Bernard, Ryan. The Corporate Intranet: Harness the Power of the Next-Generation Intranet. John Wiley, 1998. The success of the intranet as a communication tool depends on the participation of all employees from the least technically savvy to the IT professionals who run it, and this book provides valuable information to that wide audience. In addition, this book addresses the concerns of the next generation of intranets such as database connectivity, advanced Java programming, and intranet return-on-investment issues.

Brown, Eric and James W. Candler. The Elements of Intranet Style. Cyberpress, 1999. Fully detailed information on what it takes to develop an intranet and the preparations necessary for a successful project. Heavy emphasis on a "people first/technology second" approach.

Craig, Malcolm. Thinking Visually: Business Applications of 14 Core Diagrams. Continuum, 2000. An extraordinary tool for writers and analysts. This is a how-to book focused on 14 basic diagrams commonly used to manage or report on in any kind of project. The book is divided into three parts: 1) all about diagramming, 2) applying the core diagrams, and 3) managing information and diagramming theory.

Part 2 is the heart of the book. The core Diagrams are divided into six groups: 1) mapping the business (System Maps, Mind Maps), 2) relationship and influence (Relationship, Tree, and Influence diagrams), 3) business process control (Input/Output and Control diagrams), 4) causation (Multiple Cause, Fishbone [also called Ishikawa], and Sign diagrams), 5) change (Force-field and Window diagrams), and 6) flow (Flow and Ring diagrams).

Many of the diagrams have multiple instances. For example, flow diagrams can take the form of flow process, blocks, algorithms (flow charts) or network diagrams. Likewise, window diagrams take on many different forms, including strength/weakness/opportunity/threat (SWOT), quad matrices (such as the "Boston Matrix"). This extends the 14 core diagrams into many more because of the variations, with all of the major ones discussed in this book.

Each diagram is presented with an overview of the diagram, example business application, example business purpose and a summary and conventions for the diagram. When variations are discussed, such as a critical path network diagram derived from a flow, the same treatment is given.

The book also contains valuable advice on managing information with the core diagrams - especially developing diagrams that convey information instead of resulting in information overload. The chapter on diagramming theory and some of its pitfalls is also excellent. Finally, Appendices A and B, only two pages, are incredibly useful because they map the core diagrams to themes (Appendix A) and to management activity (Appendix B). These make selecting the right tool for the right job easy.

Doyle, Michael and David Straus. How to Make Meetings Work: The New Interaction Method. Berkeley Books, 1993. Tested on more than 10,000 participants, the Interaction Method of conducting meetings is proven to increase productivity by up to 15 percent. Demonstrating how time and people can be better used in meetings, this thorough manual is indispensable for any organization--from large corporations to the PTA.

Duarte, Deborah L. and Nancy Tennant Snyder. Mastering Virtual Teams: Strategies, Tools, and Techniques that Succeed. Jossey-Bass, 2001. Office face-time may always play a critical role in certain corporate settings, but technology and globalization have combined to thrust "virtual meetings" into an increasingly important place on today's overall business stage. With once-rigid boundaries of time, geography, and even organization now rapidly disappearing, members of almost any workplace team can communicate and collaborate regardless of physical location. How to do so most effectively? Deborah L. Duarte, assistant professor at George Washington University, and Nancy Tennant Snyder, chief learning officer for Whirlpool Corporation, outline suggestions applicable to large and small organizations alike in Mastering Virtual Teams. Designed for those who work in--as well as lead--such teams, it is divided into sections that focus on their unique inherent complexities, their creation, and their operation. Real-life examples and the authors' experienced observations are complemented by an abundance of helpful checklists and practical exercises.

The original edition of Mastering Virtual Teams offered a first-of-its-kind tool kit for leaders and members of virtual teams. Now, this revised and expanded second edition includes a CD-ROM packed with useful resources that allow virtual teams to access and use the book's many checklists, assessments, and other practical tools quickly and easily. The authors provide updated guidelines, strategies, and best practices for working cross-culturally and cross-functionally, across time and distance, to see a project through. The useful tools, exercises, and real-life examples show how anyone can master the unique dynamics of virtual team participation in an environment where the old rules no longer apply.

