research-article

Does Distance Still Matter? Revisiting the CSCW Fundamentals on Distributed Collaboration

Authors:

Pernille Bjørn,

Morten Esbensen,

Rasmus Eskild Jensen,

Stina MatthiesenAuthors Info & Claims

ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI), Volume 21, Issue 5

Article No.: 27, Pages 1 - 26

https://doi.org/10.1145/2670534

Published: 21 November 2014 Publication History

Abstract

Does distance still matter? Reporting on a comparative analysis of four ethnographic studies of global software development, this article analyzes the fundamental aspects of distance as depicted in the famous paper “Distance Matters.” The results suggest that, although while common ground, collaboration readiness, and organizational management are still important aspects for distributed collaboration, the arguments concerning coupling of work and collaboration technology readiness need to be refined. We argue that in working remotely, closely coupled work tasks encourage remote workers to spend the extra effort required in articulation of work to make the collaboration function. Also we find that people in distributed software development have already made collaborative technologies part of their work, and individuals are comfortable with them; thus, collaboration technology readiness takes a different shape in this setting.

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Index Terms

Does Distance Still Matter? Revisiting the CSCW Fundamentals on Distributed Collaboration
1. Social and professional topics
  1. Professional topics
    1. Computing and business

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cover image ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction

ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction Volume 21, Issue 5

November 2014

120 pages

ISSN:1073-0516

EISSN:1557-7325

DOI:10.1145/2692163

Editor:
Shumin Zhai
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Publication History

Published: 21 November 2014

Accepted: 01 September 2014

Revised: 01 September 2014

Received: 01 May 2014

Published in TOCHI Volume 21, Issue 5

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https://doi.org/10.1515/icom-2023-0038
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