Brian Butler

University of Maryland, College Park | UMD, UMCP, University of Maryland College Park · College of Information Studies

As flexible work arrangements such as remote working or digital nomadism are normalized, the structure of work, performance expectations, and employee-employer relationships fundamentally change, presenting both benefits and risks for workers. Currently, the design and management of ICT systems for work is still geared towards 'standard' organizati...

Cultural diversity has been conceptualized and studied in different ways. On the one hand, cultural diversity can be conceptualized based on people’s ethnic and national backgrounds. On the other hand, cultural dimensions are defined depending on people’s behaviors and traits. Sociologists further categorized the latter depending on the degree of t...

International students face various challenges in their new countries, but research is less clear about their challenges in information behaviors. This article fills this gap by examining information behaviors of international newcomer students during adjustment to local environments, that is, local information behavior (LIB). Drawing on prior work...

To understand information accessibility issues, research has examined human and technical factors by taking a socio‐technical view. While this view provides a profound understanding of how people seek, use, and access information, it often overlooks the larger structure of the information landscapes that shape people's information access. However,...

Forming impressions of job candidates is a challenging process, one characterized by ambiguity brought about by the uncertainty associated with making decisions and judgments. To reduce ambiguity, hiring professionals have established policies and procedures to facilitate the sourcing and use of information about a candidate. However, recently, a p...

Purpose Community-governed mass collaborations are virtual organizations in which volunteers self-organize to produce content of value. Given the high turnover of participants and the continual development and modification of governance modules, questions arise about how mass collaborations can succeed. Based on organizational routine theory, the p...

In a creative process, divergent thinking needs to be stimulated to generate novel ideas; yet these ideas must be synthesized to produce something valuable. Hence to foster creativity in developing IT products, creators need to manage the tension between novelty and value. Since the forces affecting the novelty-value tension often exist outside a c...

Through the findings from a longitudinal survey and the preliminary analysis of the follow-up interviews, this paper explores how international newcomer students' needs for local information and their information-seeking behavior develop during adjustment to new host environments. Also, this study examines the relationships between their local info...

Cultural heritage institutions leverage digitization to fulfill their mission to preserve, represent, and provide access to collections under their care. Despite their common interest in documenting the progress of digitization and online access, the library, archives, and museums (LAM) sector lacks a conceptual framework for assessing and demonstr...

Faced with highly competitive and dynamic environments, organizations are increasingly investing in technologies that provide them with new options for structuring work. At the same time, firms are increasingly dependent on employees' willingness and ability to make sense of novel tasks, problems, and rapidly changing situations. Yet, in spite of i...

Geo-local systems can significantly increase users' familiarity with new places. However, for these systems to be useful, geospatial information needs to be presented in ways that those systems can minimize users' difficulties of learning about a new place. This raises a fundamental question about what kinds and representations of geospatial inform...

In the absence of systematic knowledge about the characteristics and practices of data collections, successful data hubs and other platforms that support collaborative data sharing are unlikely to be designed and built. We begin to fill this gap by performing an in depth case study of a global scientific data hub - the Encyclopedia of Life - in whi...

The Peer 2 Peer University (P2PU) is an online, open education platform where any user can create a course, contribute content, or join an existing course as a learner. P2PU represents an experiment in organizing the production of entirely user-generated, open education. However, the open model of P2PU rests on the critical assumption that members...

This research addresses the question of why enterprise-wide information systems are so difficult to assimilate. Conceptualizing organizations as interpretation systems, we posit that the internal scanning of emerging organizational needs will have a direct positive effect on a firm's level of enterprise IT assimilation, moderated by the extent of t...

This paper presents the findings from an online survey investigating how new students seek geospatial information in an unfamiliar environment. By surveying 149 new graduate students at University of Maryland, College Park, this study identifies the geospatial information needs and information sources used during their adjustment in new environment...

This full-day workshop focuses on building Big Social Data research competencies for scholars interested in issues of contribution quality and contributor performance in online coproduction systems that generate value through contributions by volunteers. The workshop is designed to engage discussion and promote co-working through a hackathon format...

Local events foster community pride, cohesion, and community attachment. Keeping residents informed about the existence of local events is necessary to reach events’ targeted audiences and realize their positive consequences. This article reports on an initial study of the online event information landscape of neighborhoods in a mid-sized US city....

