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Handbook of Group Decision and Negotiation pp 1–26Cite as

Collaboration Engineering for Group Decision and Negotiation

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Abstract

Collaborative work is essential to the success of modern organizations. Many organizations could benefit from the use of advanced collaboration technologies and collaboration professionals, such as facilitators. However, these technologies are often too complex for practitioners to use without professional support, and collaboration professionals are too expensive for many groups who could benefit from their help. Collaboration Engineering is an approach to designing collaborative work practices for high-value recurring tasks and deploying those designs for practitioners to execute for themselves without ongoing support from expert facilitators. Collaboration engineers design collaborative work practices using a facilitation pattern language consisting of “thinkLets” – facilitation techniques that create predictable patterns of collaboration. Extensive research and practice demonstrate the feasibility and effectiveness of the approach. This chapter summarizes the Collaboration Engineering approach in general and thinkLet concept in detail using an illustrative case in a governmental organization.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of South Florida, Tampa, FL, USA

    Gert-Jan de Vreede

  2. San Diego State University, San Diego, CA, USA

    Robert O. Briggs

  3. Better Samenwerken, Delft, The Netherlands

    Gwendolyn L. Kolfschoten

Authors
  1. Gert-Jan de Vreede
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  2. Robert O. Briggs
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  3. Gwendolyn L. Kolfschoten
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Gert-Jan de Vreede .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Wilfrid Laurier University Dept. Mathematics, Waterloo, ON, Canada

    D. Marc Kilgour

  2. University of Strathclyde Strathclyde Business School, Glasgow, UK

    Colin Eden

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de Vreede, GJ., Briggs, R.O., Kolfschoten, G.L. (2019). Collaboration Engineering for Group Decision and Negotiation. In: Kilgour, D., Eden, C. (eds) Handbook of Group Decision and Negotiation. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-12051-1_21-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-12051-1_21-1

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  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-12051-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-12051-1

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