Duarte, Deborah L. and Nancy Tennant Snyder. Mastering Virtual Teams: Strategies, Tools, and Techniques that Succeed (Downloadable PDF Version). Jossey-Bass, 2001. E-Book version of original book. Adobe Acrobat Reader is required.

Figallo, Cliff. Hosting Web Communities: Building Relationships, Increasing Loyalty, and Maintaining a Competitive Edge.. John Wiley, 1998. Former director of the Well, recent consultant to America Online, and current director of community development for Salon Magazine, Figallo knows what it takes to create a true community in cyberspace and what kinds of mistakes will torpedo the effort. Figallo believes that community comes from people, and so he begins by focusing on the human element. He writes about the groups that form online communities and how a community builder can foster the process. Figallo includes a great section on building a quality online staff. While he keeps technical aspects in perspective, Figallo doesn't shortchange them--he fully discusses types of interfaces and technical tools.

Figallo's discussion of the business side of a community is refreshingly hype-free. He provides excellent information on revenue models and support strategies. He further shows the advantages businesses can gain from creating or supporting online communities, plus what types of expectations are unrealistic. He believes, for example, that creating online communities is not a reasonable way to directly boost sales or provide a highly profitable income stream. He does show, however, that it can offer major corporate advantages in the same way that good public relations or other indirect marketing activities do. And while Figallo never claims that there's an easy formula for building the type of online feeling that brings people back again and again, he demonstrates with both theory and real-world examples how dedicated community builders can pull it off.

Gibson, Cristana B. and Susan G. Cohen. Virtual Teams That Work: Creating Conditions for Virtual Team Effectiveness . Jossey-Bass, 2003. Virtual Teams That Work offers a much-needed, comprehensive guidebook for business leaders and managers who want to create the organizational conditions that will help virtual teams thrive. Each chapter in this important book focuses on best practices and includes case studies and illustrative examples from a wide variety of companies, including British Petroleum, Lucent Technologies, Ramtech, SoftCo, and Whirlpool Corporation. These real-life examples demonstrate how the principles identified in the book play out within virtual teams. Virtual Teams That Work shows how organizations can put in place the structure to help team members who speak different languages and have different cultural values develop effective ways of communicating when there is little opportunity for the members to meet face-to-face. The authors also reveal how organizations can implement performance management and reward systems that will motivate team members to cooperate across multiple boundaries. And they offer the information to determine which technologies best fit a variety of virtual-team tasks and the level of information technology support needed.

Grantham, Charles. Going Virtual: Moving Your Organization Into the 21st Century . McGraw-Hill, 1999. A new social psychology is developing in today's workplace that is no longer bound by time, place, or traditional roles. The notion of where a corporation starts and stops is going to be very different in the future," so said Robert Walker, CIO of Hewlett-Packard. This visionary book points a compelling portrait of how the new workplace that is already taking shape is creating a new framework for the way people think about--and act at--work, whether at home, in a satellite office, or corporate headquarters. It draws on the cutting-edge research of the Institute for the Study of Distributed Work, the leading international think tank on virtual workplaces and other trends in the workplace of tomorrow. For anyone interested in the sociology and psychology of the workplace, this book will help frame the questions that must be asked now. It explores how the current moves toward the virtual corporation, the technological consolidation of traditional job functions, and the growth in part-time employment will continue to change the relationship between the workers and their jobs around the world.

Grenier, Raymond and George Metes. Going Virtual: Moving Your Organization Into the 21st Century . Prentice Hall, 1995. A handbook for managers, describing how virtual teams work together using networked, electronic information and communications systems. Covers the electronic operations, cultural implications and technologies of virtual operations, including strategies for training and technology investment.

Harasim, Linda, and Starr Roxanne Hiltz, Lucio Teles, and Murray Turoff. Learning Networks: A Field Guide to Teaching and Learning Online. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1995, third printing, 1997. Arguably the best book about online teaching available. Only a handful of scholars know as much as these authors about using the online medium for learning and communication.