Online discussion communities play an important role in the development of relationships and the transfer of knowledge within and across organizations. Their underlying technologies enhance these processes by providing infrastructures through which group-based communication can occur. Community administrators often make decisions about technologies...

Badges have garnered great interest among scholars of digital media and learning. In addition, widespread initiatives such as Mozilla's Open Badge Framework expand the potential of badging into the realm of open education. In this paper, we explicate the concept of open badges. We highlight some of the ways that researchers have examined badges as...

Communities face opportunities and challenges in many areas, including education, health and wellness, workforce and economic development, housing, and the environment [21]. At the same time, governments have significant fiscal constraints on their ability to address these challenges and opportunities. Through a combination of open government, open...

Online Communities data is prevalent in CSCW research, but the approaches to collecting, managing, analyzing and visualizing large scale social data varies on a lab by lab basis. The OCData hackathon is aimed at creating a community opportunity to share approaches to online communities research at the level of data. Integrating data, tools and theo...

Understanding how social media systems affect the way people work, learn, and live requires examination of the ways in which social media use is affected by and affects relationships. No matter what the underlying technology, the power of social media systems arises from the impact they have on relationships. Whether in friendship and dating relati...

This paper presents the findings from a project about how international students seek and acquire information during their settlement in an unknown geo-spatial environment. Through semi-structured interviews, questionnaires, and cognitive mapping with twenty international students, this study examines their information needs, information sources, a...

The hiring process is challenging as the lack of quality information limits the discovery of the true nature of candidates, potentially leading to adverse impacts. Social networking sites (SNSs) have emerged as a potential source for candidate information with more than one billion profiles online. While abundant, the quality of this information fo...

Deliberative mass collaboration systems, such as Wikipedia, are characterized as undisciplined, unstructured social spaces where individuals participate in collective action. However, examination of Wikipedia reveals that it contains a bureaucratic structure, which ensures that collective goals are primary drivers of that collective action. To supp...

The dominant narrative of the Internet has been one of unconstrained growth, abundance, and plenitude. It is in this context that new forms of organizing, such as online groups, have emerged. However, the same factors that underlie the utopian narrative of Internet life also give rise to numerous online groups, many of which fail to attract partici...

While there is significant potential for social technologies to strengthen local communities, creating viable online spaces for them remains difficult. Maintaining a reliable content stream is challenging for local communities with their bounded emphases and limited population of potential contributors. Some systems focus on specific information ty...

Mass collaboration systems are often characterized as unstructured organizations lacking rule and order. However, examination of Wikipedia reveals that it contains a complex policy and rule structure that supports the organization. Bureaucratic organizations adopt workarounds to adjust rules more accurately to the context of use. Rather than resort...

Online learning has matured as a mechanism that can change how we deliver education. Open education resources are proliferating, and institutions are creating massive open online courses (MOOCs). In addition, efforts are underway to develop platforms that allow individuals to create, lead, and participate in their own courses. This bottom-up, peer-...

Social question and answer sites (SQAs) are increasingly popular knowledge sharing platforms. In this paper, we outline how an SQA site functions as a social learning community. The success of an SQA site depends not only on effectively organizing and delivering information, but also on whether it can provide the cues needed by community members to...

Social-media-supported academic conferences are becoming increasingly global as people anywhere can participate actively through backchannel conversation. It can be challenging for the conference organizers to integrate the use of social media, to take advantage of the connections between backchannel and front stage, and to encourage the participan...

Increasingly, online discussion communities are used to support activities ranging from software development to political campaigns. An important feature of an online discussion community is its content boundaries, which are individual perceptions of what materials and discussions are part of the community and what are not, and how that community i...

Digital natives – the generation for whom the Internet has always existed – have embraced the medium as one of choice. They use social computing applications as a medium for many activities, including receiving and giving product advice (ratings, comments), meeting with and talking to friends (social networking, chat), organizing events (social net...

Digital natives — the generation for whom the Internet has always existed — have embraced the medium as one of choice. They use social computing applications as a medium for many activities, including receiving and giving product advice (ratings, comments), meeting with and talking to friends (social networking, chat), organizing events (social net...

Science in general, and biomedical research in particular, is becoming more collaborative. As a result, collaboration with the right individuals, teams, and institutions is increasingly crucial for scientific progress. We propose Research Networking Systems (RNS) as a new type of system designed to help scientists identify and choose collaborators,...

Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn - individuals have more opportunities than ever before to present themselves in public using social networking sites (SNSs). However, individuals tend to live segmented lives and often develop different selfpresentations depending on the audience. The combination of opportunities to present publicly and presenting differ...

Many information portals are adding social features with hopes of enhancing the overall user experience. Invitations to join and welcome pages that highlight these social features are expected to encourage use and participation. While this approach is widespread and seems plausible, the effect of providing and highlighting social features remains t...

The impact of a discipline's research is constrained by its ability to articulate compelling problems. Well-crafted problems are the foundation for mobilizing the effort, resources, and attention essential to scientific progress and broader impact. We argue that Information Systems (IS) scholars, individually and collectively, must develop the prac...

Purpose Social networking sites (SNS) are changing the methods of social connectivity – and what it means to be public. Existing literature hints at competing perspectives on how the public nature of these sites impacts users. The question of how the perceived publicness of SNSs influences users' self‐disclosure intentions is debated in the literat...

Common ground. Shared interests. Collective goals. Much has been said about the power of technology to bring people together around commonalities to form groups, teams, and communities. Yet, the same technologies can also be used to bring together individuals with fundamentally irreconcilable differences. In these cases, the question is not how to...

Information and knowledge are often stored not in databases repositories, but within highly distributed communities of experts. Leveraging these resources requires identifying needs and gathering, contextualizing and making information available. While this can happen in one-on-one interaction with experts, there are significant limitations to the...

Many information portals are adding social features to enable benefits of Web 2.0. Such additions are undertaken with hopes of increasing the usefulness of the information and enhancing the overall user experience. Invitations and welcome pages that highlight these social features are expected to encourage use and participation. We studied the effe...

The success of investments in online communities has been limited because online communities often fail to motivate members to contribute over the long term. Prior research has shown that receiving benefits from online communities encourages continued contribution. However, little is known about why online communities are willing to provide benefit...

Implementation of electronic health records (EHR), particularly computerized physician/provider order entry systems (CPOE), is often met with resistance. Influence presented at the right time, in the right manner, may minimize resistance or at least limit the risk of complete system failure. Combining established theories on power, influence tactic...

This research, when complete, will represent a prototype of the development of a virtual teaching case and the use and assessment of the initial versions of research instruments whose aim is the assessment of this new form of teaching case, or any type of teaching case, with regards to learning efficacy, gains, satisfaction, and environment. The pu...

Communities are often faced with challenges associated with attracting and maintaining a membership base, which affects their ability to develop a pool of resources and ultimately impacts their sustainability. A potential resolution to this challenge lies in the members of the community referring non-members to the community - member referrals. Whi...

Firms need to balance efficiency gains obtained through exploiting existing knowledge assets with long-term competitive viability achieved through exploring new knowledge resources. Because the use of knowledge management systems (KMSs) continues to expand, understanding how these systems affect exploration and exploitation practices at the individ...

Online discussion communities have become a widely used medium for interaction, enabling conversations across a broad range of topics and contexts. Their success, however, depends on participants' willingness to invest their time and attention in the absence of formal role and control structures. Why, then, would individuals choose to return repeat...

As Web 2.0 technologies have developed from novel innovations to generally accepted tools they have begun to shape the way we communicate and collaborate. The impact of Web 2.0 systems in the public sphere has led many organizations to invest in them in order to facilitate interaction and knowledge work (Young 2007). Yet, in spite of growing intere...

Organizations deploy information technology (IT) in an effort to improve their decision-making and action capabilities. However, few organizations are fully successful in their efforts to assimilate IT innovations. Scholars have begun to argue that collective mindfulness, or an elevated state of collective alertness toward expectations and changes...

Web 2.0 technologies have changed the way users interact with the Internet. Users play a growing role in the generation of content, and while doing so disclose a piece of themselves. We seek to provide a theoretical link between the boundary characteristics of a social networking website and self-disclosure. Utilizing Communication Privacy Manageme...

Over recent decades, reliance on global food systems involving highly distributed supply chains has increased. However, as awareness of environmental, social, and health consequences of these arrangements has developed, so has interest in local food systems (LFSs) in which consumers are served by nearby producers and intermediaries. Yet, in spite o...

Choosing the most appropriate collaborators is becoming increasingly crucial to biomedical research as many research questions evolve into complex and multidisciplinary projects. Despite a growing emphasis on translational and interdisciplinary research, little is known about how biomedical researchers form collaborations. We conducted 27 semistruc...

