Multicultural Collaboration And Its Significance

Multicultural collaboration is situation where people from diverse cultures get together and work as an organization. They share common motives. They have common purpose and goals. They crate harmony between each other to work as an organization for long period of time. There are many example in present world of multicultural collaboration like CPEC (Pak-China economic corridor) a business collaboration between Pakistan and China and NATO a military alliance between European countries and America.

There are some terms which are used inter relatedly (synonymously) but in deep they have different meanings i.e. collaboration, multicultural collaboration and coalition.

Collaboration

Collaboration involves people or group of people work together for multiple goals to achieve. Their organization is for long period of time and a commitment is built with each other in form of making policies and roles. They have a high respect for each other and they trust and value each other. Sometimes they create high context communication regardless of their background.

Multi-Cultural Collaboration

When people from different culture joint together and create an organization in form of a culture which comprise of person from every culture. They share their own values, norms, religion social background, tradition, language, life-style, dressing codes, ethics and much more. They create a culture where everybody share his own values and common purpose. Such like collaboration occurs in business community.

Coalition

Like collaboration, coalition is also a get together of people but their organization purpose is for specific issue or problem which they cannot tackle on their own. They come tighter with each other because they cannot solve that issue without help of others. This collaboration is short termed. When they solve their issue or problem, they go on their own ways. In peace missions of UN many countries create coalition with many other countries where they have no active relationship with each other.

Various Techniques to Build Multicultural Collaboration

There are some techniques which used to build successive multicultural collaboration. Some are given in below.

1. Motivate others

For the purpose of successive multicultural collaboration, people must be motivated to bring collaboration in context of culture. They must share their efforts to achieve common goals. Culture differences must be avoided. The motivation is necessary for bringing cooperation and connection with each other.

2. Be accommodative:

A person must be in fully accommodation in order to get successful multicultural collaboration. They must be in flexible nature to accept others social background, religion and others values.

3. Adapting attitude:

A person needs to adapt his attitude according to the requirements of other culture. He must display those behavior which is not only acceptable to him but also to other person as well. He must know how to become a part of a culture which is comprise of persons from diverse cultural background.

4. Be a philanthropic rather a misanthropic:

In multicultural collaboration, it is necessary to accept and like others. Their background must be acceptable in order to get a complete organization. Misanthropic attitude in every respect is dangerous to society and culture. Like people regardless of their background, accept them as valuable personals who can add in every aspect of life.

5. Avoid orthodox:

We must not be so conservative that we do not accept valuable changes in our lives. Yes it is natural that everybody loves his background but strictly attachment to the background that I am all in all will leads to destruction. In order to get success achievement of your goals, as person need to show room in his attitude to accept new things about people, their culture, their religion, their language, their tradition and life styles. Accept people having different background to learn new things in life. Enjoy everybody norms and traditions.

6. Ethnocentrism:

Consider yourself superior to others and having a mental condition that my culture background, religion, and other things related to me are far better than others humans is ethnocentrism. Ethnocentrism is great barrier in communication and a person with ethnocentric attitude never accept others. Ethnocentric person never get mingled with other person. Other people always try to avoid such person. He became an outcast due his attitude from his own culture sometimes.

7. No stereo typing, no generalization, no assumption:

Most of the time we create assumption about others and tries to expect such behavior and action from the people. Our generalization about other build perception in our mind. It is a barrier in multicultural collaboration. People who made perception about others face difficulties in collaboration. They drive their mind with self-made idea with the help of their past experiences. Their views, stereotyping, and generalization may be good or bad but it hinder the process of collaboration. Our stereotypes effect the judgment process of other people. A stereotype person never get absorb or mixed up with other people if he has some generalized views about them.

8. Freedom:

A culture comes into existence where people feel free to express themselves, act according to their motives and get together with each other without any boundaries. Freedom create equality in status, values, and in expression. Everybody is treated and considered equally. Everybody get equal opportunity to participate in a culture. In such context, he become a part with that culture cordially and accept its norms, ethics, codes, and utilities and present themselves as a peaceful and valued being. He accept every one like his brothers or close relatives and tries to create a bond of affection between them. They like each other and a just community comes into existence.

9. Empathize with others:

In order to get collaborated with others, we need to empathize with others. Empathizing is, when we meet a person we not only consider his status and dressing to understand him but also consider his/her emotion, feelings, and expressions to understand him completely. In collaboration, we need to understand other’s feelings, emotions and values. We must consider other actions and behavior in the light of their emotions and feelings. They adopt their emotions and feelings due to their past experiences and their background. They become sensitive towards those situation and speeches which are connected with them.

10. Observation and following of common goals and codes:

For successful collaboration, it is very necessary to observe those codes and follow those goals which are common to all person in organization. Everybody is equally responsible in following these goals. They must get equal opportunity to participate and work together as a team. Common goals will help in creating harmony between people. They will work together in effective manner because everyone is individually connected with the result.

11. Leadership opportunity:

Make everyone responsible for organization goals and achievements. Give them chance to lead the organization to get success. They will show a spirit to lead everyone and consider its values, ethics, religion their own. They will tries their best to drive them to success. Leadership responsibilities will enables them to connect and unite people with each other. They will think for the sack of the organization. Many countries in the world have ministers which are actually emigrants. Canada and Australia always gives opportunity to those foreign people which are inhibited in highly populated countries like Pakistan, India and Bangladesh. They give them nationalities because the need more man power. Google CEO is Sundar Pichai who is Indian. Sadiq Khan, a Pakistani, is mayor of London. Eoin Morgan, current England cricket team captain, is from Ireland. Ricky Ponting former Australian cricket captain was Indian.

12. Teamwork:

A team cannot survive or win the game without proper team work. Individual performance never wins a match. A collaboration will be successful if everybody play their due role in working together. Everybody must be considered as important as a feet of a table, without a table never balance. Team work can carry their task in proper direction through adequate guidance from their leader. Each and every one cooperate with their fellow being to move towards their achievement.

13. Flexibility:

Flexibility is opposite to status quo which is attachment to your current position so rigidly that consider it a sin to get a positive change in yourself. Flexible person is accepted everywhere. Every society placed him among his individuals. A flexible person can easily adjust himself anywhere in any culture. He know every minute detail of a culture because he has intention and curiosity to know. His mind and heart is open to receive and give culture information. He is a true representative of his culture. He present himself so openly that people become compelled by his attitude to start liking his or her culture.

14. Be a good listener and observer:

Observation and listening are key process to learning new things. Observe and listen others. Practice what they do in their culture? What are their traits? What they like and what they hate? What are their motives and what they respect? All such kind of information can give you a comprehensive idea about others and as a result they become no more alien.

Why we need a Collaboration?

We are living in a world which is becoming a global village day by day through fast communication. People are communicating with each other for the purpose of trade, education, health issues and political goals. They are creating individual relation and cultural relation with each other. Now, no difference is considered between the people of France and Zimbabwe. People are openly coming forward to share their ideas and views. A country is becoming allied with a country situated miles away but they are actively engage in collaboration.

Change and innovation are the key movers in global environment. Everybody is in rush and trying to create/capture new opportunities around the world. In achieving the organizational and marketing success, everyone specials leaders and teams are facing problems of organizational collaboration across business and cultures. Either it is political or social, international interaction between organizations are growing needs to connect their local thought, ideas and voices to the global actions.

How we will facilitate the global collaboration today and future? is a question which answer may be that people are facing a world which is totally interconnected and independent. People provide opportunity to learn and benefit from wealth of diverse ideas and practices of other people. There are still so many gaps in bringing forward potential to our communities and organizations. Collaboration fails due to time, power, distance and mismanagement. Outcomes of collaboration are effected due to improper innovation, efficiency, performance and result. If we understand and observe we will see that there is need of collaboration for poor and wealthy communities. They are in dire need of connecting to the global network. They need solution to their problems by strategic social global education.

A good collaboration demands inclusion, transparency, and knowledge-sharing to make it a reality. Wherever an organization plan for something they must co-create opportunity for strategy making. Diverse knowledge and ideas that are rich in dialogue between different groups are necessary for engaging cross-cultural and cross-functional teams.

Some needs of effective collaboration are discussed below.

1. Leadership inclusion:

In effective collaboration environment, it is necessary to include leadership for inspiring new ideas and facilitate knowledge sharing diverse groups. Leaders tries to inspire collaboration community through their engaging power, behavior, guidance which gives empowerment, communication, inclusion of everybody and direction. They promote and direct facilitation of group action, dialogue and sharing of knowledge in complex multicultural environment.

2. Participation in strategy making:

We possess an art of listening local and social voices which requires openness and responsiveness for competing with diverse multi-cultural prospective. A person need to be dynamic enough to interchange his thoughts globally and locally. He need to be cooperative rather than pushing their ideas and fixed strategies on others. He must start strategy making from local perspective and shape it to global vision. He must consider his team members valuable enough to accelerate collaboration by recognition, responsiveness and engagement.

3. Engagement of Innovative Culture

In process of collaboration we will be able to engage a culture representative of innovative ideas, thoughts, and actions. Creativity comes with initiative taking, transparency, and open communication. It is necessary to engage a culture where people present their innovative and creative ideas to bring forward their organization. There must freedom of opportunities to every one regardless of his race or religion to cooperate with his organizational fellows.

4. Knowledge sharing culture:

We constantly struggle to move beyond complex organizational structure in order to collaborate effectively and creating solution to the problem. Organization builds knowledge platform and networks to simplify worldwide communication. They try to optimize technologies and nurture conversation to develop a knowledge source.

5. Interaction:

Now a days, we have many doors of communicating across borders through media and online technologies. Interpersonal commination and team building are ultimately effective in creating relation among diverse culture and groups. Social networking, knowledge sharing and cross-cultural sources are key to create a helpful collaboration.

