Case Study Findings from Human Interaction with Web E-Services

Case study findings may provide a deeper insight into human interaction with web e-services. The qualitative data that was captured in this study suggests that human interaction with web e-services may make the user task difficult, and that the user expectation about the system not meeting user requirements may downgrade the system’s use. Introducing an e-services system without integrating the user-friendly characteristics may have the effect of introducing complexity. Initial staff impressions of the system were formed on the basis of their expectations. When task outcomes did not meet their expectations, staff tried and then avoided its use.

Conducting Effective Interviews about Virtual Work

This chapter explicates interviewing as a viable research method for studying virtual work. The chapter begins with a review of the existing interdisciplinary scholarship on qualitative interviewing along with three modes of interviewing, interviewing techniques, formats, and rigor. Next, the chapter reviews exemplary research reports on virtual work to illustrate best practices in interviewing and data analysis. Finally, suggestions for collecting, analyzing, and interpreting interview data about virtual work are discussed.

Applying Dramaturgy to Virtual Work Research

Dramaturgy as a research approach is a creative and useful tool to fully understand the complex dynamics of individuals interacting in a virtual work environment. Following Goffman’s seminal dramaturgical research techniques, this chapter applies the principles and tenants of dramaturgy to virtual work. The authors examine the historical and theoretical underpinnings of dramaturgy and offer a potential research design integrating this methodological approach. The chapter extends the dramaturgical approach to offer challenges and opportunities of using this research approach in an electronic work domain.

Virtual Vines

This chapter focuses on the somewhat unexpected relationship between participatory research methods, virtual work, and community-based practices. More specifically, the authors’ contribution outlines different conceptual foundations and methodological approaches related to participatory and community-based research. Embedded within this review, they address two key connections between participatory methods and virtual work. First, participatory and community-based methodologies provide a useful set of concepts and practices that can be applied in virtual contexts. Second, virtual work can facilitate participatory initiatives and achieve community-based goals. The chapter also offers two short case studies that illustrate how community-based groups often rely on virtual work to move their local initiatives forward.

Thinking Outside the Office

This chapter draws on labor process theory and builds on a previous paper by Spivack and Rubin (2011) that explored workplace factors that might diminish the autonomy of creative knowledge workers. Using data from the National Study of the Changing Workforce, this chapter tests hypotheses linking creative workers’ ability to work virtually, control their task and temporal autonomy to their well-being, job satisfaction, and commitment. The authors find that creative workers that have spatial autonomy have more positive work attitudes and better mental health. Further, they show that along with task and temporal autonomy, the conditions of the new workplace make spatial autonomy an important consideration. These findings contribute both to literature about the changing workplace and to practitioners concerned with maximizing the well-being of creative knowledge workers.

The Way We Work

Information technology provides unprecedented opportunities to work virtually. Despite a handful of perceived drawbacks, telecommuting offers society, organizations, and individuals numerous benefits. However, the embrace of telecommuting has been lukewarm at best. One possible explanation is that the traditional idea of a commuter workforce is so strongly ingrained that it will take more time before people begin to regard the office as superfluous. This chapter examines what the idea of “work” looked like in the past, looks like in the present, and what it may look like in the future. By examining the factors that contributed to how we worked both before and after the industrial revolution, and questioning whether these factors are still valid today, this chapter prompts us to reevaluate our assumption about the way we work, and prepare for the changes that are presently taking place. Lastly, this chapter will explore the practical and research implications of virtual work.

Exploring Organizational Cultures through Virtual Survey Research

The survey is regarded as the most commonly used methodological tool in gathering information. There are many types of surveys, but this chapter discusses how to conduct and analyze quantitative and qualitative survey research in virtual environments via online or computer-administered surveys. Corporations are increasingly relying on virtual surveys to acquire knowledge about their employees’ morale, satisfaction, and productivity. Hence, this chapter is intended as a tutorial guide for exploring organizational cultures through virtual survey research. This chapter explains in detail how to design survey questionnaires, sample subjects, analyze data both quantitatively and qualitatively, and finally how to interpret survey results. Strengths and limitations associated with using virtual surveys are highlighted. The chapter also considers future directions for understanding employees’ needs through virtual survey research.

The Role of Experiments in the Study of Virtual Groups

In this chapter, the authors discuss the use of experimental methods in the study of virtual groups. For some time, experimentalists have hoped, as noted in Bainbridge (2007), that virtual worlds would provide a locale for research. The authors discuss practical techniques for doing so, and provide a detailed example of one such experiment as a platform for discussing opportunities and potential pitfalls for conducting research on virtual work groups. For convenience, they divide the steps in creating and conducting an experiment into several stages: design of the experiment, pre-testing, and statistical power of the data it produces. Each stage in any experiment presents challenges and requires decisions on the part of the experimenters; experiments conducted with virtual groups are certainly no exception.

Reply Timing and Emotional Strategy in Mobile Text Communications of Japanese Young People

In this chapter, the authors present two studies that examine the timing of replies to mobile text messages, especially the behavior of intentionally waiting before replying. As the first step in Study 1, 42 Japanese university subjects were asked by questionnaire survey whether they would wait before replying to mobile text messages they received, and if so, in which situations they would they wait. A large percentage of respondents suggested that they would sometimes wait before replying to a mobile text message. The freeform responses also indicated the involvement of an emotional aspect in most cases where subjects did not immediately reply to a mobile text message, even when they were capable of doing so. For Study 2, 224 Japanese university students were asked to rate on a 6-point scale whether they would wait before replying to mobile text messages from senders conveying each of four emotions: happiness, sadness, anger, and guilt. They were also asked to give a freeform answer as to why they would respond in such a way. The results showed that for each of the four emotional settings, subjects adjust the timing of message replies in order to manipulate the emotions of others or their own emotions, according to the situation. Individual differences were also observed in subjects’ thoughts about adjusting reply timing and manipulating emotions.

Shadowing Virtual Work Practices

Without modification, traditional ethnological approaches cannot fully attend to the translocation of practices into and out of virtual spaces. The ethnographer can observe the dislocation of a particular work practice from a specific place when he or she observes a research subject “log on,” but accounting for the translocation of others’ practices into the shared virtual space, which is necessary to conduct hermeneutical (or constitutive) research in virtual environments, remains an elusive methodological practice. In this chapter, interpretive shadowing, as it has recently been described (e.g., Czarniawska, 2007), is offered as one way to address some of the limitations of virtual ethnography. By describing (virtual) action nets vis-à-vis the “hybrid character of actions,” researchers are able to follow subjects and objects as they move through various spaces/places and describe how these actants constitute fields of practices. Drawing upon examples from two years of shadowing research within the field of private investigations, this chapter describes how shadowers can observe both immediate and virtual practices. Specifically, descriptions of how to account for institutional practices that transcend space, place, and time are provided. Though interpretive research is theoretically sound, examples of specific methodological techniques are provided to address some of the technical limitations of the method when using it to study virtual practices.