Abstract
Is the expression “virtual team” an oxymoron? Or is it a platitude?
In CSCW, most metaphors used have a flavour of neutrality, “equilibrium”, “reciprocity”, “harmony”, “positive mutual understanding”, and so on. Individuals coordinate, concur, cooperate, communicate; here the prefix “co” suggests the synergetic of patterns. Unfortunately, such patterns are predominantly rigid, organisational, and static. In such a “co-work” environment, the current approach in CSCW focuses on a shared space that should promote flexibility, adaptability and intelligent system behaviour, where the human involved feel that the “team” is made up somewhat artificial, not emerging from the real world and the task at hand. According to actual approaches, in CSCW, decision making is rather “organisation-driven” and humans are constraint to “live” in an artificial environment managing it in a predefined manner (static, pattern and custom oriented). This paper tries to define the “coach” metaphor emphasising the following issues: 1) team selection — is carried out in a task-driven manner (ad-hoc, dynamic, tailored to the specific problem and its environment); 2) training the team; 3) monitoring it during the “match”. Therefore, the group constellation is not any longer determined by human decision-makers but the task itself. Thus, the problem and its resource environment become the “coach” of the team designed to solve it. Because of the shift in the approach, the paper also addresses the impact of the proposed metaphor on human-computer interfacing.
The original version of this chapter was revised: The copyright line was incorrect. This has been corrected. The Erratum to this chapter is available at DOI: 10.1007/978-0-387-35390-6_58
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© 1998 IFIP International Federation for Information Processing
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Zamfirescu, C.B., Bãrbat, B., Filip, FG. (1998). The “coach” metaphor in CSCW decision making system design. In: Camarinha-Matos, L.M., Afsarmanesh, H., Marik, V. (eds) Intelligent Systems for Manufacturing. BASYS 1998. IFIP — The International Federation for Information Processing, vol 1. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-35390-6_21
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-35390-6_21
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