Opportunities of inspiration and innovation is provided by teams, organizations and leaders. People are facilitated through multicultural collaboration to insight and discover open-mindset, inclusiveness, dialogue and a continuous quest for sharing solution of problems in the world. Local knowledge provide essential information to understand international customers and market. Great attention is required for crating meaningful change through leadership and effective organization in order to celebrate optimize culture diversity.

Challenges

Multicultural collaboration organizations face different kind of challenges while they are collaboration. Most of the challenges originate from different style of communication. Main challenges which they face are direct vs indirect communication, accent and fluency, and inappropriate attitude.

  1. Direct vs indirect communication: Direct vs indirect communication can cause serious damages to relationship between team members when they encounter some problem. Usually, communication is straight forward and explicit in most of organizations. The meanings are apparent and listeners do not require any context of its interpretation.
  2. Accent and fluency: Fluency and accent cause problems in international language community. English is international business language misunderstanding and frustration may occur. Nonnative speakers’ accent also have impacts on perception and competence.
  3. In appropriate Attitude: Multicultural collaboration is considered flat by their managers. They ignore the reality that in specific culture their attitude determined how they treat their teams. Inappropriate attitude from higher status member of organization may damage team member stature and credibility.

Collaboration in Healthcare: Barriers And Effectiveness

Collaborative work including delivering more innovative resolutions to complex issues, reducing repetition of efforts, is an all-encompassing composition that can take on numerous forms (Marek, Brock, & Savla, 2015; Salignac, Marjolin, Noone, & Carey, 2019). Failure is prevalent in collaboration, but successful collaboration can be achieved (Marek et al., 2015). Evaluation of successful teams allows necessary changes to be made in a timely manner to meet the expected outcomes (Marek et al., 2015). The purpose of this paper is to define collaboration as a key business strategy to solve difficult scenarios and challenges that are faced in today’s world.

Collaboration as an Effective Strategy

Organizations are seeking creative innovations that can be implemented quickly and efficiently (Elsbach, 2019). Creative innovations cannot occur without successful collaboration between individuals, groups, teams and communities (Elsbach, 2019). Collaboration has been defined in numerous ways and share common themes. One definition of collaboration from Greenwald & Zukoski (2018) is that it is comprised of two or more organizations with persistent commitments to working together for social purposes. The collaboration components can be both tangible and intangible (Salignac, Marjolin, Noone, & Carey, 2019). Tangible elements are people and resources where intangible components are described as perceptions, connections and ideals (Salignac et al., 2019). Organizations are looking for the innovative idea to breakthrough current models of care or products. Consumers are always looking for the next new versions of products in a very short turnaround time (Elsbach, 2019). Effective collaboration efforts will contain strong positive relationships, which help provide a foundation to achieve goals, and effect change (Braganza, 2015). Another component to successful collaboration is the ability of a single organization to recognize that the shared common goal cannot be achieved alone.

Barriers to a Successful Collaboration

Successful collaboration efforts are more likely to include strong positive relationships. The teams need to be able to achieve goals freely, with a distinct coordinated service in order to effect change (Braganza, 2015). When the teams have the inability to recognize the absence of collaborative relationships it will result in failure to achieve the shared goals. Members of the collaborative team need the education and training in order to nurture, strategize and highlight their relationships (Braganza, 2016). Braganza (2016) identified five challenges to collaborative relationships: time, conflict, competition, bias and roles. Barriers to a successful collaboration include the incapability to invest dedicated time to the relationship. The relationship needs to be nurtured (Braganza, 2016). Time is vital to be able to communicate, build values and for constructing the collaboration. Managing conflict cannot occur if participants are unwilling to sit down and resolve the problem. When working with many competing organizations, individual goals must be set aside to achieve the common goal, this is difficult when there are scarce resources to go around and the organizations are contending for them. This can hamper sincere and candid communication and eventually damage relationships (Braganza, 2016). Previous negative connotations need to be set aside in order to overcome bias. Finally, there needs to be clear definition of roles, responsibilities and goals. It needs to be clear what organization is responsible for contributions, time and resources or the collaboration is at risk for failure (Braganza, 2016).

Recognizing and Evaluating Effective Collaboration

Although the believed advantages of collaboration may be agreed upon, successful collaboration is challenging to achieve and failure is predominant (Marek, Brock, & Savla, 2015). Greenwald and Zukoski’s (2018), essay address the challenges that are faced to properly measure successful collaboration. They attest that instruments being used focus more on an individual assessment of satisfaction, the community and efficacy of leadership. The usual evaluation tool is about relationships, climate and expectations (RCE). Greenwald and Zukoski (2018) offer an alternative with the approach of extent of collaboration (EC) as an evaluation tool. The extent of collaborative action asks members which services they provided freely as opposed to the partnership with the other organizations (Greenwald & Zukoski, 2018). The authors suggest that evaluators assess collaboration primarily through perceptions among individual participants regarding satisfaction with their partnerships, belief in their leadership and positivity regarding success. The EC gives more concrete information to measure collaboration than REC to determine if the organizations is achieving their goals (Greenwald & Zukoski, 2018).

Collaboration in Healthcare

The dynamic nature of healthcare organizations means that collaboration has come to be crucial for many (Salignac et al., 2019). Collaborations among researchers and across disciplines, administrative and cultural limitations are essential to address progressively more complex challenges and prospects in science and society (Hall et al., 2018). Salignac et al. (2019) aim of their paper was to test the effectiveness of their Collaboration Health Assessment Tool (CHAT) and the validity of the associated measures. They looked at three components to analyze the validity of the tool. First, they classified active characteristics of collaboration to provide a strong basis for developing measures of success to systematically investigate collaboration health (Salignac et al., 2019). Secondly, they proposed an enhanced measure of collaboration that utilizes a systems methodology.

Models Of Collaboration And Current Work Environment

The two models of collaboration that will be reviewed are collective impact and collaboration networks. The collective impact model is a framework for social change. Collaboration networks can drive value creation (Camarinha-Matos & Afsarmanesh, 2006). Collective impact is the pledge of a group of important members from different divisions to finding a common agenda for solving a specific social issue (Kania & Kramer, 2011). There are five components of the collective impact strategy. The components are a common agenda, shared measurements, mutually reinforcing activities, continuous communication and backbone support (Kania & Kramer, 2011). Collective impact strategy does not allow silos, the participants are required to have a methodical style to social impact that concentrates on the relationships between organizations and the movement toward mutual objectives (Kania & Kramer, 2011).

The common agenda requires that all participants share the vision of the goal and for change. There is an awareness of the problem as individuals but a joint venture to problem solve and act (Kania & Kramer, 2011). Collective impact requires that any conflicts be discussed and resolved. The fundamental goals must be agreed upon by the complete collective impact initiative participants. Shared measurement systems are essential to measure success of achieving the shared goals. Measurement of success keeps all efforts aligned. It is also a way to hold each other accountable and learn from each other’s triumphs and disappointments (Kania & Kramer, 2011). Mutually reinforcing activities allows the stakeholders to work on what they excel at while working together. All stakeholder’s efforts must fit into the overarching plan of action in order to succeed (Kania & Kramer, 2011). This eliminates redundancy. Continuous communication needs to occur through regular meetings in order to develop the trusting relationships. This gives the ability to recognize and value the shared motivation behind their distinct efforts. Communication is dynamic and being together allows the acknowledgment of the message to be confirmed. Coming together rather than through written communication enables an ability to learn and problem solve together with others who share the same extensive knowledge and zeal around the shared goal (Kania & Kramer, 2011). The backbone support of the organization is crucial to its success. This serves as the backbone to the entire initiative and requires a very specific set of skills (Kania & Kramer, 2011). This team should be separate from the organizations working together. This team will facilitate, plan, data collect, report to keep the initiative running effortlessly (Kania & Kramer, 2011). Failure to provide a supportive foundation is a common reason for failure for an initiative (Kania & Kramer, 2011). The leadership from the backbone support of the initiative can deal with the waves and the storms of the project.

Collaborative networks are networks consisting of a diversity of organizations and people that are largely self-governing, locations distributed anywhere and assorted in terms of their operating environment, culture, social, capital and goals but join forces to better achieve common or like-minded goals and whose connections are supported by computer network (Camarinha-Matos & Afsarmanesh, 2006). Camarinha-Matos and Afsarmanesh (2006) believe that many confuse collaboration with cooperation and although each are important, they do not carry the same weighted importance. The authors go on to define networking, coordination, cooperation and collaboration. Networking involves the ability to share and facilitate exchange of communications and information. Coordination implies aligning and altering activities that more efficient results are achieved, in addition to networking. Cooperation involves networking and coordination. Additionally, cooperation shares assets to achieve the implied goals. Collaboration is a process in which entities share knowledge, resources and obligations to jointly plan, execute and evaluate a program of pursuits to realize a common goal (Camarinha-Matos & Afsarmanesh, 2006). Camarinha-Matos and Afsarmanesh (2006) examples of joint ventures show that as the integration level increases the network will move from a coordinated network to a collaborative network. A network has communication and information exchange, but coordination extends networking. Cooperation broadens coordination and collaboration lengthens cooperation. Moving along the continuum from networking to collaboration, it is noted the increase in shared common goals, commitment and resources that are investments by the participants (Camarinha-Matos & Afsarmanesh, 2006).

