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Analyses the adoption and use of an electronic messaging system (EMS) by members of a large R&D organisation. Develops and tests hypotheses about relationships among job categories, perceived social presence of an EMS, use of the system, and outcomes – such as effectiveness, communication flow and the use of extant media. Discusses lessons learned. Offers further areas of potential research.

This paper examines whether new media can address low levels of political engagement among youth. This paper reports the results of an experiment conducted in 2010 and 2011 where a random sample of participants were exposed to a variety of online news sources. The experiment is unique in recognizing the varied ways in which online news is accessed and acquired by users, including through social networks, and in assessing how different news stories affect political interest. Interest in local politics was higher for youth who were exposed to a variety of online news sources as opposed to those youth who were not exposed to these sources. In addition, use of online news increased political interest, controlling for prior levels of political interest. The results affirm the potential of online news sources to stimulate youth’s interest and engagement in politics.

Understanding electronic communication and the patterns that characterize its development are critical to realizing full benefits from computer‐supported work. Cooperative work depends on effective communication and on the ability of organizations to manage the technology of communication appropriately. Organizations that do not understand the political and social dimensions of their communications system will inevitably fail to achieve their purposes.

This chapter introduces the volume’s theme by describing the challenges of sustainability in the agri-food industry and the critical role of agri-food supply chains. Following a description of traditional and sustainable supply chain management practices, we discuss the likely characteristics of sustainability-oriented innovations and how organizations pursuing higher levels of economic, social, and environmental performance will need to adapt their capabilities.

Drawing on the emerging concepts and practices from sustainable supply chain management as well as traditional and emerging concepts from innovation, we develop general propositions and expectations about how organizations might address sustainable effectiveness in their supply chains. The importance of the agri-food industry to all three pillars of sustainable effectiveness and predictions about the inability to feed future populations gives the discussion a certain urgency.

Sustainability-oriented innovations in the agri-food supply chain are different from traditional innovations. We develop propositions regarding the driving motivations, their nature and scope (i.e., more radical and systemic than incremental and focused), and the importance of a multi-stakeholder approach. The 10 cases presented in the volume are summarized.

Identifies a set of expectations about information technology (IT) adoption and usage in work groups, based on prior theory. Describes a longitudinal study on the adoption and usage of asynchronous technologies in small face‐to‐face groups. Compares observations with expectations. Concludes that expectations were generally supported except in one case, where file transfer was used synchronously to support face‐to‐face interaction. Observed one use of asynchronous technology to maintain social distance because of poor relationships. Discusses the implications of the findings. Offers possible areas of future research.

Takes a detailed view of the scientific community in Chile regarding network implementation and use. Argues that since Chile has many characteristics in common with other nations in this regard, the methodology is replicable elsewhere. Makes generalizations based on a statistically significant sample of scientific network users, under such headings as research discipline, education level, computer access and other variables. Develops hypotheses using the literature of Computer Mediated Communication Systems (CMCS). Discusses the potential of using the current methodology as well as the insights of previous CMCS to give better information in the planning process for research networks of all kinds.

Federal attempts to stimulate technological innovation have been unsuccessful because of the application of an inappropriate policy framework that lacks conceptual and empirical knowledge of the process of technological innovation and fails to acknowledge the relationship between knowledge production, transfer, and use as equally important components of the process of knowledge diffusion. This article argues that the potential contributions of high‐speed computing and networking systems will be diminished unless empirically derived knowledge about the information‐seeking behavior of the members of the social system is incorporated into a new policy framework. Findings from the NASA/DoD Aerospace Knowledge Diffusion Research Project are presented in support of this assertion.

The purpose of this article is to contribute to our stock of knowledge about who uses networks, how they are used, and what contribution the networks make to advancing the scientific enterprise. Between 1985 and 1990, the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) ACCESS data facility at the University of Wisconsin‐Madison provided social scientists in the United States and elsewhere with access through the electronic networks to complex and dynamic statistical data; the 1984 SIPP is a longitudinal panel survey designed to examine economic well‐being in the United States. This article describes the conceptual framework and design of SIPP ACCESS; examines how network users communicated with the SIPP ACCESS project staff about the SIPP data; and evaluates one outcome derived from the communications, the improvement of the quality of the SIPP data. The direct and indirect benefits to social scientists of electronic networks are discussed. The author concludes with a series of policy recommendations that link the assessment of our inadequate knowledge base for evaluating how electronic networks advance the scientific enterprise and the SIPP ACCESS research network experience to the policy initiatives of the High Performance Computing Act of 1991 (P.L. 102–194) and the related extensive recommendations embodied in Grand Challenges 1993 High Performance Computing and Communications (The FY 1993 U.S. Research and Development Program).

The advancement of human knowledge is the result of evolution of human capabilities for absorbing, developing and processing human intelligence, and perhaps just as equally, on the human capability to develop symbols and artifacts for assisting in the creation, diffusion and sharing of knowledge. These artifacts not only have evolved in their sophistication and ability to help human knowledge enterprise, but also they have become embedded in the knowledge networks and the global knowledge enterprises. The universal knowledge architecture today can be best represented as a set of interconnected networks linking the neural networks of our brain with our organizational, institutional, professional and societal networks, and the networks of knowledge artifacts. Within this context the knowledge enterprise is viewed as a sustaining quest for sense making through the human to human process for scaffolding of knowledge where the knowledge artifacts play quintessential and inseparable roles. The effectiveness of our efforts in developing and implementing the knowledge artifacts or management tools depends to a large extent on our ability to refocus the design context of these tools as artifacts, from an information centric paradigm to one of knowledge within the context of a sense‐making paradigm.

A short presentation concerning the use of computer‐mediated‐communication (CMC) in information work is given together with the latest figures for use worldwide. Human aspects of CMC are discussed briefly. A few traditional information professional applications of electronic mail are described. Special attention is paid to the Danish Science Park Network as an example of computer supported cooperative work (CSCW). Through the use of some examples of dedicated ‘person‐centred’ systems (ALANET, LA‐net, etc.), interesting new applications of E‐mail for the information professional are considered.