Collaborative Project Management
A Special Issue of the Journal:
International Journal of e-Collaboration

Guest editors:

Jerry Fjermestad, New Jersey Institute of Technology

Nicholas C. Romano, Jr. Oklahoma State University

Paul Rossler, Oklahoma State University

IJeC editor:

Ned Kock, Texas A&M International University

Topics:

A number of business and technical forces are changing the fundamentals of project management as it had been developed over the past decades. First, advanced Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) enable cooperation in a distributed mode. Technologies like groupware and videoconferencing are increasingly becoming feasible for organizations to use in international projects. Second, globalization of markets and competition necessitate integration of global managerial and business processes in corporations. This corporate integration is achieved by people working from geographically distributed sites in a given project. Corporations expect organizational teams to cooperate on an international scale, dealing with business problems with a global impact. Third, organizations are increasingly adopting a strategy of global sourcing, not only in innovative sectors like microelectronics and semi-conductor industry, but also in the area of financial and business services as well as manufacturing and engineering operations. As these strategies require intensive cooperation between the organizations involved in these exchanges, projects including professionals from multiple organizations will occur. Fourth, cooperation from distributed sites around the world enables organizations to benefit from differences of time zones between locations. Improvement of project cycle time becomes feasible in such a distributed environment. Fifth, multinationals increasingly organize their R&D activities around globally distributed centers of excellence. Coordination of activities between these centers and integration with business operations require close cooperation of professionals. Thus, multinational organizations tap in local sources of competence and leverage this knowledge on a global scale. Globally distributed projects enable realization of these benefits and increase corporate performance.

The confluence of these trends has given rise to new forms of organizations which, enabled by advanced ICT, are labeled “virtual organizations”. The focus of this special issue is not on the level of these organizational forms, but on the level of projects that increasingly occur within or between these types of organization. These so-called “virtual projects” involve people cooperating from internationally distributed sites and even different organizations. Professionals working geographically distributed participate in multi-cultural and cross functional projects with a global focus. These virtual projects pose new challenges to project management practitioners and researchers.

We welcome submissions that address issues associated with collaborative project management in virtual teams, or in the management of distributed projects. Examples of such topics also include (but are not limited to):

· Distributed collaborative project management tools (including media studies): development and use. Tool description manuscripts when accompanied of testing and evaluation are also welcome. We are also open for submissions in the category of demonstrations (presentations without a formal research paper, although requiring a white paper).

· Knowledge management in the management of distributed projects, and distributed knowledge management

· Project management in organizational clusters, networks, industrial districts, or other organizational cooperative forms

· Trust in Virtual Teams

· Management of distributed projects in the agile organization domain

· Team composition issues associated with optimal management of distributed projects

· Cross-cultural issues associated with the management of distributed projects

· Headquarter-subsidiaries distributed project management issues

· Failures in distributed project management

· Team Dispersion Issues

Important dates:

Below are tentative dates for all the main steps involved in the production and publication of the Special Issue:

· February 1, 2005:	All submissions are due to the guest editors.
· May 1, 2005:	Decisions and review comments are sent to authors.
· July 1, 2005:	Revised and resubmitted manuscripts are sent back out for review.
· August 1, 2005:	Final decision letters are sent to authors.
· September 1, 2005:	Final revised manuscripts are due to Editor.
· December 1, 2005:	Special Issue goes to Idea Group for publication.
· January 1, 2006:	Proofs go to authors.
· March 1, 2006:	Special Issue is published.

Submission guidelines:

All submissions must be in English, and should represent the original work of the authors. Improved versions of papers previously published in conference proceedings are welcome, provided that no copyright limitations exist. Submissions must be made electronically via e-mail to Jerry Fjermestad or Nicholas Romano (address below). The manuscript should be included as an attachment in MS Word format.

Jerry Fjermestad: fjermestad@adm.njit.edu

Nicholas Romano: nicholas.romano@okstate.edu

Manuscripts should be between 4000 and 6000 words in length. Submissions should include the following:

(a) On the subject of the e-mail message: the text “Manuscript submission” followed by the title of the manuscript being submitted. Please do not include any character (@#$%^&, etc) in the title.

(b) On the body of the e-mail message, for each author: Name, university/organization affiliation, e-mail, mailing address, phone/fax numbers. Please indicate who the contact person is for the submission.

(c) On the paper: Submission title, an abstract of the submission, the main body of the submission, references and/or bibliography.

Please do not include the name of the authors or any information that would allow for their identification on the paper. Reviews will be blind.

All paper submissions and the submission review process will be managed through e-mail. The receipt of submissions will be quickly confirmed by e-mail. Submitted manuscripts must be written in the APA (American Psychological Association) editorial style. References should relate only to material cited within the manuscript and be listed in alphabetical order, including the author's name, complete title of the cited work, title of the source, volume, issue, year of publication, and pages cited. Please do not include any abbreviations.

Information on camera-ready copy preparation will be provided to submitting authors upon acceptance.

About the guest editors:

Jerry Fjermestad is an associate professor in the School of Management at NJIT. He received his B.A. in chemistry from Pacific Lutheran University, an M.S. in operations research from Polytechnic University, an M.B.A in operations management from Iona College and an M.B.A. and Ph.D. from Rutgers University in management information systems. Jerry has taught courses on management information systems, decision support systems, systems analysis and design, electronic commerce, data warehousing, and graduate seminars in information systems. His current research interests are in collaborative technology, decision support systems, data warehousing, electronic commerce, global information systems, customer relationship management, and enterprise information systems. Jerry has published in the Journal of Management Information Systems, Group Decision and Negotiation, the Journal of Organizational Computing and Electronic Commerce, Information and Management, Decision Support Systems, Logistics Information Management, International Journal of Electronic Commerce, the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, Technology Analysis & Strategic Management and the Proceedings of Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences. Jerry has also been a special issue editor for the International Journal of Electronic Commerce, Group Decision and Negotiation, and Logistics Information Management, and is currently doing a monograph with Dr. Nicholas Romano on Customer Relationship Management: Advances and Issues in Advances in Management Information Systems.

Nicholas C. Romano, Jr. is Assistant Professor of Management Science and Information Systems at the Oklahoma State University. Previously he was Assistant Professor of MIS at the University of Tulsa and a Research Scientist at the University of Arizona’s Center for the Management of Information. His research interests include Collaborative Computing, Web-based application design and development, Customer Relationship Management in Information Systems and GSS interface design. He received a Ph.D. in MIS from the University of Arizona and worked for International Business Machines Corporation. Romano conducts theoretical and empirical research on applications of technology to organizational, group and individual productivity and learning. Dr. Romano has published his research in journals and conferences including: the Journal of Management Information Systems, The International Journal of Electronic Commerce; Group Decision and Negotiation; Journal of the American Society for Information Science; Proceedings of the EuroGDSS workshop; Proceedings of the Hawaii International Conference on Systems Science; and Proceedings of the Americas Conference on Information Systems.

Paul Rossler is Associate Professor of Industrial Engineering and Management and Director of the Engineering and Technology Management Program at Oklahoma State University. He is a licensed professional engineer and holds M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from Virginia Tech, along with a BSIE from the General Motors Institute. His areas of teaching, research, and practice focus on the implementation, acceptance, and effective use of management approaches and technologies intended to improve group and organizational performance.

Contact Information for the special Issue editors