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This paper aims to understand the current state and challenges of deploying collaborative applications in small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Germany.

A survey of 101 SMEs in Germany showed how intensively collaborative applications are used today and the positive and negative effects associated with their use. Analyses proved correlations between the use of collaborative applications, the need for cooperation within SMEs and the effects and benefits of their use.

The company representatives surveyed reported a positive balance of their pro and con experiences with collaborative applications. The use of collaborative applications closely interacts with work-related demands: the more complex the requirements of joint action, the broader the benefits and challenges are of their use. The data also revealed three gaps between demand of cooperation and use of specific applications, supporting the argument that implementation of collaborative applications is challenging for SMEs. A successful use requires major changes in work systems and culture of the company.

The data of the survey are not representative of the population of SMEs in Germany.

These empirical findings contribute a unique as well as substantive view of today’s state of digitalisation of project communication and management within SMEs, specifically their deployment of collaborative software.

Elder suicide is a major problem, particularly in the USA, that accounts for 15.9 in 100,000 deaths, or an average of one death every 95 minutes. The rate of elder suicide is higher than that of any other age group. Unlike teens, or younger age groups, the elderly attempting suicide are largely successful. This selective literature guide includes materials on elder suicide that deal with all aspects of the topic, including identification of those at risk, prevention, and survivors, as well as resources addressing alternative views of suicide, such as assisted, rational, and pre‐emptive suicide.

This paper aims to: first, it studies expert opinions about the future of clean, decentralized energy technology in Australia; second, develop an interpretive and participatory foresighting methodology for a forthcoming study.

This paper reports a forecasting study about the future of clean energy. Driven mostly by economics and changing carbon policies, the energy sector is currently moving from fossil fuels to a variety of cleaner technologies. Energy experts have several incommensurate interpretations of how this change will happen. This paper describes the first phase of an ongoing study that foresight clean energy futures in Australia. By building on a participatory method in a scientific expert community, it describes the path from technological presumptions into four parallel yet interconnected scenarios. The paper also explores the social drivers behind these scenarios.

First, energy experts in Australia classify futures into four main scenarios: abundant, where energy will be mostly produced by solar cells; traded, where the future of energy lies in virtual power plants and microgrids; circular, which targets Australia’s NetZero goals through biomaterials, carbon capture and new powerful; secure, which secures the country’s energy supply through coal and nuclear energy. Second, they locate policy as the most important form of wildcards. The policy is multilayered from local to US politics and falls outside the scope of forecasting.

The most important limitations of the study are: first, its reliance on scientific and technological experts, which guarantees its scientific validity but may underrepresent the social drivers of energy; second, this study is a methodological pilot of a larger study that will target industrial, commercial and local drivers; third, its focus on Australia, where politics, the size of the country and climate shape the uptake of clean energy in specific ways, most notably in the case of rapid uptake of solar energy.

The main practical implications of the paper are its broad focus on clean energy futures and its participatory foresighting approach, which can be repeated in other studies.

The main social implication of the study is that it clearly shows that a technological perspective is necessary but not sufficient in understanding the future of clean energy. The paper also shows that local drivers importantly mold the future and should be taken into account in future studies and policy.

This paper makes two contributions. First, it organizes several technologies into four scenarios that clarify Australia’s clean energy futures better than a piecemeal study would do. Second, it developed and piloted an interpretive participatory methodology for studying futures by building on references from design research. This methodology will be used in subsequent studies.

Virtual teams are on the rise and many companies are implementing them to compete for the most talented experts. However, the use of information and communication technology (ICT), on which virtual teams depend, often ends in communication chaos. Research has shown that shared mental models (SMM), which are knowledge structures on team level, enhance team communication. In teams, which use ICTs, shared mental models of ICTs (ICT SMM) seem to be important. However, few studies that investigated ICT SMM have used different measurements that restrict their generalization. The purpose of this study is to define ICT SMM as well as develop and validate an ICT SMM scale.

This study used a cross-sectional questionnaire in two different samples (N1 = 117 students and N2 = 165 employees).

The results of item and factor analyses indicated that ICT SMM contain at least two facets, ICT functionalities and task-specific ICT use and are distinct from teamwork, taskwork and temporal SMM. The ICT SMM scale reached good validity and reliability. On an individual level, ICT SMM were positively associated with perceived team performance and coordination and negatively with ineffective communication, workload and frustration.

Future research using teams as sample to validate the ICT SMM scale seems to be promising.

To the best of authors’ knowledge, this is the first study that developed and validated a rating scale to measure SMM of ICT in different samples.