Hiltz, Starr Roxanne and Murray Turoff. Network Nation: Human Communication via Computer . (revised edition) MIT Press, 1993. A visionary book when it was first published in the late 1970s, The Network Nation has become the defining document and standard reference for the field of computer mediated communication (CMC). This revised edition adds a substantial new chapter on "superconnectivity" (invented and defined in the unabridged edition of the Online Dictionary of the English Language, (c) 2067) that reviews the developments of the last fifteen years and updates the authors' speculations about the future.

Hiltz and Turoff highlight major current organizational, educational, and public applications of CMC, integrate their theoretical understanding of the impact of CMC technology, address ethical and legal issues, and describe a scenario in 2084. They have also added a selected bibliography on the key literature.

Starr Roxanne Hiltz and Murray Turoff each hold the position of Professor of Computer and Information Sciences at the New Jersey Institute of Technology. They are also members of the faculty of the Graduate School of Business at Rutgers University, Newark. They created the mother of all interactive collaborative platforms, The Electronic Information Exchange System (EIES), in the early 80s as a part of a National Science Foundation research grant.

Hinds, Pamela J. and Sara Kiesler (eds.) Distributed Work. MIT Press, 2002.  Technological advances and changes in the global economy are increasing the geographic distribution of work in industries as diverse as banking, wine production, and clothing design. Many workers communicate regularly with distant coworkers; some monitor and manipulate tools and objects at a distance. Work teams are spread across different cities or countries. Joint ventures and multiorganizational projects entail work in many locations. Two famous examples--the Hudson Bay Companys seventeenth-century fur trading empire and the electronic community that created the original Linux computer operating system--suggest that distributed work arrangements can be flexible, innovative, and highly successful. At the same time, distributed work complicates workers professional and personal lives. Distributed work alters how people communicate and how they organize themselves and their work, and it changes the nature of employee-employer relationships.

This book takes a multidisciplinary approach to the study of distributed work groups and organizations, the challenges inherent in distributed work, and ways to make distributed work more effective. Specific topics include division of labor, incentives, managing group members, facilitating interaction among distant workers, and monitoring performance. The final chapters focus on distributed work in one domain, collaborative scientific research. The contributors include psychologists, cognitive scientists, sociologists, anthropologists, historians, economists, and computer scientists.

Hoefling, Trina. Working Virtually: Managing People for Successful Virtual Teams and Organizations. Stylus, 2001. The move to virtual work is growing exponentially. New economy businesses have pioneered telecommuting and global work teams. While the collaborative technology is understood, what managers and team leaders lack is a clear guide to the human skills for bonding individuals into cohesive, high-performance teams across distances and differences.

This book explains what's needed in terms of both organizational and individual development--and shows how the technological tools support and expand the options for collaboration. It answers such critical questions as "What makes working virtually work?" "How do we start?" "How do you develop new leaders in a virtual environment?" "What skills do virtual managers and team members need?" "How do you determine how ready they are?" "Which technologies are most appropriate for your purposes?" "What's the impact on existing systems and structures?"

Through work charts, vivid "composite" examples, definitions and actual cases, the author explains how to reframe the organization without losing the culture, how to manage the group dynamics of change, and create trust by expanding emotional bandwidth. She sets out the criteria for selecting technologies to adapt and guide communication and work flow processes to a virtual environment, discusses new team roles, and how to select virtual team candidates.

Hunter, Dale, Anne Bailey, Bill Taylor. The Art of Facilitation: How to Create Group Synergy. Fisher Books, 1995. Provides a superb training resource for facilitators and enables group members to understand facilitation and to take on this role themselves. It also provides access to the source of group empowerment and shows how to create group synergy.

Divided into four major parts, Part 1, all about facilitation in general; Part 2, a toolkit about meeting design and facilitative processes; Part 3, a personal perspective on facilitation revealed through interviews with experienced facilitators; and Part 4, additional resources and readings.

