%0 Conference Proceedings %B Proceedings of the 35th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICIS) %D 2002 %T A New Perspective on "Virtual":Analyzing Discontinuities in the Work Environment %A Mary Beth Watson-Manheim %A Kevin Crowston %A Chudoba, Katherine M. %K Virtuality %X The word "virtual" has become a potent buzzword and, as such, is freely applied to many situations, with many meanings. As a result, it, like other buzzwords, is in danger of meaning nothing. In this paper, we develop a more precise understanding of the use of the word "virtual" to describe changing work environments. Our specific contribution is to propose a framework to classify these different work environments based on the type of discontinuities involved. This framework enables us to compare research across a variety of different topics and work settings and further develop a foundation for future research investigating managing and working in this new environment. In this paper; we test our framework by using it to classify 75 published articles on virtual work environments and from earlier research streams. %B Proceedings of the 35th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICIS) %C Kona, HI %R 10.1109/HICSS.2002.994446 %> https://crowston.syr.edu./sites/crowston.syr.edu/files/hicss2002.pdf