Abstract: A mechanism is provided for fostering the adoption of grid computing by bridging the thread-oriented paradigm (used in single and multi-processor computers) and the job-oriented paradigm (used in grid computing). This mechanism allows an application developer to write an application in the same manner as if he were writing a thread-oriented program (in terms of creating and joining threads). However, when the application is executed on a client computer and the mechanism is invoked, the mechanism interacts with a resource management interface to cause a distributed resource manager to create, distribute, and manage the execution of jobs on the resource computers of a grid. Thus, rather than actually spawning threads on the client computer, the mechanism causes jobs to be spawned and executed on the grid. By doing this, the mechanism allows the application to take advantage of grid computing without requiring the application to be grid-aware.