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The global use of online communities has exploded to involve hundreds of millions of users. Despite the tremendous social impact and business opportunities afforded by these communities, little information systems (IS) research has addressed them -especially in a cross-cultural context. Our research proposes an online community self-disclosure model, tested in a crosscultural setting using data provided by French and British working professionals. Our model is based on social exchange theory (SET) and social penetration theory (SPT), as well as on cross-cultural theory related to individualism-collectivism. SET explains that individuals engage in relationships when the perceived costs associated with the relationship are less than the expected benefits. SPT extends SET to explain that individuals participate in self-disclosure to foster relationships -reciprocation is the primary benefit of self-disclosure, whereas risk is the foundational cost of self-disclosure. Our study established several important findings: positive social influence to use an online community increases online community self-disclosure; reciprocity increases self-disclosure; online community trust increases self-disclosure; and privacy risk beliefs decrease self-disclosure. Meanwhile, a tendency toward collectivism increases self-disclosure. We further found that French participants had higher scores on horizontal individualism than British participants. Several other findings and their implications for practice are also discussed.

Phase I. Discovering the new construct's domain space (i.e., the relevant associated behaviors within the environment encompassed by the proposed construct) (determine the key behaviors that best represent a construct, from the perspective of the theory-based literature, experts, and target participants for whom the construct is being defined) Step 1a. Behavioral elicitation through literature review

This study evaluates the impact of varying group size and social presence on small-group communication. It compares key communication factors-faceto-face (FtF) without computer-mediated communication (CMC) support, FtF with CMC support, and virtual with CMC support-on two different small group sizes (3 and 6). Results indicate that smaller groups establish and maintain higher levels of communication quality, and FtF with CMC support groups have higher levels of communication quality than virtual with CMC support groups; however, no significant difference between traditional FtF groups and virtual groups with CMC support was found. Also, CMC minimized the impact of increased group size. Process losses that a larger FtF group might ordinarily experience can be reduced through the use of CMC. These results should help project managers plan for and deal with the difficulty of communication between project group members in virtual environments.