The goal of the Virtual Communities and Collaboration track is to disseminate research and extend our knowledge of how collaboration manifests in virtual communities. Following a continuing trend toward globalization and remote or hybrid work arrangements, virtual communities and collaboration are becoming indispensable elements within organizations. Virtual communities constitute groups of individuals who interact and pursue mutual goals within computer-mediated environments. Prevalent across digital spaces ranging from crowd platforms to social media to virtual worlds among others, organizations are leveraging on the collective wisdom of virtual communities to improve business processes and bolster firm performance. Consequently, there is a necessity for researchers and practitioners to address cognitive, behavioral, social, and technical issues in such virtual collaborative environments. Research areas range from design issues in collaborative environments, to sense of community and engagement in virtual communities, to the impact of virtual communities and collaboration in domains as diverse as business, education, and government. The track aims to solicit contributions from a range of ontological and epistemological perspectives to not only deepen our understanding of virtual communities and collaboration but also enhance the theoretical foundation for research, share insightful empirical findings related to these venues, and provide guidance to practitioners.

Track Chairs
Chee-Wee Tan, Copenhagen Business School, ct.digi@cbs.dk
Langtao Chen, Missouri University of Science and Technology, chenla@mst.edu
Tom Meservy, Brigham Young University, tmeservy@byu.edu