A Special Issue of the International Journal of e-Collaboration (IJeC)

http://www.igi-pub.com

Guest editors:

Kai Riemer, The University of Münster (Germany)

Volker Wulf, The University of Siegen (Germany)

IJeC editor:

Topic Outline:

Today’s work practices are undergoing significant changes due to trends of virtualization and the emergence of new communication technologies. Distributed settings are increasingly common in organizations. While virtualization offers benefits (e.g. remote and flexible interaction), the resulting work environments present a number of challenges such as a lack of awareness of co-workers’ activities and locations. At the same time, with the number of available communication channels and devices growing, the communicative complexity increases likewise. People are faced with an increase in communication volume, more work interruptions, and at the same time with a poor availability of co-workers. The latter typically impedes information access and the free flow of knowledge.

Real-Time Collaboration (RTC) technologies are supposed to present an answer to these challenges. The idea of RTC technologies is to lessen the aforementioned problems through enabling instant (real-time) collaboration between people using various media and devices and by enabling the creation of awareness. RTC technologies comprise Voice-over-IP telephony, video conferencing and Instant Messaging with its text chat feature and presence information. Integrated RTC systems are the result of media convergence, device integration, and unified communications. By providing active presence management and rule-based message filtering, RTC systems try to re-empower users to be in control of their communication. Moreover, RTC systems show significant potential for integration with other software systems in order to enable contextual real-time collaboration in work processes (e.g. integration with other groupware systems, office software, and enterprise systems).

We are pleased to invite scholars from any methodological background to contribute papers that advance our knowledge of the design, diffusion, appropriation, usage and impact of RTC systems, particularly in the context of distributed work. We welcome theoretical, conceptual, design-oriented and especially empirical contributions using both qualitative and quantitative research methods. Research efforts might focus on different organization levels such as individuals, teams, corporations, networks, and informal communities and on different RTC technologies such as Instant Messaging tools, Voice-over-IP telephony, Video conferencing, Unified communications, Mobile RTC systems, or integrated RTC systems suites.

Typical RTC systems include:

• small RTC tools: Skype, AIM, ICQ etc - Instant Messaging and Voice-Call tools
• integrated RTC systems: IBM Sametime, Siemens Hipath Openscape, Oracle Collaboration Suite etc.
• related technologies: Video and web conferencing systems

For specific topics and the submission guidelines please download the enclosed pdf file.