Our organization just entered the fourth year of its merger with Hackensack University Medical Center. Our network is comprehensive and is comprised of 14 acute care hospitals, physician offices, urgent care centers, rehabilitation facilities, behavioral health facilities, long-term care facilities and assisted living facilities. There is over 33,000 team members. In the beginning collaboration across campuses was difficult even what felt almost hostile at times. Over the course of the years as the facilities shared practices and policies it has become easier. Today, I do believe the network is more collaborative then cooperative. The collaboration that needs to occur must happen at all levels of the organization, from the network Chief Executive officer to the environmental service worker. Having one agenda, using shared metrics, mutually reinforcing activities like our culture of being courageous, compassionate, creative and collaborative and having a backbone to support the organization (Kania & Kramer, 2011) is what is making the difference today. The more integrated we become demonstrates the common agenda of shared goals.

Conclusion

Collaboration is a key business strategy as it will move an organization’s mission, vision and values to the next level. Collaboration is an indispensable strategy that is required to successfully and efficiently address the complexity issues that are associated with healthcare, society and finances. By not working in silos but working together, without personal agendas, allow systems to come together by sharing a common goal, shared metrics, mutually reinforcing activities, continuous communication and a true backbone of support for the organization will make the difference now and for future challenges (Kania & Kramer, 2011).

Benefits Of Collaboration In International Environment

As the world gets smaller and smaller due to globalization and technological advancements, countries and companies have access to the global market with a wide range of collaboration opportunities. Heidelberg (2004) defines that “Collaboration in the organizational context is the effort made by two or more organizations to achieve results that they cannot achieve working by themselves”. Countries being more liberal and open towards their trade policies indulge in importation and exportation of goods and services. This paved the way for globalization, In which companies can become global through expansion, which benefits the economy of different countries and companies. Among them are joint ventures. According to Friedmann and Kalmanoff (1961) the central concept in the joint international business venture is that of partnership. Partnership has two sides, technical and emotional. On the technical side it is joining of contributions whereas on the emotional side it is a feeling of cooperative effort. Joint ventures play a vital role for companies to access foreign markets.

“Working collaboratively in an international organization benefits everyone” this statement will be verified with evidence by analysing the joint international ventures of numerous countries. Dinu (2016) states that “There are several motives as to why a company wants to enter an international joint venture, among them are lower manufacturing costs, advantageous monetary conversion rates and lower taxes”.

The major benefits resulting from the formation of international joint ventures is that all the partners involved in it save money and reduce their risk in the business from capital and resource sharing. They give the minor firms a chance to work with them which helps in progression of developing, manufacturing and marketing new products and services. Enterprises gain access to a bigger market for their goods and services which has a chance to raise the sales. They can help small business grow on a fast pace which leads to increase in profits. Joint ventures help to strengthen and develop long term relationships of businesses of any size apart from helping them with additional resources which include staff, technology and finance. International joint ventures are not usually long term. Therefore long term commitment is not required (Dinu 2016). It has been argued Friedmann and kalmanoff (1961 pp.5) that joint international ventures have appeared as a possible technique for reducing conflicts and promoting harmony. The benefits of the international joint ventures mentioned above prove that working collaboratively have huge benefits for everyone. Taking this into account we will further move on to how joint international ventures have become successful with financial results and how they impact the economy. A study of a Mexican steel company called Altos Hornos de Mexico, which was the first company to engage in the integrated production of steel in latin america. The shortage of steel early in the second world war interested the Mexican industrialists for a possibility to establish another steel mill resulting in the second integrated steel mill called Altos Hornos de Mexico. Foreign technical assistance was sought and was obtained from a leading steel mill producer, The Armco International corporation of the United States. The Mexican industrialist with the collaboration of their government bank and Armco international corporations came into an agreement and was legally constituted on July 6, 1942. Armco got into a contract for the technical assistance of supervising the construction and operations of the plant. To achieve this they had to train a lot of Mexican personnel. The collaboration between them resulted in benefits for everyone. The company earned huge amounts of profit. The production of steel were substantially increasing over the years making it the leading steel manufacturers in the country and represents close to one-third of the total production in the country.(Friedmann and Kalmanoff 1961). Moving on to an Indian dyestuffs and pharmaceutical company which collaborated with multiple countries, The company took the initiative to seek collaboration of foreign companies. Cyanamid an American company joined hands with them to provide technical data and information about the plant layout, equipment specifications, organisation to construct the plant and install the equipment. Atul later on entered into an agreement with another collaborator called Ciba Ltd of Switzerland. Ciba had experience in the field of chemical production. Atul also collaborated with a company in London. Taking into consideration the international composition of the company, it was found that personnel relationships were satisfactory, which a benefitted the company for its progress. Working collaboratively with these companies resulted in smooth production, which led to increasing amounts of profit over the years. Moreover it paved the way for direct foreign investment which benefitted the Indian economy (Friedmann and Kalmanoff 1961). Analysing another Mexican company called Industria Electrica de Mexico (IEM) which was developed by a group of Mexican bankers to produce electrical equipment. The company was formed with the technical assistance of Westinghouse electric corporation of the United States. They supplied design information. Mexican personnel were trained by them in the United States, the training given by them was successful. Labour relations were good. IEM played a big role in the economy. It became the largest company to produce electrical equipment’s for industries and for domestic use in Latin America. The value of their shares steadily increased. The company earned a decent amount of profit. The company kept expanding with more manufacturing factories which create employment opportunities (Friedmann and Kalmanoff 1961).

To conclude, looking at some of the above examples and hundreds of other collaborations worldwide, we can say that international joint ventures are a win win for all. Both the countries stand a chance to gain and nothing much to lose, if they plan their ventures properly and think of long term planning and strategy rather than short term gains, which may sometimes work in their favour or may not.

REFRENCES

  1. Dinu, A 2016. Knowledge Horizons. Economics. Vol. 8. Bucharest: Dimitrie cantemir Christian university.
  2. Friedmann, W and Kalmanoff, G. 1961. Joint international business ventures. New York: Columbia university press.
  3. Heidelberg. 2004. Information systems and eBusiness management. Vol. 2. Hamilton: springer- Verlag.

Interprofessional Collaboration In Patient Care

Interprofessional collaboration is essential in ensuring that efficient and high-quality care is provided to all patients. Regardless of the environment or specific discipline, all involved healthcare professionals, including physical therapists, must work together with the patient to maximize care and reach treatment goals. When successful interprofessional collaboration is exemplified, the patient benefits in numerous ways. There are three essential benefits of interprofessional collaboration in patient care and overall physical recovery: high quality, transparent care with optimal outcomes; increased patient safety; and accurate health services and continuum of care.

Due to the complexity of health care and patient diagnosis, the utilization of interprofessional collaboration is necessary to enhance communication and coordination between healthcare professionals. No one discipline can provide the broad spectrum of care necessary to meet each individual patient’s total care needs. Combined knowledge and clinical expertise are crucial assets to provide patient care that focuses on the treatment of the patient as a whole, instead of just the disease and independent body functions. Physical therapists are able to work with other disciplines in order to better understand the patient’s physical needs in concert with their other medical needs for optimal and functional patient outcomes. Physical therapists provide their expertise, maximizing functional mobility needs and adapting the treatment plan accordingly.

Interprofessional collaboration is an integral safety component during the assessment, planning, intervention, and evaluation of the patient’s care. Lack of communication between health professionals can lead to negative patient outcomes. Closing these gaps in communication through the provision of effective interprofessional collaboration leads to significant decreases in accident, regression, and/or patient loss. Assessment, planning, intervention, and case reviews with input and coordination from each discipline guarantee a quality continuum of care. During my previous clinical nursing experience, I have seen first-hand the necessity of interprofessional collaboration between nurses and physical therapists. When patients are hospitalized, nurses are able to provide around the clock assessment of the patient’s health status. Nurses are able to communicate assessment findings that indicate acute changes in the patient’s cognitive, behavioral, or physical status with the physical therapist. This interprofessional collaboration between the nurse and physical therapist can be crucial in treatment planning and may impact the patient’s safety when performing rehabilitation activities. Effective and open collaboration between healthcare professionals ensures timely interventions and cohesive treatment goals.

Interprofessional communication can reflect an improvement in the management of healthcare services which results in the continuum of patient care. When collaboration between professionals is successful, the patient’s care is effectively coordinated throughout the healthcare system. Case managers are able to coordinate and facilitate interdisciplinary care with multiple disciplines. Physical therapists work alongside many others in the coordination and collaboration of discharge assessments and outcome planning while keeping in mind occupational and home environmental concerns. Effective patient outcomes rely immensely on collaboration of care for a continuation of optimal wellness for the patient. Interprofessional communication allows multiple disciplines to ensure compressive services.

As an aspiring physical therapist, I strongly believe that interprofessional communication is an integral component in patient care. Rehabilitation involves the interaction of numerous health care professionals. The patient and their family, along with physicians, physical therapists, nurses, and case managers, are all collaborators in the planning and implementation of care that ensures the long-term health and wellbeing of the patient.

Social Science vs. Natural Science

The objects of social research and scientific are different. Specifically, social science is based on people and society while scientific is research on inorganic or organic matter. The former is expected to help us build a deeper understanding of humility and comprehension of the human behaviors and our society in a systematic, multi-level and scientific method while the purpose of the latter is to discover universal rules. (Hofman in his article Prediction and explanation in social systems argued that “There is no single answer to this question because human behavior spans the gamut from highly regular to wildly unpredictable.”)That is to say, unlike nature operation rules, human behavior is hard to predict. The results of prediction was be divided by Hofman into two parts “skill world” and “luck world”. As he mentions in the article, in the skill world, under the premise of being able to measure skills, the results of prediction in principle will be successful and almost follow the perfect rule. While in luck world, success prediction is almost entirely caused by other factors which means skills cannot play a role in this world. Thus, skills and luck are totally unrelated in an extremely stylized explanation.

