Does the medium matter in collaboration? Using visually supported collaboration technology in an interior design studio

With the recognition of the importance of collaboration in a design studio and the advancement of technology, increasing numbers of design students collaborate with others in a technology-mediated learning environment (TMLE); however, not all students have positive experiences in TMLEs. One possible reason for unsatisfactory collaboration experiences is that existing text-oriented collaboration technology may not fully support interior design students’ needs for spontaneous interaction with visual images. The purpose of the current research was to determine whether a visually supported collaboration technology (VSCT) for designers, enhances students’ collaboration experiences in a TMLE. A total of 28 junior interior design students participated in the study, all of whom engaged in similar group projects via two collaboration modalities: face-to-face and VSCT. The results show that collaboration modalities influence students’ learning experiences, in particular, achievement and confidence in completing collaborative tasks. When using VSCT, students achieved significantly higher grade and demonstrated higher confidence in completing collaborative tasks compared to face-to-face collaboration; however, no significant differences were reported in either their perception of the collaboration process or their evaluation of the medium in the two collaboration modalities. The findings demonstrate that VSCT enhanced students’ collaboration experiences in design studio. Discussion and implications are provided to facilitate design students’ positive collaboration experiences in a TMLE.     

Evaluating students with online testing modules in engineering economics: A comparision of student performance with online testing and with traditional assessments

Abstract

Engineering economics courses often require students to take time-constrained, in-class exams in which they solve problems by hand, possibly referring to interest rate tables. Many students rely on partial credit to successfully pass exams. Outside of the classroom, professionals rely on computers to solve engineering economics problems, which raises the question of whether engineering economics courses are correctly assessing student performance. This article describes the study of a large engineering economics class using a non-conventional testing method. Student performance was evaluated using online testing modules with a stringent passing criterion, and the tests could be taken multiple times. The questions for each testing attempt were pulled from a database so that students received a new question every time. We compare the performance of students who were assessed using traditional methods with the performance of students assessed with these online testing modules. Our analysis shows that, overall, students who were assessed using the online testing modules earned better grades than students who were assessed via traditional methods. The analysis also discusses several benefits and drawbacks to using online assessments compared with traditional methods. The online assessment method could be useful in large engineering courses that are formula-based.     

Realising the Potential – and Lost Opportunities – for Peer Collaboration in D&T Setting

This paper follows up our theoretical discussion of the potential for collaborative problem solving in Design and Technology (Hennessy and Murphy, 1999). In this paper we report our empirical investigation of peer collaboration in a setting where we identified the presence of significant pre-conditions for productive collaboration. The study investigated the participation of two boys aged 13 who worked together with their teacher over 8 weeks in designing and making an aid for a child with a disability. We analysed their participation using a framework of key features derived from the research literature. Our analyses yielded evidence of effective collaboration in the early design stage, but the students' collaboration and their progress were subsequently undermined. The reasons related to the students' ability to collaborate and the tension for the teacher between students' learning needs and client needs within an authentic activity. The outcome was a successful product but a wealth of lost opportunities – and lack of support – for the students' collaborative problem solving and Design and Technology (D&T) learning. Our observations confirm that despite little evidence of collaboration in D&T, this setting offers extensive resources for supporting collaboration in joint design, planning and problem-solving activities. We also identify impediments to collaboration as a learning mechanism. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

What do i want? The effects of individual aspiration and relational capability on collaboration preferences

Research summary: We examine individuals' collaboration preferences in the Knowledge Transfer Network (KTN) for the UK plastics electronics sector. Using conjoint analysis, we investigate how aspiration gaps and relational capability affect the value placed on potential organizational collaborations. Aspiration gaps reflect individuals' perception of whether they are ahead of or behind peers on their career trajectory, and relational capability captures three distinct dimensions: networking skills, openness to collaborate, and network awareness. Our findings suggest that positive and negative aspiration gaps augment preferences to form organizational partnerships. These effects are positively moderated by networking skills and openness and negatively moderated by network awareness. We discuss the implications of these findings for theories of partnership formation, scientific collaboration, and behavioral strategy. Managerial summary: University–industry collaboration is important to the creation and application of new knowledge. Such collaboration requires individuals of different backgrounds to work together, which can be difficult. We investigate what drives individuals' preferences to collaborate. We find that individuals who consider themselves ahead of or behind their peers are more favorable toward collaboration. We also find that networking skill and openness augment this positive collaboration disposition whereas awareness of the network members makes one more selective and reduces the proclivity to collaborate. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The role of space in interdisciplinary collaboration in design education

