As experience with use of on-line operating systems has grown, the need to share information among system users has become increasingly apparent. Many contemporary systems permit some degree of sharing. Usually, sharing is accomplished by allowing several users to share data via input and output of information stored in files kept in secondary storage. Through the use of segmentation, however, Multics provides direct hardware addressing by user and system programs of all information, independent of its physical storage location. Information is stored in segments each of which is potentially sharable and carries its own independent attributes of size and access privilege.Here, the design and implementation considerations of segmentation and sharing in Multics are first discussed under the assumption that all information resides in a large, segmented main memory. Since the size of main memory on contemporary systems is rather limited, it is then shown how the Multics software achieves the effect ofa large segmented main memory through the use of the Honeywell 645 segmentation and paging hardware.

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Antecedents of collaborative problem solving in R&D teams have received little attention. Furthermore, the relationship between this form of problem solving and R&D team productivity remains unarticulated. This lacuna is addressed in the present study be analyzing the relationships between task and team, properties, collaborative problem solving and team productivity. Multiple regression was used to study the relationships among these variables. Results indicated that team cohesiveness and task certainty were robust predictors of collaborative problem solving and productivity for 45 R&D project groups. It was found that collaborative problem solving did not have a linear relationship with team productivity The collaborative problem solving-productivity relationship was further examined and it was shown that the relationship was sensitive to high and low levels for each of four predictors used in the research design (task certainty, task interdependence, team size, and team cohesiveness). These empirical findings were then translated into implications for R&D managers.organizational studies: behavior, project management, research and development

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