Due to our real-world, it exists between these two extremes, the precision of the prediction might be affected by many factors. (Take a simple example, a person who gets his salary £1000 per month, one day he found £100 on the street suddenly. From a scientific point of view, he will turn a blind eye or hand it over to the police, so his income this month is still £1000. But from the perspective of anthropology, he might put the money in his pocket then he will have £100 more this month. However, this is not the only result. If the owner finds someone takes it as his own and calls the police, the possibility this person will not only lose the £100 that he found but also face a fine punishment, which means his earnings might less than £1000 this month. ) In the above case, it can be known that human behavior is difficult to predict, and sometimes the actual results might contain the components of luck, such as the person who found the money or the owner did not call the police. We cannot hundred percent predict which situation will happen. Therefore, unlike scientific research, even we use the natural science methodology to analyze human behavior, it is still difficult to predict the result.

Besides, selection bias is the reason which causes the error exists, even social science research copies the methodologies of the natural sciences. Compared with scientific research, selection bias is more likely to occur in social research and usually can be seen during the sampling process. Since people will be divided into typical categories according to their cognitive activities, so the selected samples may not represent the entire population. This will cause the bias might occur in the research results. Nonetheless, many scholars often overlook or forget about it when they are conducting or evaluating social research studies (Geddes, 1990). In addition, approximately 250 years ago, Newton proposed his Newtonian mechanics, which lead to a revolution in the whole physics field. This revolution makes the whole universe become clocklike which can completely predictable (Almond and Genco, 1977). Generally speaking, in the field of scientific, if a phenomenon other than the running rule occurs, it will be classified as a calculation bias or other type of bias. While in social studies, most of these errors are attributed to selection bias.

One of the impressive cases of the selection bias that mentions in the course is survivorship bias, it is a kind of logical error. In the period of World War II, Professor Abraham Ward had researched the issue that how should enhance aircraft protection to reduce the chance of being shot down. After analyzing the data, he found that although the wing was the most vulnerable location on the entire aircraft, the engine was the least attacked. Therefore, Ward argued that ‘we should strengthen the protection of the engine’, but the US Navy commander had a different opinion and believed that ‘the wing should be strengthened because it is the most vulnerable position.’ Finally, they adopted Ward’s suggestion to increase engine protection and later confirmed that the decision was completely correct and this research has had a profound impact on the military field (survivorship bias, 2019).

This case tells us that the military has made a mistake with survivor bias. In general, those planes that as sampled were the aircraft that were not shot down and those planes that were shot down were not taken into consideration at all. Thus, when we have a misunderstanding of the samples that could not represent the whole group, there will be selection bias. The selection bias in social science involves human behavior and thought, so it is often ignored and hard to predict. It is one of the points that why social science research is not useful and inaccurate when the selection bias happened in the research.

Methods- quantitative and qualitative methods

The processes of social research and scientific research are the same. Both of them need to make a hypothesis at the beginning and then conduct an experimental investigation, then finally find the conclusion to prove whether the initial hypothesis is correct. Research methods can be divided into quantitative research and qualitative research. Quantitative research is using quantitative data to empirical the exam of social phenomena. This method uses statistical analysis of cases to achieve broad and valid evidence of effectiveness and credibility. For example, a questionnaire survey is one of the well-known quantitative research methods. While qualitative research is through the communication or analysis of context to generate the information or knowledge about a particular case. For instance, elite interview belongs to qualitative research. The quantitative method used quite common in the fields of scientific and social research however qualitative method rarely can be seen in scientific research.

For researchers, compared with social experiments, scientific experiments are might a little bit easier. Namely, science technology and equipment of the experiment are getting more and more advanced. Scientists can create perfect experimental conditions, control variables, remove irrelevant factors, and find out the relationship between experimental group and control group. But the quantitative researches of sociological are not like this. Social science experiments are difficult to precisely control variables like natural science. Such as when we get the data from the questionnaire survey, even if we use many complicated methods to ensure validity and reliability, we also cannot say with certainty that the realistic behavior of the research objects is consistent with the statistical results. Because the questionnaire has the characteristics of response instability and response effects (Zaller and Feldman, 1992). As for the qualitative method, it is a subjective way, to analysis the content or language to understand the actual phenomenon of the research issue, rather than calculate with numbers to conduct the research. Such as content analysis, critical discourse analysis, interview and so on. The most commonly used as the examination method in the social sciences is investigated rather than the experiment. This is also the reason why the qualitative method seldom be used in scientific research.

Since there is often a lot of debate between quality and quantification that which one is more suitable to use in the research, more and more people have been conducting qualitative and quantitative research at the same time in recent years because both of them exist advantages and disadvantages (Laurison and Friedman, 2016). Therefore, social science has more complicated research methods. The scientific features of the questionnaire survey are significant which have similar logic programs and content structures to natural science methods. Yet the questionnaire is essentially an empirical research method, so this is the method that rarely used in scientific research which means although natural science and social science have the same logic, they all have their verification means. This is the reason why social studies are difficult to imitate natural experiments because the former is more complicated. Here, I choose a case of social research which is using quantitative methods -“Mortality after the 2003 invasion of Iraq: a cross-sectional cluster sample survey” (Burnham at el, 2006) – by using social and scientific perspectives to compare and analyze the differences between the both.

In terms of research purposes, social research aims to find out how does a situation going in an area after a significant event happened, it belongs to a continuity study. Scientific research may try to understand what causes the effect and how to prevent the attack. Such as, what kind of weapon and gunfire can resist the attack or what kind of medical treatment can reduce mortality after the invasion of Iraq. The purpose of science is finding out a solution that is suitably applied to the whole society. If it is not effective as we expect which means the experimental process might be biased.

In the research method aspect, according to the article, the researchers use quantitative methods to conduct a sample survey. After a series of safety assessments and sampling, they collected the data about the deaths of the families by using a questionnaire. As the paper mention, errors and deviations are potentially exist in every investigation (Burnham at el, 2006). In this case, many factors have to take into concern such as sensitivities, security and so on, each element may affect the accuracy of the survey results. As for the scientific, these factors may not exist since human uncertainty do not contain in their samples. That is to say, if scientists want to study what kind of weapons can prevent attacks, they must focus on the type of weapon rather than writing the questionnaire to ask people which type of weapons they like to use.

After a series of investigations, the researchers will come to a conclusion. The result of social research might be a kind of phenomenon which exists in the area. For example, in the Iraq article, authors found that post-invasion mortality rates were higher than pre-invasion and gunfire was the main reason (Burnham at el, 2006). This conclusion confirms that war will increase the mortality rates however, we still cannot predict the trend of mortality rates in Iraq in the future. While the outcome of scientific research might be a kind of theory or a solution. For instance, in order to prevent the invasion, they may invent a new type of missile to help them to reduce the mortality rates. This kind of scientific study can also predict how many people can be saved with the new technology. Therefore, natural science and social science have different orientations, no matter in terms of research purposes, research methods, and conclusions. Even if social science research uses the main method of the natural sciences, it is still difficult to effectively predict future trends.

Furthermore, qualitative research is promoting by some researchers since they argue that social sciences and scientific could not be generalized after all, they have to apply the different research paradigms. Elite interviews are one of the useful qualitative methods in the research. By interviewing the main member and analysis the content what they said to collect first-hand data (Tansey, 2007). In the case of elite interviews, there are three points are different from the concept of scientific: sampling, confirmatory and definition. First of all, scientific experiments often use random sampling to ensure that each sample could represent the group. However, elite interviews are different, which logic runs against random sampling (Tansey, 2007). That is, non-probability sampling such as convenience sampling, quota sampling, purposive sampling, and snowball sampling are more suitable (Tansey, 2007). Second, compared with scientific, interview is more difficult to verify its authenticity. Because the statements of interviewees might exaggerate their words which become unreliable. In order to avoid being questioned over the accuracy, researchers have to assess in a critical way and the collected data must also carefully weigh the value to ensure its authenticity after the interview (Tansey, 2007). Finally, the elite belongs to an abstract noun, it is difficult to define which is unlike a clear definition of scientific. According to the article (Tansey, 2007), the characteristic of the elite refers to the person who is sufficient understanding of the specific field as well as the relevant structure. Even so, everyone’s definition of elite is still different. Some people believe that the person who has a higher position is elite, others think that reputation is a good tool to measure whether the person is an elite, and still others argue that only the person who is decision-making belongs to elites. But no matter which kind of standard is used to define the elite, after an effective evaluation and critical analysis the data that we have obtained will still have certain advantages to compensate and supplement other shortcomings. Hence, through the case of elite interviews, we can know that qualitative methods are more suitable to use in social research than the main methodologies of the scientific.

Building Information Modelling for Collaboration

1. Introduction

In AEC (Architecture, Engineering and Construction) industry construction process is a vast course that includes different phases under it. Interdisciplinary teamwork has traditionally revolved around the distribution of 2D drawings and documents in the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) industries, until recently collaborative practices remained 2D-Based (Singh, Gu and Wang, 2011). Numerous individuals in professional have differentiated collaborative work within the team of consultants and contractors as a working technique that can enable corporations to become more competitive and profitable (Yeomans, Bouchlaghem and El-Hamalawi, 2006). Collaboration in construction method is a need to advance the quality, design management and time management of each project. The term “collaboration” was defined by Anon (2010) as the act of “working together”. “Construction projects are becoming much more compound and difficult to manage” (Alshawi and Ingirige, 2003, Chan et al., 2004, Williams, 2002). Collaboration on construction projects is closely linked to connectivity and seamless exchange of knowledge among stakeholders (Walker et al., 2017). Recent improvement in internet collaboration over various software give Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC) industry the ability to follow innovative trends instead of conventional methods (Johnson et al., 2002). As one of the most ground-breaking developments in the Architecture, Engineering and Construction industry, BIM (Building Information Modelling) will help project management in the areas of procurement, design management, collaboration, pre-manufacturing and facility management (Bryde et al., 2013). BIM-enabled projects are typically managed by BIM-based Construction Networks (BbCNs) comprising associates of special groups, which are contracted to perform BIM-related works (Grilo et al., 2013). BIM is one of the significant areas of current research into Virtual Reality (VR) and is expected to see effective collaboration and improved data integrity (Ellis et. al, 2006). Building Information Modelling (BIM) as a course is defined by international standards as the “shared digital depiction of the physical and functional features of any built object that provides a reliable basis for decisions by using different software like Revit and Autodesk Navisworks (ISO 29481-1, 2010). Figure 1 Explains about the lifecycle of BIM which includes various headings focusing on collaborative projects. It is about the integration of research completed by various team to create a mutual structured model for a explicit project on a given platform. Collaboration involves contractors, engineers, architects, and other subcontractors working on a project.

