Acknowledgments
Parts of this chapter were included in three previous papers: Malone (1988), Malone and Crowston (1990), and Malone and Crowston (1991). The work was supported, in part, by Digital Equipment Corporation, the National Science Foundation (Grant Nos. IRI-8805798 and IRI-8903034), and other sponsors of the MIT Center for Coordination Science.We are especially grateful to Deborah Ancona, John Carroll, Michael Cohen, Randall Davis, Rob Kling, John Little, and Wanda Orlikowski for comments on earlier versions of the chapter, and to participants in numerous seminars and workshops at which these ideas have been presented.