The Importance of Facilitator Role Behaviors

SUMMARY

Shifting the emphasis from working alone to working together in the classroom or on the job is a relatively simple idea. However, implementing collaborative work and learning has not been so easy!

This paper argues that critical meeting facilitation skills and the appropriate use of Group Support Systems' (GSS) tools support the collaborative meeting and learning paradigm. These skills and tools greatly enhance the teacher's and meeting leaders? ability to create effective collaborative situations. The use of GSS with the case study methodology is discussed as one example of blending facilitation and technology to teach people to work together more productively in multinational settings.     

Towards an Instrument to Measure Participants' Perceptions on Facilitation in Group Support Systems Meetings

Facilitation is often considered to be one of the key factors in the successful application of GSS. Research on GSS facilitation has revealed insight into the types of tasks performed by facilitators and the potential positive effects of facilitation on group consensus and satisfaction. However, earlier research has rarely approached GSS facilitation from the participants' point of view. In this study a questionnaire was developed and distributed to 369 participants of facilitated GSS meetings in order to measure their perceptions of various facilitation tasks. The results suggested three categories of facilitation tasks that are perceived as important by participants. Each of these categories strongly correlated with participants' meeting satisfaction. Further research is needed to refine these categories so that the instrument may be used to evaluate a facilitator's performance.     

A conceptual framework of anonymity in Group Support Systems

As the development and use of automated systems for collaborative work grows, the need for a better understanding of these systems becomes more important. Our focus is on one type of system, a Group Support System (GSS) and, in particular, on one important aspect of a GSS—anonymity. A conceptual framework for the study of anonymity in a GSS is presented, which describes the general classes of variables and their relationships. These variables include the factors that influence anonymity in a GSS, types of anonymity, and the effects of anonymity on a message sender, receiver, group process, and outcome. Each of these variables is discussed with working propositions presented for important group process and outcome measures. The objectives of this article are to highlight the importance and complexity of anonymity, to act as a guide for empirical investigations of anonymity, and to influence future GSS development and use.     

Coordination Structures and System Restrictiveness in Distributed Group Support Systems

Most GSS research has studied the impact of restricting group interaction to GSS-prescribed coordination structures with face-to-face groups, while Distributed GSS (DGSS) has been largely ignored. Due to the nature of mediated communication in asynchronous interaction, it is relatively difficult to coordinate distributed groups, and a special coordination structure must be arranged to overcome these difficulties. This study examines the effect of system restrictiveness of coordination structures in an asynchronous environment. A 2 × 2 factorial experiment was designed with two independent variables – sequential vs. parallel coordination mode, and with vs. without a leader – to construct coordination structures with varying degrees of restrictiveness. The study finds that less restrictive coordination structures are more appropriate to support asynchronously interacting distributed groups. Objective decision quality is equal for both parallel and sequential coordination mode, but is significantly better with a group leader. Groups with parallel coordination mode have a stronger belief that the decisions they made are of higher quality than those of groups with sequential coordination mode. In groups with a leader, communication effectiveness is better. Satisfaction with a decision process is higher in parallel coordination groups and in groups with a leader. There is also a significant interaction effect. Satisfaction with the decision process is higher in sequential coordination groups with a leader than sequential coordination groups without a leader.     

A Repeatable E-Collaboration Process Based on ThinkLets for Multi-Organization Strategy Development

In recent years, multi-organizational collaboration has become more and more important in both business and research. We conducted an action research (AR) intervention with a consortium of Finnish universities that needed to revise its joint strategy. We designed and facilitated a repeatable collaboration process for this multi-organizational strategy development. The process was built using the Collaboration Engineering (CE) approach with thinkLets, which provides expert-level advice for novice facilitators, and it was powered by Group Support Systems (GSS). Our overall impression of CE’s ability to provide valuable design and facilitation support for complex processes is very affirmative. The consortium was satisfied with the intervention, as it saved huge amounts of time compared with conventional strategic work. The process was also seen as more democratic, because the GSS tools enabled equal participation during the session. Our study also provides a ready-to-apply CE process recipe to organizations for revising their strategy. Through this recipe, supplemented with knowledge on thinkLets, the strategy development process may easily be repeated by other facilitators or even practitioners.     

Information for decision making in marketing: the use of Group Support Systems (GSS)

Group Support Systems (GSS) Technology is an information technology which seeks to support collaborative work. Extensively used to support organisational activities, it has not yet been tested to the full within the market research setting. The paper reports on a GSS focus group meeting to determine key questions of concern about the National Training Reform Agenda. Participants were leaders in a primary industry in Australia and the questions would be related to a public relations exercise. GSS provided the opportunity to deal with complex issues efficiently and yet preserve the conversational characteristics of the focus group meeting.     

