The development and use of a framework for categorising acts of collaborative work

The paper presents a framework which is intended to embrace all forms of collaborative work. The framework comprises four major elements: The collaboration purposes at the outset; The features in place before collaboration begins; The features which emerge during collaboration and; The outcomes. The collaborative work research team in the School of Information Systems experience with the Group Systems electronic meeting led to the conclusion that there was a gap in the advice and theory available to business on the identification and solution of collaborative work problems. The team carried out a literature search to attempt to map the relevant literature of several disciplines onto the framework and also to identify "best practice" in each of the elements and sub elements of the framework. The paper reports on this work and discusses the use of the framework for future research and also for the use of organisations in the analysis of the effectiveness and efficiency of their existing collaborative work and as an evaluation tool for assessing the business impact of the use of new collaborative technologies and methodologies.