%0 Conference Proceedings %B Proceedings of the International Conference on Open Source Systems %D 2008 %T Decision Making Paths in Self-Organizing Technology-Mediated Distributed Teams %A Li, Qing %A Heckman, Robert %A Kevin Crowston %A James Howison %A Allen, Eileen E. %A Eseryel, U. Yeliz %X This paper investigates decision making in self-organizing technology-mediated distributed teams. This context provides an opportunity to examine how the use of technological support to span temporal and organizational discontinuities affects decision-making processes. 258 software-modification decision episodes were collected from the public emailing lists of six Free/Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) projects over a span of five years. Six decision-making paths were identified as 1) short-cut decision-making path; 2) implicit-development decision-making path; 3) implicit-evaluation decision-making path; 4) normative decision-making path; 5) dynamic decision-making path; and 6) interrupted/delayed decision-making path. We suggest that the nature of the tasks and the affordances of the technology used reduce the need for explicit coordination, resulting in a broader range of possible decision processes than are observed in face-to-face groups. %B Proceedings of the International Conference on Open Source Systems %C Paris, France, 14-17 December %G eng %> https://crowston.syr.edu/sites/crowston.syr.edu/files/Decision%20Making%20Paths%20in%20Self%20Organizing%20Technology%20Mediated%20Dist.pdf