Effects of Experience-based Work Patterns in a GSS Environment

Existing group support system (GSS) research has focused on the impacts of GSSs on conventional group-work patterns. Few studies have examined the effects of different group-work patterns in a GSS environment. Specifically, we are interested in group-work patterns that vary in terms of group members' experience or ability levels. In this paper, we report on an exploratory experiment designed to compare the effects of three distinct experience-based work patterns on group decision quality, efficiency, and participant satisfaction in the case of GSS usage. There is the conventional work pattern in which persons of differing experience levels work simultaneously in a meeting. An alternative pattern consists of experienced participants working on a problem first and then passing their results on to less experienced participants. Yet another pattern reverses this sequence. Our results show that while groups in the conventional work pattern are more efficient in considering alternative solutions, groups organized in the other two experience-based work patterns can produce higher quality solutions. We observed no significant differences in participant satisfaction among the three group-work patterns. These findings suggest that a GSS can be as effective (or even more effective) with alternative group-work patterns as it is with the conventional pattern.     

Exploring Continued and Discontinued Use of IT: A Case Study of OptionFinder, a Group Support System

This study explores how perceptions, experience, attitudes, communication behavior and environment affect continued and discontinued use of a group support system (GSS) as an organizational innovation. The case study method was used to investigate the largely unexplored process of GSS adoption and diffusion in terms of human factors, internal organizational context, external organizational environment and GSS management activities. Analysis of data collected in 25 in-depth interviews with informants who had voluntarily adopted GSS for use in one or more meetings they initiated, suggests GSS diffusion is a complex process. The author concluded the most significant determinants of initial adoption was support of a champion, while the presence of an intra-departmental champion and a well-rounded GSS infrastructure strongly influenced continued use. Lack of task-technology fit and perception of GSS as a large group tool strongly influenced discontinued use. The surprising finding that intentions to use GSS were the same for continued and discontinued users, led to the conclusion that some discontinued users are in reality stalled users who should not be classified as rejecters of the technology.These research findings have important implications for devising strategies for the effective introduction and assimilation of GSS and other information system technologies, and point to the need for continued support throughout the different stages of the diffusion process.     

Differences between workstations and keypad group support systems: Implications for keypad GSS facilitators

Organizations are successfully using group support systems (GSS) to improve efficiency, effectiveness, and satisfaction in organizational meetings. Meeting success relies on making an appropriate match between group, taks, and technology. This responsibility often falls to the meeting facilitator. This article draws upon GSS and facilitation literature to develop a framework for the discussion of effective facilitation in workstation and keypad meeting environments. The article identifies differences between the systems and how they impact upon the behavior of the meeting facilitators and their choice of technology. Compensatory actions are proposed for keypad facilitators to address the lack of key workstation features. Keypad strengths are also identified to show the opportunities available to facilitators to maximize the benefits of using these GSS. Further, it is proposed that different types of GSS are not mutually exclusive and should be seen as complementary components of a suite of GSS tools designed to support organizational goals.     

Using GSS to Design Organizational Processes and Information Systems: An Action Research Study on Collaborative Business Engineering

During an action research study a collaborative business engineering approach was developed, applied, and evaluated. Key characteristic of the approach is its focus on the participative design of organizational processes and supporting information systems. Following the approach, various design activities are carried out in close cooperation with groups of stakeholders supported by a Group Support System (GSS). This paper describes and reflects on the execution of these collaborative design activities in a police organization. Lessons learned with respect to GSS and collaborative design are formulated. Key insights illustrate the stakeholders' perception of the group technology and the way in which it facilitated an efficient design process.     

The Role of Leadership in Group Support Systems Failure

This paper reports on a research case study in which the use of a Group Support System (GSS) by a multi-organizational alliance failed. The paper argues that the leadership style of the meeting champion may be a much greater moderating factor in GSS meeting success than previously thought. Transformational Leadership Theory is used to explain the results, and implications for both researchers and managers are drawn. Two themes emerge: first, the case shows where the concept of phony democracy may or may not occur. Second, the case illustrates conditions under which a GSS may generate, as opposed to mitigate conflict. For managers, it suggests that using a GSS may not be optimal if they choose to adopt a Transactional leadership style. For researchers, this work offers insights into boundary conditions affecting GSS usage, extending a paucity of research in negative GSSusage cases.     

Creative Problem Solving in GSS Groups: Do Creative Styles Matter?

Creative groups drive innovation and organizational change and collaborative systems can be used to pool creative team members across the globe. How individual creative preference impacts the group’s creative performance across different creative problem solving phases in a GSS environment is not well understood. The objective of this exploratory study was to understand if there are differences in group performance when groups with varying member creative styles interact solely via GSS. We conducted a quasi-experimental study that compared the performance of groups with two alternate member styles interacting only via group support systems during a creative problem solving process. Ideator and Evaluator groups were compared on their divergent and convergent phase performance. Significant differences were found between the Ideator groups and Evaluator groups on idea fluency, idea flexibility, idea novelty, idea elaboration and solution cost-effectiveness. No significant differences were found between the performance of the two groups on solution feasibility and novelty. Results indicate that member creative styles play an important role in determining the performance of technology-supported groups. These results aid researchers and practitioners by improving their understanding of the performance of creative teams interacting solely via collaborative support systems for creative problem solving tasks.     

