Value, Visibility, Virtual Teamwork at Kairos

Abstract

This chapter proposes an analytic for the assessment of sustainability and success of virtual workplaces. This analytic considers value, visibility, and infrastructure as key factors required for success, and suggests that an assessment of sustainability must include methods for evaluating current and possible mechanisms for securing or distributing social capital, exposing the degree to which the tasks and interactions of workers are made visible, and assessing the administrative and technological infrastructure with regard to support of communication, cooperation, and collaboration. This analytic is applied through a case study of the virtual workplace of the online scholarly journal Kairos: Rhetoric, Technology, Pedagogy.

The Shape of Problems to Come

“…Cooperation across distributed work environments is especially crucial for the success of virtual teams (Carlson, 2001; Coppola, 2004; Gassmann & Von Zedtwitz, 2003). Douglas Eyman (2008) makes a similar point in a reflection on his role as a managing editor of the digital born journal Kairos , noting that virtual teams need to support the visibility of team member’s respective work in order to successfully maintain collaborative work in virtual spaces. Likewise, Allen Brizee (2008) suggests that in order to effectively navigate workplace challenges, technical communicators today must possess “the ability to collaborate with multidisciplinary teams that work in high-tech and often remote contexts and the ability to shift roles and responsibilities based on technological and managerial demands” (p. 368).…”