Anu Sivunen

Laboratory of Work Psychology and Leadership, Helsinki University of Technology, Finland

July 2009 – June 2010. Hosted by Byron Reeves, H-STAR

My research project focuses on the organizational uses of virtual worlds for communication and collaboration. Specifically, I am interested in the social interaction and group identity of innovative, geographically dispersed teams collaborating in these environments. The research questions are: 1) What are the specific features of virtual worlds that are related to team communication and team dynamics, such as to the creation of a shared group identity and 2) how team members construct their social identities when collaborating via avatars in these 3D environments. While staying at Stanford, I will work with empirical data collected from a geographically dispersed group collaborating in Second Life.