Provides an in-depth examination of the art of intervention and cooperative beliefs and values underlying facilitation for creating group synergy.

Toolkit includes facilitative designs for workshops, meetings, projects and evaluations; facilitative processes of being with a group, working with other individuals, keeping sight of the group's vision and goals, empowerment, identity, role playing and more. Plus, a Facilitators' Training Program.

Kim, Amy Jo. Community Building on the Web: Secret Strategies for Successful Online Communities. Peachpit Press, 2000. What's the point of creating a great Web site if no one goes there-or worse, if people come but never return? How do some sites, such as America Online, EBay, and GeoCities, develop into Internet communities with loyal followings and regular repeat traffic? How can Web page designers and developers create sites that are vibrant and rewarding?

There's been a marked shift in the philosophy of developing successful Web sites. The technologies (HTML, JavaScript, JavaServer Pages) no longer occupy center stage. Rather, functional objectives and the communities that grow up around them seem to be the main ingredient in Web site success. In her carefully reasoned and well-written Community Building on the Web, Amy Jo Kim explains why communities form and grow. More importantly, she shows (with references to many examples) how you can make your site a catalyst for community growth--and profit in the process. From marketing schemes like Amazon.com's Associates program to The Motley Fool's system of rating members' bulletin-board postings, this book covers all the popular strategies for bringing people in and retaining them.

Nine core strategies form the foundation of Kim's recommendations for site builders, serving as the organizational backbone of this book. The strategies generally make sense, and they seem to apply to all kinds of communities, cyber and otherwise. (One advocates the establishment of regular events around which community life can organize itself.) Some parts of Kim's message may seem like common sense, but such a coherent discussion of what defines a community and how it can be made to thrive is still helpful.

Topics covered: Strategies for designing Web sites around the needs of particular groups of people, attracting those people to your site, and motivating them to return frequently. Community identification, member profiling, community leadership, and organization (of information, time, and relationships) all receive ample coverage.

Koehler, Jerry W., Thom Dupper, Marvin D. Scaff, Fred Reitberger, Patti Paxson. The Human Side of Intranets: Content, Style & Politics.. CRC Press, 1998. Intranets have changed the way organizations around the world communicate. Many people are intimidated by this technological revolution-but they need not be! The Human Side of Intranets guides you through the daunting task of transforming communication within your organization. This book is for every non-technical person charged with the task of creating or contributing to an intranet system. It goes through the process step-by-step, from initial concept to launch and beyond. The Human Side of Intranets avoids information overload, addressing three critical dimensions of creating an effective and valuable intranet: 1) content, 2) style, and 3) politics. It demonstrates how intranets are not about technology, but about people and the way they communicate. Real-world examples and proven tactics for problem-solving are given to show you the way.

Laufer, Hunter. Wireless Etiquette: A Guide to the Changing World of Instant Communication. Omnipoint, 1999. Like it or not, mobile cellular phones and their owners have become part of the landscape, and to paraphrase Pogo, "We have met the enemy, and it is the loudmouthed cellular user." Author Peter Laufer to the rescue: "People just need to use common sense." Through historical context, New Yorker cartoons, and interesting anecdotes, Laufer points out the impact that the use of phones in certain environments, such as crowded elevators, may have. A specific guide to help with the mobile, electronic communications networks of our present age. The book covers such common grounds as how to answer the phone, how to place calls, where and when to place calls, when and where to receive calls, the car phone, the portable phone; when is it safe to call and to receive calls. In other words, there is an etiquette and it is aimed at becoming more proficient and more educated on how to make and receive calls.

Lipnack, Jessica and Jeffrey Stamps. Virtual Teams: Reaching Across Space, Time, and Organizations With Technology. John Wiley, 1997. Using case studies from Eastman Chemical, NCR, Tetra Pak, and Sun Microsystems, the authors show you how to integrate virtual teams into a business structure. In addition to basic principles, they cover the skills and technologies necessary for starting up, supporting a cross-boundary team, enhancing communications electronically, and introducing intranets. Also availabe as a free download at http://www.virtualteams.com/

Malone, Thomas W. The Future of Work: How the New Order of Business Will Shape Your Organization, Your Management Style, and Your Life. Harvard Business School Press, 2004.