The growing interest in the collaborative design education for innovation has mainly been concerned with students and learning outcomes. We know less about the collaboration between the tutors who teach interdisciplinary design courses. Addressing this gap, this article explores the effect of space on the interdisciplinary collaboration between faculty members from the fields of industrial design, architecture, engineering and business administration, who come together to design and conduct an extra-curricular educational activity, Interdisciplinary Design Studio (IDS) at METU. The empirical basis of this study comes from the interviews with the faculty members and the participant observation notes generated during the IDS meetings. The findings show that the effect of space on collaboration becomes evident over three issues, (1) the participation of tutors, (2) the commonality of their expectations from a design project, and (3) the interaction not only between students and tutors, but also among tutors as an interdisciplinary team.     

Do professional service firms benefit from customer and supplier collaborations in competitive,turbulent environments?

Although recent research on business-to-business professional service firms (PSFs) emphasizes the role and consequences of collaboration with business partners, we know little regarding the conditions under which bright-side benefits of PSF interfirm collaboration turn into dark-side drawbacks. Our study shows that customer and supplier collaborations have both bright and dark sides, and their benefits with respect to helping a PSF to drive service performance are contingent on the levels of the environmental competition and turbulence. In particular, we show that increasing levels of competitive intensity and environmental turbulence encountered by a PSF can diminish the capacity of customer and supplier collaborations to drive service performance. When the level of competitive intensity increases, the benefits of customer collaboration become more positive; however, the dark-side of supplier collaboration becomes more pronounced, which negatively influences service performance. When the level of environmental turbulence increases, the dark-side of customer and supplier collaborations becomes more critical and the benefits derived from interfirm collaboration to promote service performance can be lost.     

Which one is more valuable in coordinating the online and offline distribution? Service support or online price coordination

Nowadays effective mechanisms to coordinate the online and offline distribution become increasingly important in the business market. In this research, we first propose two mechanisms (i.e. the offline service to the retailer and the online price coordination) for the manufacturer and the retailer to employ. Our results show that the online price coordination does help coordinate the online and offline distribution and bring higher profits to the manufacturer-retailer supply chain and thus both the manufacturer and the retailer, while the offline service to the retailer does not; comparing to the offline service to the retailer, the online price coordination is a better strategy to be utilized to alleviate the online to offline competition. Furthermore, we investigate if a novel coordination mechanism, which combines the offline service to the retailer with the online price coordination, can help coordinate the online and offline distribution better and becomes the optimal coordination mechanism. Surprisingly, our results show that compared to both the offline service to the retailer and the online price coordination, this combination coordination mechanism does show a dominant competitive advantage to bring highest profits to all parties.     

Implementing studio-based learning for design education: a study on the perception and challenges of Malaysian undergraduates

Studio-based learning (SBL) is a teaching and learning methodology that combines different learning pedagogies such as social constructivist, problem-based, and active learning to mimic real-world working experience. Traditionally, SBL is practised in architecture and art programmes, however there is a growing number of research in other areas such as computer science, engineering, entrepreneurship and design courses. Nevertheless, in Malaysia, studies have only focused on architecture programmes. Therefore, this study focuses on reporting the experience and challenges of implementing SBL for a design course in the area of Visual Communication. By employing a qualitative methodology, findings show positive perception towards SBL where respondents reported awareness in improved design and communication skills, and increased acceptance towards team work. They found the critique sessions, facilitated their learning progress. Nevertheless, students reported challenges with inept teaching and learning facilities for design work, collaboration and communication breakdown with stakeholders. The study also reports on improvement strategies to enhance students learning experience through SBL.

     

Complexity of sales situation and sales lead performance: An empirical study in business-to-business company

Close collaboration in business-to-business relationships has been an interest of both researchers and managers; however, companies are often struggling to obtain the benefits of close collaboration with their customers. Our study examines the complexity of the sales situation from three perspectives 1) relational complexity, 2) complexity of internal sales tasks, and 3) vendor's cross-business unit collaboration, and its effect on the sales lead performance in a business-to-business context. We adopted a mixed methods approach; our data consists of interviews with sales personnel and a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system data of 4000 sales leads from a large IT company that sells integrated solutions. Sales leads are classified into three categories: win, lost, and canceled. Based on multinomial logistic regression analysis, the results show that close collaboration with customers increases the probability of sales leads to be canceled. Our findings suggest that the selling approach focusing on close collaboration with the customers may not be a method to increase hit rates, due to possible high amount of canceled sales leads. This should be considered when salespeople's performance is measured in highly collaborative business-to-business environment. We conclude our paper with managerial and theoretical implications, and avenues for the further research.     

