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Coordinating high-interdependency tasks in asymmetric distributed teams

Published: 08 November 2008 Publication History

Abstract

Teams working on highly interdependent yet geographically distributed tasks need to closely coordinate their activities across distances. This field study in the upstream oil and gas industry illustrates that apart from geographical distribution, the onshore and offshore teams are confronted by considerable challenges due to asymmetries in tasks related, demographic, and cultural attributes. While with the industrywide move towards real-time data and video communication physical distances have become easier to bridge, other asymmetries still require attention. Using semi-structured interviews and observations, coordination requirements between subgroups, interdependencies, and task-specific asymmetries were identified. Implications for media requirements to support distributed asymmetric teams are discussed.

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cover image ACM Conferences
CSCW '08: Proceedings of the 2008 ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work
November 2008
752 pages
ISBN:9781605580074
DOI:10.1145/1460563
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Published: 08 November 2008

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Author Tags

  1. distributed teams
  2. oil industry
  3. task interdependence
  4. technology requirements

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CSCW08
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CSCW08: Computer Supported Cooperative Work
November 8 - 12, 2008
CA, San Diego, USA

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  • (2015)Geographically Distributed SensemakingProceedings of the 2015 IEEE/ACM 8th International Workshop on Cooperative and Human Aspects of Software Engineering10.1109/CHASE.2015.12(36-42)Online publication date: 18-May-2015
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  • (2010)Structuring a Local Virtual Work Ecology for a Collaborative, Multi-Institutional Higher Educational ProjectCommunication, Relationships and Practices in Virtual Work10.4018/978-1-61520-979-8.ch015(264-292)Online publication date: 2010

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