A path-breaking model for building a new-and far better-world of work .

For more than a decade, business thinkers have theorized about how technology will change the shape of organizations. In this landmark book, renowned organizational theorist Thomas Malone, codirector of MIT's "Inventing the Organizations of the 21st Century" initiative, provides the first credible model for actually designing the company of the future.

Based on twenty years of groundbreaking research, The Future of Work foresees a workplace revolution that will dramatically change organizational structures and the roles employees play in them. Malone argues that current notions about decentralization merely scratch the surface of what will be possible as technological and economic forces make "command and control" management increasingly less useful.

In its place will be a more flexible "coordinate and cultivate" approach that will spawn new types of decentralized organizations-from internal markets to democracies to loose hierarchies. These future structures will reap the scale and knowledge efficiencies of large organizations while enabling the freedom, flexibility, and human values that drive smaller firms.

Exploring the skills managers will need in a workplace in which the power to decide belongs to everyone, this optimistic book shows how we can help create a world that is not just richer, but better.

O'Hara-Devereaux and Robert Johansen. Globalwork : Bridging Distance, Culture, and Time. Jossey-Bass, 1994. The authors deliver a plan for large and medium-sized organizations to use in addressing the challenges of geographic distances, diverse workforces, shrinking time boundaries, and technological revolution.

While many of the books on the globalization of business, society, or telecommunications focus on technology, and others consider cultural diversity, few have dealt with both issues simultaneously. This book discusses the problems of team building and group activities when team or group members are dispersed--separated by time, distance, and cultures. Using results from the Institute for the Future's five-year "Groupware Outlook Project," they cover cross-cultural communication, process facilitation, remote teamwork, and the use of information technology to minimize distances and take advantage of differences. While their scope is truly multinational, the authors target the U.S. and its relations with the Pacific Rim nations, Mexico, and Canada.

Palloff, Rena M., and Keith Pratt. Building Learning Communities in Cyberspace: Effective Strategies for the Online Classroom. (April 1999) Jossey-Bass Publishers. This book focuses on the critical task of creating a sense of community among learners. The authors share their experience and insight into what it takes to create an experience of safety and a sense of shared learning among students and faculty involved in computer-mediated distance education.Their grasp of both the larger framework and the specific issues, from technical to ethical, makes this a valuable resource for faculty members as well as faculty developers and trainers who work or plan to work in the electronic classroom.

Powazek, Derek M.. Design for Community: The Art of Connecting Real People in Virtual Places. New Riders, 2002. Both Amazon and eBay brag about the "communities" that participate on their websites. Defining online communities as situations in which users have one-to-one communications with other users enabling them to build emotional relationships overtime, the author explains how to build community features into websites. Chapters include discussions of building content, website design, setting up communication policies, successful communication moderating, and financial matters. This book shows how to design a Web site, keeping in mind the idea of creating and encouraging virtual community.

Powers, Michael. How to Program a Virtual Community. Ziff-Davis, 1997. A virtual community is an online space where people interact in a social sense. This book shows you how how to create a virtual community for your own site along with plenty of expert tips and tricks that will keep people interested in returning to the site. - Easy, step-by-step instructions for the most popular solutions in text, 2D, and 3D. The book shows in detail how to create multi-user environments and gives you access to a multi-user companion Web for online discussions about the book.

Preece, Jenny. Online Communities: Designing Usability, Supporting Sociability. Wiley, 2000. If the phrase "planned community" makes you think of terrible homogenous suburbs, take another look at the Internet. Although there are unplanned aspects and emergent behaviors, every detail for the most part has been designed by people who thought that they knew what they were doing. Might we do better?

