Component technologies are perceived as an important means to keep software architectures flexible. Flexibility offered by componenttechnologies typically addresses software developers at design time. However, the design of software which should support socialsystems, such as work groups or...

In fragmented work settings like networked organizations or virtual organizations, monolithic approaches to implement support for collaboration would require the actors involved to agree on the usage of the approach or tool under consideration. As the autonomy of actors in these settings makes...

Many modern organizations can be seen as network organizations. Their participantsare individuals as well as organizations, they cooperate in distributed teams.Especially in knowledge-intensive domains (service engineering, consulting, etc.)project teams form with participants from very...

In this contribution we discuss possible approaches to exploring new directions in support for knowledgemanagement with computers. We consider networked computers in their role as communication media, andlook at three perspectives on communication support for knowledge management: communication...

CSCL at the workplace is subject to the special characteristics of a situation where learning is not the primary taskof the learners. The gap between the goal to work efficiently and the need to increase qualification and skills is evenwider in organizations which operate in knowledge-intensive...

The „OlViO“ project1 deals with knowledge management and e-learning asintegral parts of organizational learning in virtual organizations. Some of theproblems encountered in classical organizations become even harder in virtualorganizations because their members are distributed and cooperate...

Many IT design methodologies have been developed to guide professional designers towards aproduction of ‘good’ software that is useful to the users in the application fields addressed. But recentresearch has also stressed the creative activities of the users as an important part of...

The objective of this paper is the design of computer supported joint actionspaces. It is argued against a view of functionality as residing in computer applications. Insuch a view the creation of functionality is equivalent to the creation of computerapplications. Functionality, in the view...

Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has become an important factor in ourpersonal lives as well as in our social organizations—at work, at home, in our hospitals, in thepolitical institutions and in the public media. While in work settings the dynamics of sharedbusiness goals,...

In this chapter we depict collaborative aspects of tailoring software. We provide a categorization distinguishing between three levels of intensity of user ties regarding tools usage (“shared use”, “shared context”, and “shared tool”) and discuss approaches to support collaborative...