Inter-organizational collaboration is no longer entirely a free choice, but is close to a necessity imposed by economic, technical, and knowledge-related concerns. A deep understanding of collaboration will assist in making intelligent decisions on entering, operating, and evaluating collaborative ventures. The nature of the partners—industrial corporations, consultants, academic institutions a...

E-learning students’ fora were studied both manually and by computer. Physically distant students were asked to collaborate to write a program in small groups. Tutors evaluated the records of their discussions to assess the collaborative process and its phases. Discussions were also studied as a collective discourse directed by a goal. Computer parsing based on a discourse model was achieved. R...

This paper sets the basis for a research project focused on collaborative social network’s genesis and dynamics. It introduces a research framework for the empirical investigation of a network focused on the design of a shared artefact, the so-called "Web services Architecture". Our hypothesis is that network artefact’s characteristics, seen as the final outcome of a collaborative process, infl...

The supply chains in the Electronics industry have gone through some major changes over the last decades. Today’s Electronics landscape is highly competitive, with short product lifecycles, and unpredictable demands. Many specialized players have appeared in the industry. There is a growing need for collaboration between the different parties in this industry, which can be supported by software...

In this article we introduce the main research lines concerning CSCW and groupware, which are forming the core foundation of Collaborative Working Environments (CWE). Furthermore, we introduce the problematic aspects in CWE and the features and recommendations for the integration of CWE in organizations. Through this issue readers will learn new paradigms for the building of CWE as well as dire...

Summary Successful public health initiatives require multi-sector collaboration. AVONet was a UK collaborative developed to provide evidence-based strategies for active ageing. This study explored the success of AVONet in the achievement of its objectives as perceived by all partners. A convergent parallel mixed-methods design was employed, utilizing a quantitative survey and qualitative semi-s...

The key focus of this paper is to introduce an approach to collaborative concept design which makes use of critical thinking styles and methods. It consists of four stages aimed to generate concept ideas, in response to identified needs, to explore them, to develop a set of solutions, and to finally choose a solution through critical examination of the solution set. Experimental findings and re...

Modelling is a key activity in conceptual design and system design. Through collaborative modelling, end-users, stakeholders, experts and entrepreneurs are able to create shared understanding about a system representation. This paper reports on a literature review to provide an overview of the commonalities and differences in collaborative modelling research. We develop a framework of analysis ...