Recent trends in science are increasing the need for researchers to form collaborations. To date, however, electronic systems have played only a minor role in helping scientists do so. This study used a literature review, and contextual inquiries and semistructured interviews with biomedical scientists to develop a preliminary set of requirements f...

Science has developed from a solitary pursuit into a team-based collaborative activity and, more recently, into a multidisciplinary research enterprise. The increasingly collaborative character of science, mandated by complex research questions and problems that require many competencies, requires that researchers lower the barriers to the creation...

We report on the development of an instrument to measure clinicians' perceptions of their personal power in the workplace in relation to resistance to computerized physician order entry (CPOE). The instrument is based on French and Raven's six bases of social power and uses a semantic differential methodology. A measurement study was conducted to d...

As biomedical research projects become increasingly interdisciplinary and complex, collaboration with appropriate individuals, teams, and institutions becomes ever more crucial to project success. While social networks are extremely important in determining how scientific collaborations are formed, social networking technologies have not yet been s...

Power changes have been identified as a frequent and unintended consequence of the implementation of computerized physician order entry (CPOE). However, no previous study has described the degree or direction of power change, or even confirmed that such a relationship exists. Using a validated, standardized instrument for measuring personal power,...

Wikis are sites that support the development of emergent, collective infrastructures that are highly flexible and open, suggesting that the systems that use them will be egalitarian, free, and unstructured. Yet it is apparent that the flexible infrastructure of wikis allows the development and deployment of a wide range of structures. However, we f...

Although it has been argued that knowledge is an important organizational resource, little research has investigated where individuals go to search for information or knowledge. Prior work has investigated sources in isolation, but in an organizational setting, sources are encountered as an open portfolio instead of in isolation. It is important to...

Prior work has demonstrated that the impact of individual information-processing limits can be observed in dynamics of mass interaction in asynchronous collaborative systems (Usenet newsgroups and email lists). Here we present the first evidence of such impacts on synchronous social interaction environments through the analysis of an Internet Relay...

In software development, team-based work structures are commonly used to accomplish complex projects. Software project teams must be able to utilize the expertise and knowledge of participants without overwhelming individual members. To efficiently leverage individuals' knowledge and expertise, software project teams develop team cognition structur...

Dental Informatics (DI) is the application of computer and information science to improve dental practice, research, education, and program administration. As an emerging field, dental informatics faces many challenges and barriers to establishing itself as a full-fledged discipline; these include the small number of geographically dispersed DI res...

Understanding virtual community development provides a foundation for facilitating collaboration and learning among individuals separated by physical distance and organizational boundaries. Migrating offline communities into online virtual communities has the potential to significantly improve their efficiency and ability to support the sharing of...

In a world where information technology is both important and imperfect, organizations and individuals are faced with the ongoing challenge of determining how to use complex, fragile systems in dynamic contexts to achieve reliable outcomes. While reliability is a central concern of information systems practitioners at many levels, there has been li...

People come to online communities seeking information, encouragement, and conversation. When a community re- sponds, participants benefit and become more committed. Yet interactions often fail. In a longitudinal sample of 6,172 messages from 8 Usenet newsgroups, 27% of posts re- ceived no response. The information context, posters' prior engagement...

Online communities have become a major medium for social interaction amongst Internet users. However, communities addressing similar topics often have a considerable overlap in resources, which makes them at least partial substitutes for each other. Given the ease with which these resources can be accessed, why would individuals choose to return re...

In author attribution studies function words or lexical measures areoften used to differentiate the authors' textual fingerprints. Thesestudies can be thought of as quantifying the texts, representing thetext with measured variables that stand for specific textual features.The resulting quantifications, while proven useful for statisticallydifferen...

In this paper we describe our application of a relatively untried research approach called metatriangulation. Metatriangulation is a three-phased, qualitative meta-analysis process that may be used to explore variations in the assumptions of alternative paradigms, gain insights into these multiple paradigms, and address emerging themes and the resu...

This study uses a metatriangulation approach to explore the relationships between power and information technology impacts, development or deployment, and management or use in a sample of 82 articles from 12 management and MIS journals published between 1980 and 1999. We explore the multiple paradigms underlying this research by applying two sets o...

The article focuses on the quality of online social relationships. People use the Internet intensely for interpersonal communication, sending and receiving email, contacting friends and family via instant messaging services, visiting chat rooms, or subscribing to distribution lists, among other activities. The evidence is clear that interpersonal c...