was looking at some old brw issues & noticed a summary of an article from the march harvard biz review. the hbr article is ‘want collaboration?’ by jeff weiss and jonathan hughes. the brw summary says weiss & hughes advise the reasons for conflict need to be addressed before collaboration occurs and suggest 6 strategies for managing conflict (below). somehow i missed this article back in march but have just grabbed it so i’ll have a read later.

they suggest having an agreed method for conflict resolution, provide tools to assist in reaching compromises, making sure managers take responsibility for escalating conflicts, use escalation as an opportunity for coaching & creating a transparent conflict resolution process.

all of which are great ideas for both virtual & f2f teams. but more on this later.

THE SIXTH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON
KNOWLEDGE, CULTURE AND CHANGE IN ORGANISATIONS
Monash University Centre, Prato (Near Florence), Italy,
11-14 July 2006
http://www.ManagementConference.com

To be held on the Tuscan town of Prato, the conference will include
some of the world’s leading thinkers in the field of knowledge, culture
and change management, as well as numerous paper, workshop and
colloquium presentations by practitioners, teachers and researchers.
The conference venue is the Monash University Centre in the Palazzo Vaj
in central Prato, a sixteenth century town just to the north of
Florence, and close to Florence International Airport.
I would particularly like to invite you to respond to the conference
call for papers. Presenters may choose to submit written papers for
publication before or after the conference in the fully refereed
International Journal of Knowledge, Culture and Change Management. If
you are unable to attend the conference in person, virtual
registrations are also available which allow you to submit a paper for
refereeing and possible publication in the journal, as well as access
to the electronic version of the conference proceedings.
Full details of the conference, including an online call for papers
form, are to be found at the conference website. The next round call
for papers closes on 31 October 2005.
We do hope you will submit a paper and that you will be able to join
us in Prato in July 2006.
Yours Sincerely,
Prof. Robert Brooks
Monash University, Melbourne, Austra
robert.brooks@managementconference.com

the university college of london has found people with long term conditions (such as depression, heart disease, etc) find benefit in online communities which connect them to others with the same aliment. sites that contain online communities make them feel better informed, socially supported, in more control, and looked after themselves better.

bbc article
research abstract (i like how they call online communities, Interactive Health Communication Applications – IHCAs)

a couple interesting articles on virtual worlds using real currency and contributing to the real economy but not really being noticed. in the wharton article – The New New Economy: Earning Real Money in the Virtual World – one of the academics estimates the virtual economy is worth somewhere between U$200 million and U$1 billion.

they are focusing on the online multiplayer role playing games in this article. the virtual to real currency comes into play when an unexperienced or time constrained player buys powers or loot from an experienced player. they have even estimated an experienced player can sell enough power/loot to make U$3-4 a hour and point out how that’s not a good wage for an american (although people do live on those wages) but it is a good one for someone in say… china.

two posts @ freedom to tinker address the gov’t getting involved in the games because of the virtual economy. last nite i thought i saw a posting about terrorism & the games… gov’t wanting to monitor the games for illegal activity and i thought it was on schneider’s blog but now i can’t find it. maybe i dreamt it.

what i find most interesting about this wharton article is this quote:

However, these economies are becoming increasingly important, says Wharton legal studies professor Dan Hunter, adding that they could redefine the concept of work, help test economic theories and contribute to the gross domestic product in the United States.

redefine the concept of work. hmm. i wonder about that statement. sure it is creating a new area of industry, just like ebay allowed people to increase their income by selling their stuff or any number of the affiliate programs (such as those amazon ads on the right side on this site). and interacting online in any way is great training for working in virtual teams in the future but i’m not sure about redefining the concept of work. essentially it seems we’re talking about knowledge work which can be outsourced and probably has the biggest (human) benefits by outsourcing it to places with smart but low paid populations. (am i sounding like daniel pink’s a whole new mind?) i’m definitely not sold on the redefinition of work idea.