[AISWorld] HICSS-48 Minitrack Processes and technologies for small and large team collaboration: 1nd Call for Papers

[Imed Boughzala]

HICSS-48 Call for papers for the minitrack on:
"PROCESSES AND TECHNOLOGIES FOR SMALL AND LARGE TEAM COLLABORATION"

Part of the Collaboration Systems and Technology Track
of the Forty-Eight Annual Hawai'i International Conference on Systems Sciences (HICSS)
Kauai, HI - January 5-8, 2014


Papers are invited for the minitrack on “PROCESSES AND TECHNOLOGIES FOR SMALL AND LARGE TEAM COLLABORATION” as part of the Collaboration Systems and Technology Track at the Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS). 

Recent data show that collaboration is a key driver of performance in organizations. The impact of collaboration on organizational performance is more critical than strategic orientation or market and technological turbulence. Yet successful collaboration does not come without difficulty. Groups and teams need to overcome collaboration challenges such as groupthink, dominance, lack of efficiency and lack of focus. Successful collaboration requires support based on purposeful guidance and interventions to create groups and teams, to design and deploy processes, to design and deploy technology, to support leaders or facilitators, and to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of information processing. The challenge for researchers and practitioners alike is to design sustainable processes and systems within and between organizations that allow people, groups and teams to collaborate successfully. This challenge has many dimensions, including a technical, a behavioral, a social, an emotional, an economical, and a political. This minitrack invites papers that address the design and deployment of collaboration processes and systems within and between organizations, groups, and teams.

This minitrack provides one of the key international platforms on which the following issues can be discussed:
1.	The application, and evaluation of collaboration support technologies; G(D)SS, Groupware, CSCW, meeting support technology and Web 2.0 technology.
2.	Facilitation methods, techniques, patterns, and procedures to improve (a)synchronous collaboration between co-located and distributed people, teams, or groups.
3.	Theoretical foundations and design methodologies for collaborative work practices and technologies.
4.	Methods and technologies for eliciting and capturing tacit knowledge from experts in in order to enhance collaborative efforts.
5.	Human collaboration with artificial agents and the evaluation of computer systems as team members, including agent-based support for individual decision makers.
6.	Automation of collaborative processes and agent-based support for group facilitation
7.	Techniques, systems, and technologies to support mass collaboration such as crowdsourcing, and collective intelligence.
8.	Assessment models and methods for team collaboration and performance.
9.	Collaboration Engineering and the design, codification and reuse of work practices and pattern languages for group collaboration to create self-sustaining collaboration support in organizations.

Thus, papers are welcome that contain original ideas on systematic modeling, analysis, design and evaluation of group collaboration processes and systems. There are no preferred methodological stances for this minitrack: this minitrack is open to both qualitative and quantitative research, to research from a positivist, interpretivist, or critical perspective, to studies from the lab, from the field, or developmental in nature. 

Themes and topics of relevance to this minitrack include, but are not limited to (related topics not listed are especially welcome):

Collaboration support techniques, systems and processes
•	Understanding patterns of collaboration, e.g.:
•	Studies on the effectiveness and measurement of different techniques for producing predictable patterns of collaboration:  generation (brainstorming), reduction (selecting which ideas are worthy of more attention), clarification (creation of shared meaning) organization, evaluation, and consensus building
•	Creativity techniques
•	Reusability, transferability and predictability of collaboration processes
•	Best practices and patterns – development, field experiences, laboratory evaluation of codified facilitation interventions that produce a predictable pattern of collaboration 
•	Further advances of and experiences with Collaboration Engineering approaches
•	Automation of Group Decision Support processes
•	Capturing, storing, and utilizing tacit knowledge from experts 

Design approaches for collaboration processes systems & technologies
•	Theories, guidelines and strategies for designing collaboration processes, technologies and systems
•	Enhancing robustness, flexibility and longevity of these systems, processes and technologies
•	Modeling techniques and frameworks to capture collaboration process designs, facilitation interventions and information exchange in groups
•	Theoretical foundations of productivity, creativity, satisfaction, and other constructs relating to mission-critical tasks for which collaboration processes and systems must be designed 
•	Proof of concepts – examples of breakthrough collaboration technologies, processes and systems e.g.
•	Group processes for requirements specification & analysis
•	Collaborative risk management
•	Focus groups
•	Delphi processes
•	Collaborative planning
•	Strategy building
•	Evaluation & assessment
•	Collaborative writing

Collaboration Technology Adoption, Adaptation, and Transition
•	Training work group members and work group leaders
•	Change management in collaborative contexts
•	Coping with resistance to change in collaborative contexts
•	Success factors for collaborative technology diffusion
•	Theories for technology acceptance, use, and diffusion
•	Studies on the efficacy of interventions intended to introduce collaborative technologies in an organization

Facilitation of group work
•	Predictable effects of facilitation interventions 
•	Styles of facilitation 
•	Embedding facilitation support in groupware technology
•	Facilitation of dispersed group processes
•	Approaches to training facilitation skills to novices and practitioners
•	Facilitation guidelines for different socio-cultural environments
•	Approaches to capturing (un)successful facilitation techniques from expert facilitators
•	Ethical issues around facilitation

MINITRACK COORDINATORS:
Douglas C. Derrick
University of Nebraska at Omaha
College of Information Science and Technology
1110 South 67th street, Omaha, NE 68182-0116 USA
phone: (402) 554-2060  fax: (402) 554-3400
e-mail: dcderrick at unomaha.edu 

Imed Boughzala
Department of Information Systems
Telecom Business School
Institut Mines-Telecom
9 rue Charles Fourier 91011 Evry Cedex France
phone: (33) 1 60-76-45-74  fax: (33) 1 60-76-44-93
email: imed.boughzala at it-sudparis.eu  

Chistopher B. R. Diller
University of Arizona
Eller College of Management
1125 E. Helen St
Tucson, AZ 85719
phone: (520) 621-2640  
e-mail: cdiller at cmi.arizona.edu

The purpose of HICSS is to provide a forum for the interchange of ideas, research results, development activities, and applications among academicians and practitioners in computer-based systems sciences. The conference consists of tutorials, advanced seminars, presentations of accepted papers, open forum, tasks forces, and plenary and distinguished guest lectures. There is a high degree of interaction and discussion among the conference participants because the conference is conducted in a workshop-like setting.

Instructions for submitting papers:
1.	Submit an electronic copy of the full paper, 10 pages including title page, abstract, references and diagrams using the review system available at the HICSS site, make sure that the authors’ names and affiliation information has been removed to ensure an anonymous review.
2.	Do not submit the paper to more than one minitrack. The paper should contain original material and not be previously published or currently submitted for consideration elsewhere.
3.	Provide the required information to the review system such as title, full name of all authors, and their complete addresses including affiliation(s), telephone number(s) and e-mail address(es).
4.	The first page of the paper should include the title and a (max) 300-word abstract.

DEADLINES:
•	Any time: 	Optional abstracts may be submitted to the Minitrack Chairs for guidance, indication of appropriate content and to receive instructions on submitting a full paper.
•	June 15: 	Full papers uploaded in the directory of the appropriate minitrack.
•	August 15: 	Notification of accepted papers mailed to authors.
•	September 15: 	Accepted manuscripts, camera-ready, uploaded; author(s) must register by this time.

Send all correspondence related to this minitrack to:

Douglas C. Derrick (primary contact)
University of Nebraska at Omaha
College of Information Science and Technology
1110 South 67th street, Omaha, NE 68182-0116 USA
phone: (402) 554-2060  fax: (402) 554-3400
e-mail: dcderrick at unomaha.edu