Coopetition and product innovation performance: The role of internal knowledge sharing mechanisms and formal knowledge protection mechanisms

Coopetition is an important new product development strategy; yet, studies addressing the impact of collaboration with competitors on product innovation performance provide mixed evidence. Conducting Tobit analyses on a sample of 627 manufacturing firms that responded to the fifth wave of the Flemish Community Innovation Survey, we find that the innovation performance implications of competitor collaboration depend on fine-grained intra-organizational design characteristics. In particular, our results show that competitor collaboration has a significant positive impact on product innovation performance only when internal knowledge sharing mechanisms and formal knowledge protection mechanisms are present. These findings contribute to the emerging contingency perspective on coopetition and provide specific recommendations to managers that are involved in coopetitive endeavors.     

Buyer-supplier matching in online B2B marketplace: An empirical study of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs)

Mitigating perceived uncertainty and risk is critical for successful exchanges in an online B2B marketplace. However, scant empirical research has been devoted to the topic, and even less to small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). We investigate the use of quality signals and recommendations to foster buyer-supplier matching in an online B2B marketplace of SMEs. Unique proprietary data from a leading B2B e-commerce platform suggest that such a matching is significantly related to signals of SME buyers' quality and credibility embedded in how projects are described. Moreover, appropriately designed recommendation system can increase the matching rate because it helps reduce buyers' information overload. This research highlights the importance of integrating online channel data with traditional offline channel data to accurately assess the drivers of buyer-supplier matching. Our findings provide valuable insights into how to design and manage an online B2B marketplace for SMEs to yield more successful matches.     

Rehearsal of professional practice: impacts of web-based collaborative learning on the future encounter of different disciplines

This study argues that the shift towards a more multidisciplinary professional life in contemporary design practice requires design curricula to equip students with collaborative skills. The study offers that by the aid of web-based collaborative learning (WBCL) in design education, different disciplines may be brought together during their education. A case study is held as a rehearsal of professional life; involving architecture and interior architecture students collaborating on a common project, using WBCL. The evaluations of the participating students about the process were analyzed. The findings convey that there is a mutual problem of recognition of professional domains. In order to diagnose and possibly reconcile tensions that may occur due to this problem in professional life, this paper asserts that integrating interdisciplinary work to the design curricula would be beneficial.     

Circulation of loyalty: Relationships between mobile instant messenger and offline character emoticon store

Mobile instant messenger (mIM) service providers are extending their online services to the offline platform. Asia's largest mIM service providers, LINE and Kakao, are brining life to its signature characters such that they appear not only on the text screen but also on offline character flagship stores. This study investigates mIM users' motives in visiting the store and identifies the role of mIM characters in facilitating users' loyalty toward the mIM service provider. To comprehensively understand users' motivations in visiting the offline flagship store, the study conducted a focus group interview and used the confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to identify seven key motivations. The empirical findings are drawn from 332 Korean respondents that use the mIM service and have experience in visiting the character flagship store. The study finds that users who actively use mIM services and emoticons are likely to visit the store due to the identified factors. A virtuous cycle of loyalty from online to the offline platform, and vice versa was also found. Findings of this study confirm that mIM character flagship stores are a strategic way for mIM service providers to communicate with users and create their unique brand identity.     

Boundary spanner relational behavior and inter-organizational control in supply chain relationships

Boundary spanner relational behavior is considered critical in the successful management of buyer–supplier relationships and may help avoiding high costs of more formal inter-organizational controls. Yet, the influence of partners' boundary spanners on effective supply chain collaboration has had much less inquiry than the influence of broader inter-organizational controls. We use survey data of 200 buyer–supplier relationships to examine how these individual and organizational control mechanisms influence the performance effects of interfirm collaborations that vary in scope of activities undertaken. Findings show that collaboration scope as well as boundary spanner relational behavior and inter-organizational controls are positively associated with performance. The effect of collaboration scope on firm performance, however, also depends on both mechanisms but in opposite directions: while its influence on performance is enhanced by inter-organizational controls, relational behavior of partners' boundary spanners has a negative moderating effect, indicating that such behavior contributes more to the effective management of collaborations of narrow scope than those of broader scope.     