Figure 1.BIM LIFECYCLE by Planning, BIM & Construction Today, 2018

2. Literature Review

Collaboration is central in the effective execution and implementation of any form of project Construction is a highly project-based industry (Morris, 2004), in which various companies must work together through complex working partnerships with each other (Cao et al., 2018). Since construction projects include complex tasks, team members working on these projects need to collaborate (Alreshidi, Mourshed and Rezgui, 2016). Collaboration in AEC (Architecture, Engineering and Construction) industry includes people who work together by sharing information and processes through interaction, communication, exchange, coordination and approval; therefore, team collaboration is required in order to share visions among stakeholders and to optimize team effort on an explicit job (Ilich et al., 2006).

2.1 Design Management

When a combination of AEC professionals come and work together, Design management and building projects usually take place. Design management can be enhanced by using new practices and approaches pioneered by building information modelling (BIM), and lean construction. Figure 2 Clarifies about the design management process by using BIM to reduce errors and collaborate with all the consultants working together for a specific project. It initiates with the project documentation to further design and operation of the project.

Figure 2. Design Management using BIM by Gu and London, 2010

2.2 Building Information Modelling for Collaboration

[bookmark: bbb0340]Building Information Modeling (BIM) within the AEC business, which can be defined as a socio-technical process; integrating man-made technology with social behaviors to allow collaboration across the lifecycle of the project (Building Smart, 2016) has revolutionized change management in projects. With the advent of BIM, its technical capacity to promote a collaborative atmosphere was a significant motivator for building projects in their push toward execution of BIM (Hosseini et al., 2016). The BIM-Level 2 collaboration framework has revolutionized the detection, review, tracking and regulator processes of change (Karen B. Blay et., al, 2017). Collaboration has been developed between Level 2 teams, followed by BIM phase as per Singh et al., (2011). The BIM Framework collaboration offers information for those who are ‘ready’ to BIM or who are actively implementing BIM, including those market participants who tend to be at the following levels at levels 0, 1 and 2 (RAIA, 2009). BIM capability levels (or BIM phases) define minimum BIM requirements (Succar, Sher and Williams, 2012). The following BIM stages/levels are listed in Figure 3.

Figure 3.- Levels of BIM by Source: Gu and London, 2010

Asghcraft, 2008 stated that Without collaboration BIM-enabled project means nothing but ‘scratching the surface’. Instance for collaboration in BIM- based construction networks (BbCNs) was synthesized into the so-called Collaboration Pentagon. These backgrounds to BbCN ‘s collaboration are “context”, “team”, “process”, “task” and “actor”. Figure 4 Illustrates the collaboration pentagon.

Figure 4. Collaboration in BbCNS through collaboration Pentagon by Oraee, 2017

2.3 Scope and Future of Collaborative working

With BIM, there is a scope in collaborative working. BIM comfort out the work for exchanging statement between the teams working for a project. Implementing BIM in building projects can solve construction problems such as delays, design conflicts, and disagreements among build parties. Figure 5 explains about the possibility of collaboration with implementing BIM in a project indicating direct and indirect contribution with the mentioned work.

Figure 5. Scope of Collaboration using BIM by Zhao et al., 2015

Cloud-based computing enabled collaboration in real time and enabled BIM design to be extended to the construction phase (Porwal and Hewage, 2013). With this innovative feature, designers can share the data online with all other team crews while giving them access to edit and upload update files. (Underwood and Isikdag, 2010) Points that ‘cloud computing’ will enable the next generation to make full use of ‘BIM’ in which the virtual structure model moves around the building cycle.

Innovative BIM-enabled tools like Knotworking which is practiced in building design is another futuristic tool for collaboration work in AEC industry. Knotworking helps in coordinating with different design discipline through collaborative task. Through knotworking a team of members, are organized to work for minimum period to solve any error or problem occurring the task (Eadie et al., 2013). The tool is a flexible practice in which consultants and professionals work through collaboration (Kerosuo, 2017). Knotworking enables a new way to set up meetings instead of traditional meetings. Knotworking gives immediate solutions to problems (Koskela et al., 2002). Knotworking is more likely to Big Rooms in which all the technical team works under a roof and share instant information to get solutions more effectively rather than working separately (Kanzode and Reed, 2008)

Conclusion

The paper critically elaborated on AEC (Architecture, Engineering and Construction) industry and how vast it is. Due to increment in late project deliveries and errors due to lack of collaboration, there is a huge demand of advance collaboration techniques for the architects and other technical consultants working in the same field. In addition, Application of BIM (Building Information Modelling) in construction could lead to effective project building by enhancing collaboration between the stakeholders and the consultants working for a project. For any project, management is a major factor to deliver it on time while maintaining the quality of work done. BIM (Building Information Modelling) tools for Design Management will aid in management of construction projects by making diverse processes to work on a definite project. Research indicates that the dimensions of stakeholder engagement related to its implementation yield the highest positive financial impact within Building Information Modelling (BIM) during the life cycle of a project (Eadie et al., 2013). Different levels of BIM show various new techniques to ease out the work for the experts working in the field. Collaboration is done at Level-2 BIM in between the consultants. Apart from that, there is a huge scope in future of innovative techniques for doing collaboration for instance, cloud computing. Avoiding traditional meeting manner and opting new tools for instance, Knotworking and Big Room will enhance the work quality by avoiding technical errors occurred while working with different teams of consultant. However, BIM implementation in the AEC (Architecture, Engineering and Construction) industry will be the key benefit in resolving the key challenges of the remote construction projects. BIM can take forward the industry to benefit in aspects like online collaboration, data sharing, design management, construction planning and monitoring.

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Communication and Collaboration Development: Applications and Limitation

Introduction

Gravitational waves (GWs) travel at the speed of light and are caused by a disturbance in spacetime by an accelerated mass.[footnoteRef:2] The idea of these waves was first suggested by French theoretical physicist Henri Poincare in 1905, and later predicted by Albert Einstein in 1916.[footnoteRef:3] For many years the existence of these waves was unproven. The evidence for the gravitational wave theory was finally proven to be true in 2015 by a laser interferometer gravitational-wave observatory (LIGO).[footnoteRef:4] Many different science facilities around the world communicated and collaborated to develop LIGO. [2: (What is Gravitational Waves?, 2020)] [3: (What are Gravitational Waves?, n.d.) (LIGO, 2020)] [4: (LIGO, 2020)]

Background Physics

Einstein predicted that when two bodies orbit each other in space, a ripple effect would occur, and a gravitational wave produced. Gravitational waves travel at the speed of light. The prediction was linked to Einstein’s general theory of relativity in which the gravitational effect between masses results from their warping of space-time.[footnoteRef:5] Some examples of this warping of space-time could be when a supernova (explosion of a star) occurs, or when two black holes in orbit of each other merge. Figure 1 shows how a mass in space can distort space-time. These GWs are first massive in size, but since they are so far from earth, these waves are very weak by the time they get to earth, meaning the observatory must be very large and sensitive. LIGO can detect gravitational waves by recording when a change in space occurs.[footnoteRef:6] The change in space is due to the interference from the ripple effect of the GWs. The LIGO observatories have two arms which are constructed of lasers and mirrors and stretch over 4 kilometres long. This setup is shown in figure 2. When a gravitational wave passes through the arms of the laser interferometers, the length of these arms changes slightly, which is identified by the light detector. The light detector works by using the principle of interference between waves, which is shown in figure 3.[footnoteRef:7] In the unaffected LIGO setup, the light waves from the laser reflecting against the mirrors causes destructive interference and no light is produced. When a GW passes through the observatory the length of the arm changes slightly causing the wave interference to become partially constructive allowing for some light to be produced, this is recorded by the light detector.[footnoteRef:8] [5: (What are Gravitational Waves?, 2020)] [6: (Gravitational waves, Einstein’s ripples in spacetime, spotted for first time, 2016)] [7: (LIGO, 2020)] [8: (What is an Interferometer?, 2020)]

Figure 3: Principle of Wave Interference

Figure 2: Design of LIGO

Figure 1: Warping of Space Time

SHE

Many different physicists have collaborated to develop LIGO, from many different fields including: classical and Quantum mechanics, electromagnetism and relativity. The development of LIGO consisted of over 1200 scientists making up the LIGO Scientific Collaboration. The high level of interdisciplinary collaboration in LIGO allows for three different areas of research to occur: analysis of the source of the gravitational waves, how detectors operate and how larger-scale applications of the detectors could be developed.[footnoteRef:9] The collaboration to improve the development of LIGO is evident in the development of the initial LIGO interferometers, with input from MIT and Caltech based on their kilometre-scale interferometer studies and together refining to create the design of LIGO.[footnoteRef:10] [9: (When The Past Becomes the Future of Physics In The 21st Centurary, 2020)] [10: (LIGO Discovery Press Kit, 2011)]

