Information Systems and Technology in the International Office of the Future Proceedings of the IFIP WG 8.4 working conference on the International Office of the Future: Design Options and Solution Strategies, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona, USA, April 8–11, 1996

Globalization of business, internationalization of trade, and increasing prevalence of multi-cultural interdisciplinary teams are beginning to redefine the nature of office work. Different-time/different-place/different-culture teams will become the norm. Same-time/same-place/same-culture teams will become the exception. The International Office of the Future (IOF) will be a dramatically different environment than that which exists in the majority of today's organizations. Prospects for the IOF give rise to numerous questions, which are addressed in this book. What are the salient issues? What design options or solution strategies exist to address these issues? How might these design options be best implemented? What are their implications? In addition, a number of specific topics will be discussed including: multi-cultural team productivity, IT platform requirements, and global telecommunications.

A Scope and Aims.- 1 Global Inc: an experiment across time and space.- B Full papers.- 2 Working with groups using groupware: electronic problem structuring and project management support for face to face and dispersed organizational groups.- 3 The information superhighway: an on-ramp to global markets for Austrian corporations?.- 4 An IBIS-based model to support group discussions.- 5 Measuring the impact of communication technology on group decision making.- 6 An intemet realtime conference: design, experience and future application.- 7 Telecommunication and an information infrastructure in China.- 8 Cultural factors in the adoption and use of GSS.- 9 Operating systems for the multimedia office of the future.- 10 An analysis of IT platform and organizational requirements for multimedia cooperation on the internet: a case study on the international office of the future.- 11 Meetings bloody meetings — a transition in the concept of meeting as technology reduces dependency on time and geography.- 12 The windmills of our minds: a workshop on culture clash in CSCW.- 13 Using the information superhighway to support organizational learning: content, context and infrastructure.- 14 Dual information systems for organizational working and learning — the business and breakdown layers.- 15 Towards a common architecture paradigm for the global application of information technology.- 16 The conference/classroom of the future — an interdisciplinary approach.- 17 An example of the use of WWW as a tool and environment for research and collaboration.- 18 An electronic social space for consultation and collaboration.- 19 The office tyrant: abuse of power through e-mail.- 20 Distributed work and client/server computing: issues from the field.- 21 Development decision centers — astrategy to improve development decision-making.- 22 Culture-building in action: developing a vision for Global Inc..- 23 Action learning: preparing workers for the international office of the future.- C Extended Abstracts.- 24 Teamwork training for mobile interdisciplinary teams.- 25 Globalisation of information systems in Australian organizations.- 26 DecisionWeb: a tool for asynchronous meeting support.- 27 A culturally sensitive model of technology and groups: focus on group support systems.- 28 Subject areas for teaching GSS facilitation.- 29 The impact of physical environment on performance and satisfaction in the white collar office: an overview of the literature.- 30 The virtual office in practice: a case study.- D Panel Summaries.- 31 Making diffusion and adoption issues part of the design options and solution strategies for the international office of the future.- 32 When we can’t get together: how large is the “value added” of video-conferencing over computer-conferencing.- 33 The international office worker of the future.- 34 Round the clock work: the organisational issues.- 35 Round the clock work: the technology issues.- 36 Future environments.- Index of contributors.- Keyword index.