Competitive intensity and collaboration: impact on firm growth across technological environments

This article investigates the impact of competitive intensity and collaboration on firm growth across technological environments. I propose that competitive intensity determines the likelihood of firm collaboration, and that the interaction of competitive intensity and collaboration influences firm growth. These relationships are, in turn, moderated by industry‐level technological intensity. Analyzing 1,004 firms and 378 collaborations from the manufacturing sector in Singapore, I find that firms facing high or low levels of competitive intensity collaborate less often than those facing moderate levels of competitive intensity. Industry technology intensity moderates this relationship, with a stronger inverted‐U‐shaped association between competitive intensity and collaboration in more technology intensive industries. Collaboration leads to higher growth for firms facing lower levels of competitive intensity than for firms facing higher levels of competitive intensity only in more technology intensive industries. In technologically less intensive industries, collaboration leads to higher growth for firms facing higher levels of competitive intensity as compared to those facing lower levels of competitive intensity. These findings have important implications for competitive and collaborative dynamics for firm growth in different technological environments. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Formal integration archetypes in ambidextrous organizations

Research suggests that organizational ambidexterity, an organization's capacity to pursue both exploratory and exploitative activities, is critical to firm innovation and performance. Extant research primarily emphasizes several firm‐level informal integration mechanisms, such as creating a common vision and relying on social integration, for integrating structurally ambidextrous units. Research has largely ignored, however, the formal mechanisms by which organizations have integrated such units. In this inductive study, using archival and interview data from organizations in Silicon Valley, we address this gap by identifying the formal integration archetypes that enable core business units to collaborate with new venture units to incubate new businesses. The four integration archetypes that enable collaboration vary along two key dimensions: who initiates new ventures and when collaboration is solicited. We identify formal administrative and resource mechanisms that enable such collaboration. We combine the disparate literatures of temporal and spatial separation of ambidextrous structures, and demonstrate how these must be combined at the business unit and new venture levels of analysis to achieve integration. The practical contribution of this study lies in identifying suitable contexts in which each of these archetypes can be utilized by practitioners for reintegrating new venture projects developed in separate structures.     

Students’ interest and expectancy for success while engaged in analysis- and creative design activities

Inasmuch as design is a central activity in K-12 engineering education, understanding the students’ motivation during engaging in engineering design activities will help educators to develop and evaluate strategies for engineering design challenges, and improve curriculum. The objective of this study is to better understand the relationship between students’ interest and expectancy for success while engaged in two design activities in grades 9–12. The primary difference between the two activities was the strategy used to solve the design problems from a predictive analysis and a creative approach. Constructs of motivation for students’ interest include task value (TV) and intrinsic goal orientation (IGO) and extrinsic goal orientation (EGO). Expectancy for success includes control of learning beliefs and self-efficacy for learning and performance. In this study, students (n = 31) from three high schools that implement the Project Lead the Way curriculum in three states in the US participated in the study. Immediately after completing their design projects, each student was asked to complete a modified version of the Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire survey instrument which evaluates their interest and expectancy for success. The results show that students were more intrinsically motivated to engage in a design activity that involves a predictive analysis than a creative approach. No significant correlation was found between students’ expectancy for success and EGO in design tasks that utilized either predictive analysis or creative approach. The study also found that TV and IGO were good predictors for students’ expectancy for success. Demographic information associated with students’ motivation in the design activities is also presented.     

R&D Partnerships and Innovation Performance: Can There Be too Much of a Good Thing?

R&D collaboration facilitates the pooling of complementary skills, learning from the partner as well as the sharing of risks and costs. Research therefore stresses the positive relationship between collaborative R&D and innovation performance. Fewer studies address the potential drawbacks of collaborative R&D. Collaborative R&D comes at the cost of coordination and monitoring, requires knowledge disclosure, and involves the risk of opportunistic behavior by the partners. Thus, while for lower collaboration intensities the net gains can be high, costs may start to outweigh benefits if firms perform a higher share of their innovation projects collaboratively. For a sample of 2735 firms located in Germany and active in a broad range of manufacturing and service sectors, this study finds that increasing the share of collaborative R&D projects in total R&D projects is associated with a higher probability of product innovation and with a higher market success of new products. While this confirms previous findings on the gains for innovation performance, the results also show that collaboration has decreasing and even negative returns on product innovation if its intensity increases above a certain threshold. Thus, the relationship between collaboration intensity and innovation follows an inverted‐U shape and, on average, costs start to outweigh benefits if a firm pursues more than about two‐thirds of its R&D projects in collaboration. This result is robust to conditioning market success to the introduction of new products and to accounting for the selection into collaborating. This threshold is, however, contingent on firm characteristics. Smaller and younger as well as resource‐constrained firms benefit from relatively higher collaboration intensities. For firms with higher collaboration complexities in terms of different partners and different stages of the R&D process at which collaboration takes place, returns start to decrease already at lower collaboration intensities.