Contact: katee@us.ibm.com
Research Interests:
Social Network Analysis (SNA)
Distributed Teams
Expert Networks
Kate is Senior Technical Staff Member in the Collaborative User Experience group at IBM Research where she uses Social Network Analysis as a research and consulting tool to gain insights into patterns of collaboration in distributed teams. She has used SNA with over 60 groups covering team dynamics, knowledge and information flow, collaboration, communities, innovation, software development and governance structure. She is currently investigating the systematic combination of social and task networks to effect more productive and efficient collaboration and coordination in distributed software teams. Kate has published academic papers on her research using SNA in the CHI, CSCW, software engineering and management science premier conferences.
Kate originally joined Lotus in 1993, where she led research and consulting on expertise location and the role of intermediaries in knowledge transfer. She returned to IBM in 2003 after spending several years as Global Solution Lead for collaboration at Viant, a professional services organization and as a visiting scholar at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.
Kate has a B.Sc in Psychology from the University of London and a PhD. in Cognitive Science from the University of Sussex, UK. She did post-doctorate work in cognitive science at University of Texas, University of Massachusetts and Yale. Kate has been active in several professional societies including the ACM SIG on Human Computer Interaction including founder of the Boston chapter and conference co-chair. She has co-chaired other professional and business conferences and she serves on the review committees of conferences and journals in CHI, CSCW and software engineering.
Projects:
Ensemble
Publications:
Cross, R,. Ehrlich, K., Dawson, R. and Helferich, J. (2008). Managing Collaboration at the Point of Execution: Improving Team Effectiveness with a Network Perspective. California Management Review (In Press).
Ehrlich, K. and Shami, S. (2008). Searching for expertise. In Proceedings of Conference on Computer Human Interaction, 2008.
Ehrlich, K. and Carboni, I. (2008). Many hands make light work: The role of a core-periphery structure in team communication. Academy of Management Conference, Anaheim, CA, August, 2008.
Ehrlich, K, Helander, M,, Valetto, G. Davies, S. and Williams, C. (2008). An Analysis of Congruence Gaps and Their Effect on Distributed Software Development. Socio-Technical Congruence Workshop at ICSE conference, Leipzig, Germany, May 2008.
Shami, S., Ehrlich, K and Millen, D. (2008). Pick me! Link selection in expertise search. In Proceedings of Conference on Computer Human Interaction, 2008.
Wagstrom, P., Helander, M., Ehrlich, K. and Williams, C.. Understanding Communication, Coordination, and Congruence at an Individual Level By Harnessing Baseball Statistics. INSNA Sunbelt Conference St Petersburg, Florida, Jan 2008.
Carboni, I., Ehrlich, K. and Casciaro, T. (2007). Taking a hit for the team: Differential effects of citizenship behavior on individual and team performance. Academy of Management Conference 2007.
Chang, K. and Ehrlich, K. (2007). Out of Sight but Not Out of Mind? Informal Networks, Communication and Media Use in Global Software Teams. Cascon 2007.
Ehrlich, K., Lin, C-Y., and Griffiths-Fisher, V. (2007). Searching for Experts in the Enterprise: Combining Text and Social Network Analysis. In Proceedings Group 2007.
Ehrlich, K. and Carboni, I. (2007). Media choice in the workplace: Effect of strength of tie. Academy of Management Conference 2007.
Ehrlich, K. and Carboni, I. Building better teams by building better leadership: The role of instrumental and affective ties in the networks of successful team leaders. INSNA Sunbelt Conference, Corfu, Greece, May 2007.
Lin, C-Y., Griffiths-Fisher, V., Ehrlich, K., Desforges, C. (2007). SmallBlue: People Mining for Expertise Search and Social Network Analysis. IEEE Multimedia Magazine.
Valetto, G., Helander, M., Ehrlich, K. Chulani, S., Wegman, M.N. and Williams, C. (2007). Using Software Repositories to Investigate Socio-technical Congruence in Development Projects. In Proceedings MSR 2007.
Ehrlich, K. and Chang, K. (2006) Leveraging expertise in global software teams: Going beyond boundaries. IEEE International Conference on Global Software Engineering, Florianopolis, October 2006.
Ehrlich, K. (2003). Locating Expertise: Design Issues for an Expertise Locator System. In Ackerman, Mark, Volkmar Pipek, and Volker Wulf (eds). Beyond Knowledge Management: Sharing Expertise. Cambridge, MA, MIT Press.
Ehrlich, K. (1998) Design of Groupware Applications: A work-centered design approach. In M. Beaudoin-Lafon (Ed.) Trends in CSCW. Wiley & Sons.
Ehrlich, K. and Cash, D. (1998). The Invisible World of Intermediaries: A cautionary tale. Journal of Computer Supported Cooperative Work.
Maltz, D. and Ehrlich, K. (1995). Pointing the Way: Active Collaborative Filtering. In Proceedings CHI'95 Human Factors in Computing Systems (Denver, CO), 202-209.
Ehrlich, K and Cash, D. (1994). Turning Information into Knowledge: Information Finding as a Collaborative Activity. In Proceedings of Digital Libraries Conference, College Station, Texas.