The development of LIGO was first completed in 2007. LIGO was built with two identical observatories measuring over 3000km apart. This is since the Interferometers can pick up any interference such as an earthquake which will cause detection in one interferometer but not the other. Both Interferometers pick up interference from GWs, so disturbance can be tracked and compared.[footnoteRef:11] The biggest limitation of LIGO relates to the degree of sensitivity required to detect GWs. In 2009, through increased technology capabilities the sensitivity of LIGO was improved by using increased laser power, Homodyne detection, Output mode cleaner and In-vacuum readout hardware. However, this progress was not enough and LIGO continued to be limited by lack of sensitivity. Over the next couple of years the interferometers still picked up no gravitational waves, so the original arms were rebuilt and project advanced LIGO came about.[footnoteRef:12] The advanced LIGO was developed over five years with collaboration from countries such as the United Kingdom, Germany and Australia, with over 900 scientists working together on the project. The development involved installing new detectors which were almost 22 more times more sensitive to waves than the original interferometers used in 2007. What allowed the advanced LIGO to be much more sensitive than the original LIGO was a heavier and larger mirror (test mass) to be used in conjunction with a quadruple pendulum suspension as shown in figure four, rather than a singular pendulum. Using this advanced LIGO, two days after it was turned online the first gravitational wave was detected. This was on September the 14th 2015. Since then approximately 50 gravitational waves have been detected.[footnoteRef:13] [11: (Gravitational Waves Detected 100 Years After Einstein’s Prediction, 2016)] [12: (Technology Transfer Case Studies, 2020)] [13: (LIGO Magazine – Construction: Advance LIGO, 2012)]

Figure 4: Advance LIGO Mirror Design

After the successful outcome of the first two LIGO setups, the importance of collaboration in the research of GWs was made clear. The accuracy of the interferometers is limited and dependent on the number of Interferometers in use. With only one Interferometer no GW’s can be detected, with two interferometers, GW’s can be detected but with more than two the source of the waves can also be found. This influenced the development of the “sister facilities” of LIGO, made up of the interferometers: Virgo in Italy, GEO600 in Germany, and KAGRA in Japan with future plans for LIGO India to be built.[footnoteRef:14] The increase of the Interferometers in the world allows for a global network to be created, hence increasing the amount of research able to be gathered on GW’s. The increase of research will allow for gravitation and relativity theories to be tested and improve the ability to find sources of GW’s, allowing the knowledge of our universe to grow.[footnoteRef:15] [14: (Interferometer techniques for gravitational-wave detection, 2016)] [15: (OBSERVATION OF GRAVITATIONAL WAVES FROM A BINARY BLACK HOLE MERGER, 2016)]

There are two key limitations to the working ability of LIGO. The first one is due to the quantum nature of light. Light is made up of an elementary particle called a photon which causes electromagnetic radiation. This radiation can cause changes in the positioning of the mirrors in the LIGO design, which limits the ability of the interferometers to accurately gather information on gravitational waves that pass through. To overcome this limitation, the design of LIGO has been developed to include a concept called “squeezing”. In this process, light is sent through a squeezed vacuum decreasing the amount of radiation fluctuations.[footnoteRef:16] The second key limitation is the sensitivity of the LIGO structure. The sensitivity is affected by the length of the arms and the power of the lasers used in the design. The arms of the interferometer have been developed using the Fabry Perot cavity, which involves the reflection of the lasers on mirrors. This increases the distance travelled by each laser, increasing sensitivity. This also increases the amount of laser light and power of the lasers, hence also increases the sensitivity, the squeezed vacuum design also helps to improve this. These key limitations have not been fully resolved and any further developments to remove these limitations in full are very costly since the technology is new.[footnoteRef:17] [16: (LIGO R & D, 2020)] [17: (LIGO’s Interferometer, 2020)]

The detection of these gravitational waves allows for the Universe to be further studied. Unlike light waves on the electromagnetic spectrum which the Universe is currently studied through, gravitational waves cannot be changed by the atmosphere of the Universe. As a result more information about the Universe can be discovered from the study of gravitational waves. LIGO can compare the information produced from the detection of GWs to the electromagnetic observations on light made by facilities such as the Hubble Space Telescope.[footnoteRef:18] An example of this was on August 17th when LIGO detected a gravitational wave, and then moments later the NASA Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope measured a quick release in gamma rays. Then using the Hubble Space Telescope an image of two neutrons stars colliding was produced as shown in figure 5. Another theory, which has not been proven, is that the world is made up of approximately 27% dark matter. By following the sources of GW’s the creation of dark matter, may be able to be tracked in future.[footnoteRef:19] [18: (Why Detect Them?, 2020)] [19: (NASA Missions Catch First Light from a Gravitational-Wave Event, 2017)]

Figure 5: Neutron Stars Colliding

The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatories can detect gravitational waves. The successful development of LIGO included collaboration from many different fields to overcome the limitations of LIGO. These limitations include lack of sensitivity and accuracy of the detection can be overcome by further developments, however these are costly. Using LIGO allows for more information and research to be discovered on the Universe than ever before and LIGO will positively impact society and allow the Universe to be further understood.

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  17. When The Past Becomes the Future of Physics In The 21st Centurary. (2020). Retrieved from BBVA: https://www.bbvaopenmind.com/en/articles/when-past-becomes-future-physics-in-the-21st-century/
  18. Why Detect Them? (2020). Retrieved from LIGO: https://www.ligo.caltech.edu/page/why-detect-gw

Collaboration and Management In ICT Sphere: Reflection Essay

Self-Reflection

All the opportunities for business growth in the current world evolve around technology.

Everyone working with technology has to be aware of the challenges that come with it. One of the main challenges that come with digitalization and e-commerce is dealing with security issues. However, most people think of hacking whenever cybersecurity is mentioned. But the truth is businesses are vulnerable in different dimensions. Other security concerns include unprecedented cyber espionage and data theft. Regardless of the intensity, the bottom line is any security issue has many negative implications for a company. For instance, the reputation of the company may be jeopardized and also it may instill a financial burden to the company especially due to outages and time out. It also places customer and partners’ information at risk. For this reason, planning to safeguard a company’s network must be one of the topmost priorities today. Cybercrime is not a new story. We are surrounded all over by news of cybercrime on various media platforms. However, very little information on cybersecurity is known, according to the EY Global Information Security Survey (GISS), (2018), around 77 percent of organizations around the world have less secured networks. The worst part is that most of them do not have any clue where their assets or information are most vulnerable. At first, I did not understand how cybercrime could be perpetrated and cause massive destruction and losses. Although they appeared sophisticated, I still believed there could be solutions to the problem or at least there was something I could do in my capacity to bring change. Through this, my dream was not only to do right but to be part of the team that ensures that everything happens the way it is supposed to, and only that. Nothing else. I had the motivation to deliver technologies that are vital to propel businesses forward. This essay gives a clear reflection of my interest, journey, and aspirations in the cybersecurity profession.

Why ICT Security Professional

Choosing the cybersecurity path to me was more of a calling than compulsion because everything I connected with led me to computers. I was well aware of the demand and need for cybersecurity professionals in society and I knew it is one of the areas that are likely to have steady growth in the job market in the future. I was not only assured of better pay but was also sure that I had a greater opportunity for career advancement and I could pursue different roles that I was passionate about. Besides, being an all-around person, I dreaded routine and repeated assignments because I have always been explorative and keen to find new challenging assignments from time to time. I noticed this during my early years in class. I always wanted to get out of the box and do things differently. My teacher believed that I was a fast learner and explorative. Therefore, I have always grown with the desire of not settling for anything for a long time. Cybersecurity was the best platform to meet my desires because the profession itself branches into different fields like digital forensics, information security, social engineering among others. To me, this was what job satisfaction really meant, having the ability to find my space in the midst of my assignments to do what I love most.

Another reason why cybersecurity was the best option for me is that it is one of the professions that could lead me to any field around the world. Most companies depend on technology and therefore with a further increase in technology, there will be a demand for security professionals in any sector. Besides, I always believed getting into the field was too easy. I was only required to get started with some basic IT knowledge and relevant cybersecurity certification.

Nature of My Job

In general terms, I am extensively an ethical hacker whose main aim is to unveil flaws and loopholes in the security by hacking systems with permission. My main duty is to use similar skills used by unethical hackers to identify areas of potential vulnerabilities, finding out the ways used by cybercriminals to hack systems and getting ready in case of any cyber attack. I believe that working as a penetrator in Ultimum B.V is the right place for me since every day and every role feeds my passion and interest. It gives me a better opportunity to grab new skills every day. Generally, I am part of a team that values security and is focused on helping clients with the best security solutions. My role as a penetration tester is not only complex but fulfilling. It revolves around a simulation of Cyber attacks against a computer system to check for any vulnerabilities. This works with the help of encapsulating CDN which is a direct gateway for all incoming traffic to the company’s web application. This, therefore, makes it possible to filter out any malicious attacks and entries like SQL interjections.

My roles as a penetration tester are broken down into five major stages. First, I have to take part in planning and reconnaissance where I have to define the scope and goal of a test, the details of the system that need to be addressed and the most appropriate testing method to be used. This is usually the basis of gathering intelligence, understanding how a network works and the potential risks. Second, I usually scan the target application for any attempts by an intruder. This is usually through a statistic analysis of the application codes to understand its operation behavior as well as the dynamic analysis that entails a deeper examination of the running state of an application to know the performance of a system. The third step after scanning is to get access to the application to identify and expose application attacks like backdoors and scripting. I then exploit three risks by streaming data for example of those interfering with traffic to better get an idea of the potential effects of the invasions. Fourth, I have to continuously monitor the exploited application systems to try and copy those that do not easily leave the system. Lastly, I have to analyze and give comprehensive results of every penetration test. The report usually contains details of the threats identified, report on whether any important data was accessed or interfered with or the time taken. According to Bertolgio & Zorzo (2017), my role as a penetration tester is not only important for locating vulnerable spots and exploiting them, but also helps the organization find the weaknesses of the hardware and software then helping the company to develop controls. Penetration testing also ensures that the controls in place are effective and well implemented and locate new bugs in the software.