Facilitation Methods for Collaborative Modeling Tools

This paper presents results of an ongoing research effort to support effective user involvement during modeling and analysis meetings. Productivity and user participation of traditional group meetings have been limitations imposed by chauffeured facilitation and single-user tools. These tools have been designed for analysts rather than for direct use by non-analyst users. Recently, electronic meeting systems (EMS) modeling tools that allow users to work in parallel to contribute directly during meetings have been developed. Such tools allow more domain experts to participate directly and productively during model development meetings than is possible using the traditional approach. Although previous research has demonstrated that EMS modeling tools may be used to develop some model content, little research had been done on collaborative facilitation methods that employ these tools. This paper presents a comparison of modeling approaches for use with EMS modeling tools and proposes an approach that overcomes significant problems inherent in other approaches. It leverages the productivity enhancement afforded by direct group access and still results in production of complete, integrated, high quality models. This approach allows models to be developed two to four times faster than with traditional modeling support and yet avoids model ambiguities and inconsistencies.     

The Meta Environment: A New Group Support System Structure

The greatest success of conventional group support systems (GSS) has been in meetings whose purpose is to extract and record the ideas that participants bring to the meeting. Research supports the usefulness of GSS when complexity is high and groups are large. Conventional GSS almost always require a facilitator or group leader to guide a group through a desired set of tasks. The next natural step beyond conventional GSS is to empower people to use even a broader set of tools in meetings. This article proposes a new GSS structure called the meta environment in which group members bring material into the meeting from their individual workstations, and interact dynamically not only to generate new material, but also to access and analyze existing computer-based information such as spreadsheets and documents. More importantly, a meta environment enables people to work both in synchronism and out of synchronism with the meeting, and adjust to and remember work across meetings. A prototype development project and user testing shows how meta environment components can be built and used. Results from the user testing suggest the need for a new cycle of empirical testing in GSS research to evaluate the effect of the meta environment on existing and new group structures.     

Challenging Group Support Systems Research: The Case for Strategic Decision Making

Strategic decision making (SDM) often occurs in groups that can benefit from the use of group support systems (GSS). However, no comprehensive review of this logical intersection has been made. We explore this intersection by viewing GSS research through the lens of SDM. First, SDM is broadly characterized and a model of GSS-mediated SDM is produced. Second, we review empirical GSS research linking these findings to the characteristics of SDM. We conclude that GSS research has not produced sufficient knowledge about group history, heterogeneity, member experience, task type, time pressure, technology or tool effects, and decision consensus for a favorable evaluation of SDM in GSS groups. SDM in GSS groups challenges researchers to study the effects of group processes such as those just mentioned in a context that involves ongoing and established groups, political activity, and a multiplicity of tasks.     

Exploring the drivers of customer engagement behaviours in social network brand communities: towards a customer-learning model

Customer learning is regarded as a process that alters either individual cognition or the outcomes of socialisation. Understanding how the learning process works enables a brand firm to identify a customer’s latent needs. Prior studies have primarily focused on effectively positioning brand knowledge in the minds of customers, but that linear learning process does not apply to the interactive and proactive social media setting. Based on the uses and gratifications perspective, this study proposes a customer-learning model and analyses 373 online questionnaires using partial least squares structural equation modelling. The empirical results confirm that learning motivation and collaborative learning are two core components of customer learning that have positive influences on satisfaction, which in turn has a positive influence on customer engagement behaviours (CEBs) and loyalty. In addition, learning motivation is the driver of collaborative learning. Finally, CEBs also have a positive influence on loyalty. This study also concludes that the social network brand community is an informative customer-learning platform that is characterised by interactivity, collaborative learning and co-creation. Theoretical and managerial implications are also discussed.     

Using and Influence Level of Information to Explain the Non-consensus Process Loss

Much of the Group Support System (GSS) literature comparing GSS groups with manual groups has produced contrarian results. One of the more confusing is that GSS groups have a higher level of non-consensus than manual groups. Lack of consensus in GSS groups is considered to be a negative aspect of GSS. This paper argues that low levels of consensus are not necessarily harmful and should be expected given the assumptions about GSSs. This study uses an alternate measure to compare face-to-face groups with GSS groups; an influence level of information. Experimental results using an influence level of information show no difference between face-to-face group members and GSS group members. We discuss these implications, as well as additional directions for further consensus research.