The online encyclopedia Wikipedia is a highly successful “open content” project, written and maintained completely by volunteers. Little is known, however, about the motivation of these volunteers. Results from an online survey among 106 contributors to the German Wikipedia project are presented. Both motives derived from social sciences (perceived benefits, identification with Wikipedia, etc.) as well as perceived task characteristics (autonomy, skill variety, etc.) were assessed as potential predictors of contributors' satisfaction and self-reported engagement. Satisfaction ratings were particularly determined by perceived benefits, identification with the Wikipedia community, and task characteristics. Engagement was particularly determined by high tolerance for opportunity costs and by task characteristics, the latter effect being partially mediated by intrinsic motivation. Relevant task characteristics for contributors' engagement and satisfaction were perceived autonomy, task significance, skill variety, and feedback. Models from social sciences and work psychology complemented each other by suggesting that favorable task experiences might counter perceived opportunity costs in Wikipedia contributors. Moreover, additional data reported by Wikipedia authors indicate the importance of generativity motives.

Personality aspects are largely neglected in existing models of media preferences. Based on a functional approach, it is hypothesized that media preferences are affected by Extraversion and Neuroticism particularly in situations that correspond to the motivational implications of these traits. The results of a questionnaire study (N = 228) on preferences for communication media with varying levels of media richness (face-to-face conversation, e-mail) revealed Extraversion and Neuroticism as significant predictors of media preferences. Moreover, these effects were mediated by the motivational manifestations of these traits in social situations (i.e., social skills, social anxiety). Finally, the effects were moderated by the potential threat of a communication situation, showing significant trait effects particularly in social conflicts.

Job satisfaction is predominantly measured as global attitudinal judgment which requires employees to summarize their experiences across different job situations. In contrast, experience‐based measures assess momentary thoughts and feelings of the employees in specific job situations. This paper introduces the event reconstruction method (ERM) as an efficient measure of experience‐based job satisfaction that is less invasive and less time consuming compared with traditional experience sampling methods. An initial validation study is reported with N=193 employees from a German wholesale company. As expected, job satisfaction measured with the ERM was different from attitudinal job satisfaction. Also, consistent with expectations, experience‐based job satisfaction was a better predictor of self‐reported helping behaviour, whereas attitudinal job satisfaction was a better predictor of turnover intentions. Finally, comparing the ERM results with the results of a similar study using a traditional experience sampling method (Fisher, 2002) revealed very similar patterns.

Personality aspects are largely neglected in existing models of media preferences. Based on a functional approach, it is hypothesized that media preferences are affected by Extraversion and Neuroticism particularly in situations that correspond to the motivational implications of these traits. The results of a questionnaire study (N = 228) on preferences for communication media with varying levels of media richness (face-to-face conversation, e-mail) revealed Extraversion and Neuroticism as significant predictors of media preferences. Moreover, these effects were mediated by the motivational manifestations of these traits in social situations (i.e., social skills, social anxiety). Finally, the effects were moderated by the potential threat of a communication situation, showing significant trait effects particularly in social conflicts.

HR has a new bridging role to play in providing the skill and wisdom to connect the technologists — who are often ill equipped to research and analyze human motivation, behavior, and performance — with the end-users who perform the work that makes the organization go. If HR performs this role successfully, end-users will feel motivated and will become equipped with the necessary skills and knowledge to use their technology effectively, securely, adaptively, and creatively. Conversely, if HR fails in this role, or is not invited to fulfill this role, it is plausible that the generalist internal HR professional as construed during the 1980s and 1990s will largely disappear in a continuing storm of downsizing, outsourcing, and automation.

Globalization trends have increased the popularity of geographically distributed collaboration and virtual teams. The potential benefits of working across virtual team boundaries abound, but they come at substantial coordination costs, particularly when geographic configurations and team tasks are flexible and complex. While research in this area has flourished, we still don't understand what the net benefits of geographically distributed collaboration are, once all the respective coordination costs have been accounted for. Consistent with the conference theme " doing well by doing good " , and to bring together multiple perspectives on coordination benefits and costs in geographically distributed collaboration, we have put together a collection of current research for this symposium. The contributions are from European and US scholars with recognized expertise in research on coordination and geographically distributed teams. The symposium aims to discuss the complexities of coordinating work across multiple virtual team boundaries, and to bring together various perspectives on the respective coordination benefits and costs in this context. Symposium Overview Global market developments and the large-scale use of diverse applications in the area of information and communication technology have been key factors in the popularity of geographically distributed collaboration, often carried out by virtual teams. Virtual teams enable collaboration between people across traditional boundaries of time and place and offer tremendous opportunities for various collaborative achievements. Organizations are no longer tied to a single time location or time zone to conduct business and are able distribute task activities to have easy access to clients and/or expertise, and in some cases take advantage of time zone differences to carry out work activities like software development around the 24-hour clock. The Internet as the almost universal medium for interaction across boundaries has created an infrastructure that enables many organizations to launch virtual teams. However, despite the potential benefits of geographically distributed collaboration, there is often substantial coordination overhead associated with the complexity of the team's geographical configuration. Therefore, the costs and benefits of distributed collaboration need to be carefully evaluated because what may appear to be a big advantage (e.g., ability to work on a task around the clock, cheaper labor rates in outsourcing arrangements) may end up causing substantial disadvantages (e.g., high coordination costs, increased effort, team member burnout). 11212 5 Technical obstacles for communication and collaboration across geographic boundaries remain, as virtual team processes are supported by collaboration technology solutions, such as groupware and other collaborative applications …