Team Structure

Working for Ultimum B.V Company’s Security Service has taught me one major lesson.

Being a security professional is not a walk in the park. It requires a deep understanding of technology, strategic plans and cyber laws (Bertolgio & Zorzo, 2017). I have learned the fact that any successful security operation is a team effort and requires the contribution of different people within the company including ICT experts, business specialists and regulatory bodies. This coordination is the best environment to tackle any form of cyber challenges. It also simplifies and facilitates all security processes. The concept of collaboration is strongly affirmed by Hui, et al., (2014) who according to them, sharing information is important because in most cases, cybersecurity analysts are usually distributed and they face an almost similar set of tasks of defending the network infrastructure. However one of the disadvantages of collaboration is the conflict of interest. Not all security analysts are usually interested in the same kind of information. Hui, et al. (2014) however, recommend an architecture that consists of a feedback loop between analysts and the system.

Our organisation values team effort and most tasks are grouped according to team ability.

Therefore Utimum B.V is a team based lateral structure where employees are grouped into teams that perform the same job functions. Research shows that team effort is substantial in team performance. The Tuckman’s model clearly brings out the phases that lead to the performance of the roles of a team in Ultimum B.V. Company. According to Tuckman, with time relationships within a team establish with the development in maturity and abilities. The team dynamics begin with directing style, to coaching, participating and finally finishing the assignment. At completion, the group can be easily detached. This progression in team behavior and leadership style is the real picture at Ultimum B. V, which is reflected in different ways. First, During the forming stage, the management plays a dominant role in guiding the team because in most cases, our roles are not well defined, the team’s members are unfamiliar with each other and what is required of them. As we get serious into business, team members push themselves against the limitation of teams especially with differing approaches to ethical hacking. I must admit that sometimes we lack a common ground of reference. Each team member has a different role in the organization’s network and they use different terms that may not be common to other members of the team. Turkman refers to this stage the storming stage. Third, team members gradually get into the normative stage when the management steps in as a position of authority. The management representative is usually the team leader or supervisor chosen by the management to ensure effective completion of assignments. Through the group leader, differences are also resolved and team members start to appreciate other peoples’ views and ideas. Fourth, the team gets into work without conflict and puts in their best efforts in completing the assignments. At this point, the group can either be disbanded or further split to perform many another available task.

Team Goals and Vision

The immediate goal is to deliver the best we can at Ultimum B.V. We do not take the opportunity the company has entrusted us for granted and our drive is to bring the best out of it. Our aim to make use of new skills to bring about innovation and to be an element of change within the company. However, we do not limit ourselves to helping secure Information Systems by performing penetration tests and security audits but we have a dream of being part of the analytical security research. I desire to be part of the team that oversees the viability of any form of investment towards aligning the business goals and objectives as well as minimizing risks.

This too is possible if we remain focused, build relationships as much as we can, accept new responsibilities assigned to us and be more trustworthy.

One of the lessons I learned is that being an information technology professional requires a deep investment in knowledge. This is also part of our plans. We aspire to improve my current skills by taking advantage of all training s and workshops arranged in the company. The most important skill set that we should work on includes programming skills, problem-solving, networking, communication and database knowledge.

Ultimum B.V does not limit our ability. Therefore, aspirations are not only tied to personal advancement and the growth of the company but to help bring forth changes to a larger society and help to minimize cybercrime since we believe that an informed community is the basis of a sustainable security culture. However, this initiative has to start from the influence we make on the people. We aim to find ways of instilling the concept that security belongs to everyone to encourage responsibility. We have to speak about the importance of security at every level. Awareness and sensitization is also a vital tool for teaching lessons on cyber security in most social gatherings. These lessons are likely to equip people on making secure products and services.

Management at Ultimum B.V.

The management of our organization takes up different roles every time depending on the nature of tasks. Management at Ultimum B.V is in line with Quinn’s model of competing values framework, where the conception of effectiveness depends on two major dimensions. First, the focus on the internal structure, welfare and development of employees to the external focus on organizational development. Second, the differences between the organizational preference for a structure, which is a representation of the contrast between stability, control, and flexibility (Cameron, 2011). According to Quinn, the most effective leaders usually practice all these roles while meeting the demands and expectations that come with each role. The main relations model explains the role of the manager to be a facilitator and mentor. It emphasizes on commitment.

This is what I have witnessed within our organization. The managers value participation, and they are keen to build cohesion by resolving any form of conflicts within the organization. They are mainly concerned with facilitating the key security processes which are the core mandate of the company. Most of the time the manager is focused on the personal development f employees. I have seen people leave the company better, experienced and with more skills than when they got in. On the other hand, the open system model looks at leadership from the perspective of a dynamic world where leaders have to make smart and timely decisions regardless of the limitation of time required to devote themselves to planning the organization’s issues. The emphasis, therefore, is on creativity and innovation. This is also the situation in Ultimum B.V where managers have a strong influence on employees through persuasion. The rational goal model emphasizes on profitability and productivity. This is also witnessed at Ultimum B.V

where managers are productive and strongly motivated to generate profit while also maintaining the reputation of the company. Lastly, according to the internal processes model, the criteria for effective management are stability and continuity. At Ultimum, procedures and processes on security issues have to follow a specific order. In case of conflict, the chain of command is also considered when solving issues. These processes maintain order within Ultimum B. V and promote stability.

Supervision in my department can be well described as laissez fair. Most of the roles and duties we perform are under very minimal supervision and control. In fact in most cases the opinions my team members bring on board are implemented without too much scrutiny, questioning and influence from the management. The supervisor only gets in to monitor, check the progress of our role and in case, he wants to give a new assignment (Namiq, 2018). In my present role, I am accountable to the head of the security department who is also my supervisor. This, therefore, means I have to report everything I do and I also get feedback from him. Most of the feedback I receive usually include achievements the organization has made through me, reasons why my role exists, the areas I am currently doing well and those that I need to improve on and my impact on different stakeholders within the organization. I value feedback and I always take it as an opportunity for growth. I also feel valued and appreciated by my superiors. I have learned to remain within the course of the company’s goals and mission when creating strategies and improving some areas within the organization through the feedback I receive.

Management is equally by listening and consensus with employees. rather than control. It is referred to as Management by Walking around (MBWA). In this type of management style, the main concept is to monitor the team and creating a relationship with them for the success of the organization. However, managers remain to be the counselors and directors of processes

within the organization (Tucker & Singer, 2013). There are key aspects that make the MBWA model applicable in Ultimum B.V. First supervisors are not usually confined to their desks. They interact with team members without any prior arrangement at any time of the day. Second, conversing with supervisors is as easy as talking to friends. The discussions are sometimes informal but aligned to the goal of the assignment. I have noted that my supervisor is not only focused on giving feedback but is always keen to gather our opinions on issues. Third, it is easy to get help from the supervisors. My supervisor for instance is an expert in ethical hacking techniques. I have seen him get to work with us especially in matters that require an urgent and advanced response and expertise. This has greatly helped in motivating performance because most of the employees support this type of management style.

Change Management

According to Li, et al., (2016), information technology security personnel are part of the solution for companies. They, therefore, need to be always strategic and creative by getting in front of the problem and finding fast solutions. For the few years I have worked with Ultimum

B.V. Company, there has never been a one size fits all mechanism of dealing with security issues within networks. I have learned that creativity and adaptability to every new technological change and the threats is the best approach. I have always made effort to ensure that every working experience at Ultimum B.V. Company gives me an opportunity to familiarize myself with the business systems and to know the most vulnerable areas.

Changes are part of the routine at Ultimum B.V. The changes are sometimes planned or unplanned so we are always prepared because our job is about finding the best possible security solutions. Therefore, employees do not question change as deeply as they should regardless of the timing. Instead, they are keen to bring in ideas and suggestions to make the changes more adaptable. However, in most cases, change has always altered the status quos and brought in new opportunity for reflection. For instance when a supervisor asks, ‘How best can we solve it’ , the question drives solutions away from routine and calls for other creative approaches.

However, some changes, especially those implemented without enough consultation bring in confusion because they do not create room for improvements and sometimes makes team members question the real objectives that should guide operations.

Lewin’s Change management Model is the most common approach used at Ultimum B. V by both team members and the supervisor. According to Lewin’s Model, change is split into three stages of management. Unfreezing, making changes and refreezing (Hussai et al., 2018). Employees at Ultimum B.V are cultured to acknowledge that changes must take place and they therefore easily unfreeze from normal processes to get a new approach to situations. This has helped in eliminating any form of bias, rigidity and resentment. The unfreezing process is like a preparation for all forms of changes the organization implements. During the real change, Ultimum B.V has a culture of giving extra training where needed to make the transition process easy and adaptable. After the implementation of a change, the last step is to refreeze the new status quo. During this stage, Ultimum B. V works to ensure old traditions and norms do not resurface again. The organization has a regular review system to follow up on implementation until the new changes become a tradition (Hussai et al., 2018).

