non‐union settings, in which union contextual variables are not considered. The current study uses hierarchical linear modeling to test theoretical models of these relationships in a unionized setting, where procedures and managerial treatment are more clearly defined and regulated. Results reveal that both procedural justice and leader‐member exchange are related to organizational commitment and job satisfaction and leader‐member exchange is related to actual turnover. Leadermember exchange partially mediates the relationship between procedural justice and these job attitudes after accounting for the effects of union commitment (at the individual level) and union‐management relations (at the store level). From a managerial perspective, our results emphasize the importance of proper selection, training and performance appraisal of supervisors, with treatment and support of employees as a main focus.

This paper aims to explore factors impacting wearable fitness tracking (WFT) device continued usage intention from perspectives of technology attributes (autonomy benefits), health attributes (self-health management benefits, diet-control benefits and health self-efficacy), and consumer attributes (age, gender, technological innovativeness, symbolic benefits, social benefits and hedonic benefits).

The study integrates constructs from the technology acceptance theories and the health promotion model to develop the research model and hypothesis. The empirical analysis was conducted using data from 217 respondents from India. Logistic regression was used to identify factors that discriminate between groups with low and high continued usage intentions.

Results indicate higher continued usage intention for WFT devices is driven by perceived benefits-health, autonomy, social and hedonic, and individual characteristics-technological innovativeness and perceived health self-efficacy. Further, perceived symbolic benefits, diet control benefits, age, and gender does not discriminate between the groups with low and high continued usage intentions.

The results may be limited to the context of the sample and the factors considered. The study suggests future research areas.

The paper offers insights for marketers, governments, insurance firms, and related healthcare services on promoting higher usage of WFT devices to yield dual benefits of preventive healthcare and higher profitability.

The study extends existing research by examining factors across consumer, health, and technological domains in a single framework and adds to the limited research in the context of usage of WFT devices in developing countries.

This paper aims to provide a theoretical frame and practical experience for understanding and improving knowledge creation in the RIC. This paper proved through an empirical study that knowledge transfer, knowledge assimilation and knowledge sharing between firms in a resource-based industry chain (RIC) have positive influence on knowledge creation.

A theoretical model covering knowledge transfer, knowledge assimilation, knowledge sharing and knowledge creation is established in this paper. The research object is the phosphorus chemical industry chain in central Guizhou.

The findings of this paper provide a theoretical frame and practical experience for understanding and improving knowledge creation in the RIC.

The subjective measures of knowledge capacities present a serious limitation. Another limitation is that the authors examined knowledge creation within the context of RIC. The cross-sectional design prevented the authors from studying causal relationships among the variables.

First, it contributes to the knowledge creation of inter-organization literature. Second, it contributes to the studies of knowledge creation in supply chains. Third, this study demonstrates the importance of investigating the strong network embeddedness and industry property of RIC, which have a critic effect on the capabilities of knowledge sharing, transfer and assimilation.