Kai Riemer - Collaboration in the Digital Age: How Technology Enables Individuals, Teams and Businesses

More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/10440

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The proliferation of digital technologies has brought the world closer together but also created new barriers and divides. It is now possible to connect almost instantly and seamlessly with family, friends and co-workers across the globe. As a result, new forms of collaboration between individuals, teams and businesses have not only become possible, but a necessity to stay competitive in fast-changing markets.

This book brings together expert scholars to address these challenges. Across 14 chapters, our authors share their insights into new forms of work, team collaboration, enterprise social networking, management in a digital world, digital commerce, as well as various new inter-organisational forms of doing business such as in digital cooperatives, large project businesses and living labs.

This book is a Festschrift in honour of Stefan Klein, on the occasion of his 60th birthday.

Stefan Klein is Professor for Interorganizational Systems and a Director of the European Research Center for Informations Systems (ERCIS) at the Department of Information Systems, University of Mnster. Stefan received his Ph.D. from the University of Cologne, Germany and his Habilitation from the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland. He also held positions with the German National Research Center for Computer Science (GMD); Harvard University; University of Koblenz-Landau, Germany; University of Linz, Austria; and University College Dublin, Ireland, where he was John Sharkey Chair in The Centre for Innovation, Technology & Organisation. Stefan has published widely in the discipline of Information Systems and held editorial positions with many of the top journals in the field.

Importantly, Stefan has been a positive role model for many colleagues, junior and senior alike, ourselves included. Many of those colleagues have keenly accepted our invitation, and taken time out of their busy schedules to contribute their latest work and insights to this book. As a result, this book is as much a reflection of the quality of Stefans network of collaborators, as it is of his own research interests and his approach to academic work and life more generally. If asked to describe Stefan with one word, many colleagues would provide as an answer collaboration (or various derivatives thereof). This term describes at once Stefans research interests, and his fundamentally open and cooperative attitude towards others.

The theme of the book Collaboration in the Digital Age captures, in todays language, Stefans long-standing research agenda which revolves around the impact of emerging new technologies, such as information infrastructures, inter-organisational systems, digital devices and communication technologies, on social phenomena of collaboration among businesses, teams, workers or even consumers. More specifically, the three parts of this book are a direct reflection of the three major research streams that characterise Stefans academic career to date. He has made important contributions to each.