Lewin’s change model is the most relevant for Ultimum B.V considering the nature of the industry. One thing about cybercrime is that it is revolutionary and it gets more complicated with time. Therefore, the business approach to solving security issues has to be flexible and drastically change for the better. Using Lewin’s model as an approach for implementing change at Ultimum B.V has immediate effects on the objectives and cooperation between team members. First, it helps the organization to stay relevant and aligned to its goals (Hussai et al., 2018). During the unfreezing stage, the organization surveys the situation on the ground to understand the changes that need to take place and reasons for the change. All these processes use the organization’s strategy and visions as supporting evidence. Second, the fact that the model involves a lot of communication, analysis of how the change will affect everyone, provide a chance for employees to participate and establish a reward system is a motivating factor since team members feel that they are also part of the change (Hussai et al., 2018). This not only encourages team effort but also fosters an environment for unity and participation in implementing new policies.

My Role in Collaboration with Others

It is clear that security jobs do not scale up. Instead, most roles get tougher with each passing day. In my experience, this work demands the utmost focus and expertise. This difficulty is due to several reasons. First, there is a growing volume of cyber-attack. The irony is we still rely on manual and old processes for data interpretation, which can be ineffective with complexity in the nature of attacks. Besides the growth scale of these security alerts are usually too many for us to handle on our own.

I have learned to be confidential because I get access to a lot of important company information. I have also learned to work on my attitude. Most of my assignments involve long hours of working behind a computer which is usually stressful. Despite all the pressure, I have always been positive, committed to my position, courageous in innovating ideas and having a helping spirit towards my colleagues and clients.

The best accomplishment in any position is when one delivers beyond the expected or when one goes out of his or her way to have a task done for a company. Looking back, I cannot help but appreciate all the challenges that come with this role. I view it as a major step to great accomplishment that I would not have made in any other professional field. This is due to a number of reasons. First, I am now adept at the IOT security. I am able to develop countermeasures by seeking and analyzing potential threats. Through all this, my communication, decision-making and time management skills are all getting better daily.

Second, locating weaknesses and pinpointing likely targets of cyber attackers has been the highlight of my success. I have successfully managed to incorporate a combined approach in vulnerability assessment like hardware troubleshooting, software installation, and pact management of the network security. Above everything else, I have contributed to various cyber initiatives and prevented several crimes. As Gerami (2018 ), mentions, the general security of any business network is not only determined by pointing and evaluating the number of vulnerabilities, but also a deeper understanding how these vulnerabilities can be staged to cause an attack. This is usually the most important initiative in crime prevention. This is what motivates me more, knowing that my everyday effort saves companies and organizations from attacks. It is more appealing and fulfilling to know that my efforts not only prevent the loss of important data but also saves businesses of costly delays in production, thereby preserving the reputation of a company. All these successes are attributed to the role my supervisors play as well as the commitment of my team members.

Conclusion

Through my learning and working experience, I can now look back and realize that my role as an IT security analyst is vital. Today I not only understand the basic security aspect but I also practice it. I am more confident that choosing the path that excites me was the best decision ever. However, from this reflection, there is one major concept that emerges. Being a security specialist, especially on information technology is not an easy task. It also includes the zeal and desire to become better by constantly improving self with the latest technological changes and updates on security issues around the world. Some of the challenges I experience are the long working hours, the big workload and sometimes lack of understanding with other IT professionals. With these challenges, came strengths that I found out about myself. I found out that I am creative, resilient and always motivated to bring out the best in my roles. However, I still believe I have not yet accomplished my dream in my career. I aim to not only advance my skills but also be an instrument for creating awareness in the community on cybersecurity for a better world.

References

  1. Bertolgio, D. D., & Zorzo, A. F. (2017). Overview and open issues on penetration test. Journal of the Brazilian Computer Society, 23(2 ). Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1186/s13173-017-0051-1
  2. Cameron, K. (2011). An Introduction to the Competing Values Framework. Retrieved from http://www.thercfgroup.com/files/resources/an_introduction_to_the_competing_values_f ramework.pdf
  3. EY Global Information Security Survey 2018–19(2018). Retrieved from https://www.ey.com/gl/ en/issues/governance-and-reporting/center-for-board-matters/ey-understanding-the- cybersecurity-threat
  4. Gerami, M. (2018 ). Impact of Cyber threats on business profitability. Iran.
  5. Hui, P., Bruce, J., Gregory, M., Best, D., Fink, G., McGrath, L., & Endert, A. (2014). Towards efficient collaboration in Cyber Security. International Symposium on Collaborative Technologis and Systems.
  6. Hussain, S. T., Haider, M. J., Lei, S., Hussain, S. H., & Ali, M. ( 2018, September–December ).
  7. Kurt Lewin’s change model: A critical review of the role of leadership and employee involvement in organizational change. Journal of Innovation and Knowledge, 3(3), 123- 127. doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jik.2016.07.002
  8. Li, L., Xu, L., Hu, W., & Chen, Y. (2016). Cyber Security awareness and its impacts on employee behaviour. In Research and practical issues of enterprise information system (pp. 103 – 111). Venna; Austria: Confenis.
  9. Namiq, F. A. (2018). Most effective management style for modern. International Journal of Engineering and Management Sciences, 3(3). doi: 10.21791/IJEMS.2018.3.33.
  10. Tucker, A. L., & Singer, S. J. (2013). The Effectiveness of Management-By-WalkingAround: A Randomized Field Study. Harvard Business School.

Why Teamwork Is Important For Businesses

Over the last decade, a lot of cases has been showed how teamwork and businesses work in a collaborative way. Nowadays, more than 80%of businesses are shifting towards remote hiring, deligating their work and allowing flexible working hours. In this article, we try to explain several trends that show how much teamwork affects businesses today.

Collaboration is essential for Businesses

Knowing the dramatic changes in ways the teams work, it is crucial for businesses to implement the collaborations on higher levels of hierarchy. They need to communicate responsively and in real-time, meanwhile, other managements need to give themselves a headstart and practice collaboration and engagement across different departments of businesses.

In this year, shifting trends towards technology shows changes in teamwork and their increased virtuality in a connected environment. It is the dawn of collaboration and interacting tools, with the changes made in management techniques and approaches that make teamwork feasible.

Increase in remote offices

As we know this isn’t a novel trend, and it will grow with the passage of time. Today, companeis are expanding in geographic terms across countries and cities in organizational distribution.

Most companies out there no longer have a centralized office anymore and those who have don’t completely rely on it. Rather, a considerable shift was seen towards cross-functional collaborations. In order to reduce employee cost or to have access to skilled employees who are not present in the local area, organizations are choosing to reduce the number of employees.

Preferably, it costs less, and is even more comfortable to outsource tasks to freelancers or service providers. With outsourcing, companies are already made up of contractors, suppliers, and customers around the globe. With this decision-making is also distribute among satellite teams working near the potential markets.

A shift in team-culture

The increase in collaboration has proved that working together virtually increase productivity in a dramatic way. Through this people can work together across various time zones, bringing innovative ideas, and solving problems without meeting each other in person.

On the other hand, open-plan offices have seen to resist the trend of team collaboration. Though there are some ways a business manager can overcome these obstacles. First of all, it crucial than ever to keep up with employee engagement activities through tools and updates. Secondly, define expectations and job descriptions clearly so that every employee will know what is expected of them and what are the deadlines. You can also try to increase the importance of communication and look for the opportunity to engage with the employee, all these tips can be achieved with the use of the right tool.

An increase collaborative technology

A change in business structure means that change in management style, work-place ethics, collaboration, and communication technology will also evolve in order to keep them up. An increase in cross-functional system and remote offices have increased the use of collaboration technologies for workers.

Workforce collaboration comes in various forms as well as tools:

  • Tools like project management allow teams to manage a project and collaborate with various documents effectively.
  • An app like Trello board lets teams collaborate on various projects and keep the workflow maintain.
  • Conference call and open source chat service like Mattermost allow teams to work together in real-time.
  • Time tracking tools such as StaffTimerApp track time of each individual working on a project. Moreover, some tools also help teams to connect through invoicing and quotes.

Though the need for tools will entirely depend on your use case. You will also need to see whether your chosen tool will work together efficiently or not. Sadly, these collaborative tools have their own drawbacks. If someone is not careful with these, they can end up in a web of interconnected tools which will create complex zaps. In the end, you will have to check and update multiple platforms to find the required information.

Mathedologyof Agile team

Commonly, this agile method has the conning tower for tech development agencies. Workforces that are trained under such methods implement these trained to increase productivity and improve quality.

Anyhow, several other businesses are also looking for a way to implement agile principles. Companies are expanding this methodology to implement them in product development, human resources, and portfolio management.

So what exactly is the agile model?

Basically, it is a process that helps workers to respond on feedback on a certain project. It also helps in the direction of the project and assesses it throughout the development process and deliverable cycle through different iterations. Today, agile methodology is much bigger than just a process, it involves the workplace environment and even the layout of furniture.

It let companies develop the right product and thoroughly improve the process while its development phase. It enables the delivered product a fit for its purpose, market, and value.

With the increase in productivty, there are numerous benefits of agile work model:

  • It bring a sense of independence to the team members
  • An increase in job satisfaction and morale has also been seen.
  • Cost-effectiveness and an increase in efficiency can also be attained through this.

Wrap up

Many people would agree that the combination of digital and analog methods has made a huge impact on team collaboration in the workplace. Nowadays, businesses have become a complex mess of workers, tools, SaaS products, and devices that work in a hybrid way throughout multi-dimensional communication.

Today, the technology that assists collaboration and communication has changed the way employees work together and how businesses work. Technology increases productivity and allows higher authorities to hire more talent, no matter in which part of the world they are.

Nonetheless, it is the rise of technology and management styles, that are helping both employees and employer to work in a collaborative way to attain certain goals, increase productivity and maintain transparency.