Facilitation, GSS, and Training as Sources of Process Restrictiveness and Guidance for Structured Group Decision Making: An Empirical Assessment

Wheeler, Bradley C.; Valacich, Joseph S.

doi:10.1287/isre.7.4.429

Cited by 149 publications

(98 citation statements)

References 42 publications

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“…Some researchers have focused on different forms of technology support for idea selection and evaluation activities (e.g., [60]). Other researchers have studied interventions, such as feedback, facilitation, and teamwork guidance on processes that involved convergence activities (e.g., [8,93]). Yet these studies do not investigate convergence as a distinct activity separate from other collaboration activities such as idea generation, idea evaluation, or idea selection.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Beyond Brainstorming: Exploring Convergence in Teams

Seeber¹,

Vreede²,

Maier³

et al. 2017

Journal of Management Information Systems

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Collaborative brainstorming is often followed by a convergence activity where teams extract the most promising ideas on a useful level of detail from the brainstorming results. Contrary to the wealth of research on electronic brainstorming, there is a dearth of research on convergence. We used experimental methods for an in-depth exploration of two facilitation-based interventions in a convergence activity: attention guidance (focusing participants on procedures to execute a convergence task) and discussion encouragement (engaging participants in conversations to combine knowledge on ideas). Our findings show that both attention guidance and discussion encouragement are correlated with higher convergence quality. We argue that attention guidance's contribution is in its support of coordination, information processing, and goal specification. Similar, we argue that discussion encouragement's contribution is in its stimulation of idea clarification and idea combination. Contrary to past research, our findings further show that satisfaction was higher after convergence than after brainstorming.KEY WORDS AND PHRASES: attention guidance, brainstorming, collaboration, collaborative brainstorming, discussion encouragement, idea convergence, idea quality, idea selection, ideation, satisfaction, team, teamwork.Increased market competition, fast technological developments, and the dynamic environment in which organizations function set increasingly challenging requirements on an organization's ability to solve problems and make decisions. To address such challenges, organizations rely on the collaborative development of ideas, in both small teams and large crowds [39,45]. Since the 1950s, a vast body of literature has developed on brainstorming or ideation, spanning different disciplines such as psychology, information systems, and management [30,67,76]. This research shows that under a variety of conditions, teams using collaboration technologies and techniques may produce more ideas of higher quality than individuals who do not use such support [30,31,37,76].However, brainstorming by itself is insufficient for organizational value creation. It is an early step in a collaborative idea development process but does not produce a single final solution or decision [42,45]. In fact, most brainstorming techniques and technologies aim to generate high volumes of ideas to increase the likelihood that some promising ideas will be part of the results [15]. There are many examples of high brainstorming productivity: a team of end-user representatives working with information systems (IS) professionals can generate hundreds of user stories in a matter of hours [26]. A team of military decision makers can identify dozens of possible courses of action in response to an external event or threat [12]. Emergency 940 SEEBER, MAIER, DE VREEDE, AND WEBER response workers can easily collect hundreds of ideas to bring relief to areas that have been struck by natural disaster [84]. Brainstorming productivity gets even more pronounced...

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mentioning

confidence: 99%

Beyond Brainstorming: Exploring Convergence in Teams

Seeber¹,

Vreede²,

Maier³

et al. 2017

Journal of Management Information Systems

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“…When a system provides low structuration, there are greater chances that users will re-appropriate it in unintended -and thus less effectiveways. Conversely, when a system provides high structuration, there are fewer opportunities for users to overcome the constraints posed by the system itself (Wheeler and Valacich, 1996;Alexander et al, 2015). As a consequence, there are also fewer meta-discussions and conflicts regarding how to structure the conversation.…”

Section: Visual Templates and Collaborative Systemsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Facilitating culturally diverse groups with visual templates in collaborative systems

Bresciani

Comi

2017

CCSM

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Purpose -The use of visual templates has proven instrumental in supporting group meetings.This study explores whether visual templates enable culturally diverse groups to achieve greater task precision in face-to-face meetings.Design/methodology/approach -Building on Adaptive Structuration Theory (AST), it is argued that visual templates provide structuration for face-to-face meetings, even more so when they are embedded in computer-supported collaborative systems. In particular, it is hypothesized that the higher the degree of structuration imposed by visual templates, the higher the degree of task precision will be. It is also hypothesized that this relationship is positively moderated by group cultural diversity: higher cultural diversity will further sustain the positive effects of visual templates that provide higher structuration.Findings -Results of an experiment with 229 managers from 49 countries confirm that facilitating groups with visual templates embedded in a computer-supported collaborative system significantly increases task precision at high levels of cultural diversity. Research limitations/implications -This study contributes to Positive OrganizationalScholarship (POS) by investigating the use of visual templates as a contingency factor that increases performance -specifically task precision -of co-located, culturally diverse groups.Practical implications -Results indicate that visual templates embedded in a computersupported collaborative system are an effective method for increasing task precision in face-to-face meetings of culturally diverse groups.2 Originality/value -Theories from information systems and visualization are integrated into cross-cultural management with a view to sustaining the effectiveness of culturally diverse groups.The study sample is characterized by highly culturally diverse groups interacting in face-to-face meetings.

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“…Past research on social exchange is scarce when it comes to the question of how the exchange resource could affect coordination. One common challenge for teams coordinating themselves is to break down a complex process into activities in order to achieve the team goal [41]. The generation of ideas is typically perceived as easier than clarifying and building support for the promising ideas [34,42].…”

Section: H2: Team Members Converging On Self-generated Ideas Report Lmentioning

confidence: 99%

Convergence on Self-Generated vs. Crowdsourced Ideas in Crisis Response: Comparing Social Exchange Processes and Satisfaction with Process

Seeber

Merz

Vreede

et al. 2017

Proceedings of the 50th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (2017)

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Facilitation, GSS, and Training as Sources of Process Restrictiveness and Guidance for Structured Group Decision Making: An Empirical Assessment

Cited by 149 publications

References 42 publications

Beyond Brainstorming: Exploring Convergence in Teams

Beyond Brainstorming: Exploring Convergence in Teams

Facilitating culturally diverse groups with visual templates in collaborative systems

Convergence on Self-Generated vs. Crowdsourced Ideas in Crisis Response: Comparing Social Exchange Processes and Satisfaction with Process

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