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Electronic meeting facilitation (e‐facilitation) continues to be a critical success factor in the use of information technology to support face‐to‐face collaborative work. Yet researchers and practitioners continue to struggle to understand the subtleties and difficulties in the application of meeting facilitation techniques in the ‘electronic’ context. To clarify that understanding, this paper develops a new theoretical framework that examines how technology interacts with human facilitator behavior in an electronic group meeting. This framework, The Dualities of E‐Facilitation, is composed of two dualities: the Duality of Computer and Human Interaction, and the Duality of Routine and Intuitive Actions. The framework emerged from an analysis of the e‐facilitation behaviors of newly trained face‐to‐face electronic meeting facilitators.

Effective meeting facilitation is recognised as a critical factor in group support systems (GSS) use but relatively little is known about how organisations can train and develop their “electronic meeting facilitators”. This article describes an action learning (AL) approach to the training of GSS facilitators. It begins with a description of the three schools of AL. The application of the “experiential” school of AL in GSS facilitation training is then explained. Finally, the article describes some lessons learned for both practitioners and researchers.

Because information is vital to effective decision making, the fostering of conditions which promote effective use of existing channels of information is therefore seen as a prime element contributing to organizational survival and success (Fulmer et al, 1990). In particular, the way in which characteristics of individuals and the attributes of the tasks they perform, affect the use of different information sources is a pertinent issue in organizational analysis. It is also an important consideration in information systems development and management. Much of the existing research in this area has been dominated by attempts to define appropriate modes of information processing and the construction of models that might enhance effective communication (O'Reilly, 1982; Schick et al, 1990; Kim 8c Lee, 1991). The importance of this area of research has been heightened by the dynamics and complexities of industrial organizations and the need for various modes of information processing to address these dynamics (Kim & Lee, 1991). Also, because the appropriate use of information is the ‘life‐blood’ of organizational dynamics, the identification of aspects that might affect differential use of various channels (of information) is fundamental to an understanding of the area.

The guest‐editors of the first Special Issue on E‐Collaboration provide an introduction to the issue. E‐collaboration is broadly defined as collaboration among individuals engaged in a common task using electronic technologies. A brief history of the evolution of e‐collaboration technologies is offered along with a discussion of research in the area. The paper concludes with a brief review of the contributions to the Special Issue and a look at one important future challenge for e‐collaboration researchers, the challenge of theoretical summarization.

Knowledge management (KM) research lacks a common conceptual core; it is cross‐disciplinary, addresses a wide variety of phenomena, and has difficulty distinguishing itself from many related areas of research. The result is a fragmented field that is itself artificially split from the related literature on organizational learning. KM may be progressing through a predictable life‐cycle that could end in collapse of the KM concept unless researchers can develop more integrative core theories of learning‐ and knowledge‐related phenomena in organizations. The diverse body of organizational learning and knowledge management research provides an impressive foundation for the synthesis of such broader theories of learning and knowledge that are creative, new, and integrative.

In early 2020, the world faced a rapid life-changing pandemic in the form of the Coronavirus Disease of 2019 (COVID-19) crisis. Citywide lockdowns with stay-at-home orders and mass closings quickly became the “new normal.” With these new mandates, routine activity, mental health and financial securities all began to experience major deviations, and it became clear that this could prove to be rather valuable in providing the opportunity for large-scale criminology experiments. This study aims to explore New York City's (NYC) crime patterns during this unique social situation. Specifically, has crime as a whole increased or decreased, and have particular crimes increased or decreased during these stressful fluid times?

The authors briefly review previous crises and worldwide trends but focus on NYC crime as collected by the New York Police Department's statistics unit, “CompStat.” An analysis of 13 crime types from March 30 to July 5 was completed, including percent differences and individual weekly incidence rates in citywide crimes compared to the same time in 2019.

The analysis demonstrated that all crimes analyzed, except for murder and burglary, exhibited a statistically significant difference during COVID-19 conditions compared to the same time the previous year. Grand larceny auto and gun violence crimes significantly increased during COVID-19 weeks, whereas rape, other sex crimes, robbery, felony assault, grand larceny, transit, housing, misdemeanor assault and petit larceny all significantly decreased.

Due to the ongoing nature of the pandemic, this is amongst the first studies to examine trends in NYC crime during pandemic mandates. Expanding our knowledge in these situations can inform natural disaster responses, as well as criminal justice policy and practice to better protect the public in future crises.