In this book, human-computer interactions expert Jenny Preece takes apart our preconceptions and suggests new ways to improve our virtual realities. Part sociological review, part design manual, the book is technical enough to appeal to techies and academics, but humanistic enough to touch the organizers and activists who will put her ideas further into action. Beginning with basic concepts of community and online activities, Preece moves on to survey research on the use of virtual spaces, and then focuses on techniques to design and build optimal cybervillages for given needs and people. By using plenty of examples and case studies from actual Web sites and electronic communities, she sheds light on tools that work to make them sustainable. Whether the current generation of e-planners will heed her words--and whether they can create something livable out of the weird suburb/wilderness hybrid that we have now--will be the key to determining how 21st-century humans live, work, and communicate.

Rheingold, Howard. The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier. MIT Press, 2000. Cyberculture authority Howard Rheingold was the first to write about online communities in this part-travelogue, part-ethnology style. This groundbreaking classic explores the entire virtual community, beginning with a selective but probing look at the author's original online home, The Well. The bulk of the material relates to how individuals interact online much as they do in a face-to-face community.Rheingold speaks to how both friendships and enmities are formed online and how people come together to support each other through misfortune. He gives the example of how computer-moderated communication enabled members of one Well community to send vital medical aid to a friend hospitalized halfway around the world. Rheingold goes on to show how communities can form by various electronic communication methods, using the conferencing system of The Well as one example. He also examines how people interact through mailing lists, live chat, and the fantasy cyberenvironments of online role-playing games. In the process, he questions what kind of relationships can really be formed in a medium where people can change their apparent identity at will. This book questions whether a distinction between "virtual" communities and "real-life" communities is entirely valid. This book argues that real relationships happen and real communities develop when people communicate upon virtual common ground.

Schank, Roger. Virtual Learning: A Revolutionary Approach to Building a Highly Skilled Workforce.. McGraw Hill, 1997. The majority of today's corporate training programs are weak, ineffective, costly, and hated by the employees they are supposed to train. Worst of all, they are boring. Using computer simulation and role-playing scenario methods educator Roger Shank has helped companies as diverse as Andersen Consulting, Ameritech, ATT, Target, and Bennigan's to lower the cost of training, not to mention the incalculable cost of poorly-trained employees. Shank's approach uses computer-based training to escape "read and memorize" programs of the past, teach employees to make discoveries on their own and train themselves, allow employees to fail in training exercises and learn from those failures, and broaden training goals and objectives to keep from limiting what is learned.

Shelton, Karla and Todd McNeeley. Virtual Communities Companion: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier. Coriolis Group Books, 1997. Details expert information, resources, and tricks associated with creating successful online communities (as opposed to anonymous Internet crowds). Gives tips and techniques from professionals involved in the Web's most popular virtual communities. Details how to make money and conduct business in virtual civilization. Features techniques on creating your own avatar, the character that represents you online. Discusses how to get funding so you can get larger communities online.

Schwarz, Roger M. The Skilled Facilitator: Practical Wisdom for Developing Effective Groups. Coriolis Group Books, 1997. Details expert information, resources, and tricks associated with creating successful online communities (as opposed to anonymous Internet crowds). Gives tips and techniques from professionals involved in the Web's most popular virtual communities. Details how to make money and conduct business in virtual civilization. Features techniques on creating your own avatar, the character that represents you online. Discusses how to get funding so you can get larger communities online.

Straus, David. How to Make Collaboration Work: Powerful Ways to Build Consensus, Solve Problems, and Make Decisions. Berrett-Koehler, 2002. Collaboration is an everyday practice that many people find to be a frustrating, even exhausting, experience. How to Make Collaboration Work provides a remedy: five principles of collaboration that have been tested and refined in organizations throughout the world. Author David Straus shows that these methods can help any group make better decisions and function more effectively. The five principles are: Involve the Relevant Stakeholders, Build Consensus Phase by Phase, Design a Process Map, Designate a Process Facilitator, and Harness the Power of Group Memory. Each principle addresses the specific challenges people face when trying to work collaboratively, and each can be applied to any problem-solving scenario.