Abstract
Blogs are evolving beyond “personal conversations” to tools which could support collaborative working in virtual project teams. Virtual teams need to adopt and understand new work practices, sharing attitudes and communication modes to effectively empower team participation. Companies are adopting blogs and wikis as tools for improving dialogue among workers, customers, and the public because they can affect information exchange and establish specially tailored, user-friendly data archives. Blogs could become a tool for a new way of communication, working collaboratively, sharing information and mutually supporting other team members. However, like any emerging technology tools, it will be a challenge to integrate blogs into existing business processes. This chapter discusses how blogs can be exploited for virtual team collaboration and discusses various issues and challenges that need to be resolved if blogs are to become an effective tool for virtual team collaboration.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Collaboration: Collaboration could be defined as interaction and information interchange between people working at physically disparate locations with the purpose of accomplishing mutually beneficial activity.
Information and Communication Technology: ICTs—information and communication technologies—include telecommunications technologies, such as telephony, cable, satellite and radio, as well as digital technologies, such as computers, information networks, Internet and software.
Blogrolls: “Blogroll” is on the Web site; a list of blogs that a user frequently reads or especially admires, with clickable links to the general URLs (Web addresses) of those blogs.
Blogosphere: The universe of blogs is conventionally referred to as the “blogosphere” or the totality of Web logs or blog-related Webs is usually known as “blogosphere.” It is a collective term encompassing all Web logs or blogs.
Web Logs or Blogs: Blog is a short for Web log, which is defined as a Web application which contains periodic time-stamped posts on a common Web page. It is basically an online journal composed of links and postings in reverse chronological order, meaning the most recent posting appears at the top of the page.
Virtual Team: A Virtual Team is defined as a group of individuals who work across boundaries of time, geography, nationality and culture using information and communications technologies such as groupware, e-mail, an intranet, or videoconferencing, and so forth, to collaborate from different locations for a defined work and for achieving defined objectives.
Web Logs or Blogs: Blog is a short for Web log, which is defined as a Web application which contains periodic time-stamped posts on a common Web page. It is basically an online journal composed of links and postings in reverse chronological order, meaning the most recent posting appears at the top of the page.
Virtual Team: A Virtual Team is defined as a group of individuals who work across boundaries of time, geography, nationality and culture using information and communications technologies such as groupware, e-mail, an intranet, or videoconferencing, and so forth, to collaborate from different locations for a defined work and for achieving defined objectives.
Blogrolls: “Blogroll” is on the Web site; a list of blogs that a user frequently reads or especially admires, with clickable links to the general URLs (Web addresses) of those blogs.
Computer Mediated Communication (CMC): Computer Mediated Communication (CMC) is the process by which people use networked telecommunications systems for synchronous, asynchronous or real time communication. CMC most commonly refers for e-mail, instant messaging, Internet forums, list-servers, bulletin boards, blogs and videoconferencing.
Computer Mediated Communication (CMC): Computer Mediated Communication (CMC) is the process by which people use networked telecommunications systems for synchronous, asynchronous or real time communication. CMC most commonly refers for e-mail, instant messaging, Internet forums, list-servers, bulletin boards, blogs and videoconferencing.
Collaboration: Collaboration could be defined as interaction and information interchange between people working at physically disparate locations with the purpose of accomplishing mutually beneficial activity.
Blogosphere: The universe of blogs is conventionally referred to as the “blogosphere” or the totality of Web logs or blog-related Webs is usually known as “blogosphere.” It is a collective term encompassing all Web logs or blogs.
Information and Communication Technology: ICTs—information and communication technologies—include telecommunications technologies, such as telephony, cable, satellite and radio, as well as digital technologies, such as computers, information networks, Internet and software.