Understanding the role of information technology in supporting geographically dispersed teams : an experimental study /
Technological advances have an ever-increasing impact in our society. Globalization and the changing structures of organizations have created work groups that are distributed across space (different sites) and time. Collaboration among workers is vital to both ongoing organizational activities and p...
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| Format: | Thesis Book |
| Language: | English |
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[Place of publication not identified] :
[publisher not identified] ;
2000.
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| Online Access: | http://proxy.library.tamu.edu/login?url=http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?did=727842871&sid=1&Fmt=2&clientId=2945&RQT=309&VName=PQD |
| Summary: | Technological advances have an ever-increasing impact in our society. Globalization and the changing structures of organizations have created work groups that are distributed across space (different sites) and time. Collaboration among workers is vital to both ongoing organizational activities and project-based activities. Communication is often seen as the most important factor contributing to the success of individuals, project teams, and organizational growth. Improved connectivity together with the increase in groups and teams has resulted in increased interest in extending the usefulness of IT at the individual level to support the issues faced by groups. This research focuses on communication medium, decision quality, and group cohesiveness as important factors in determining task performance. In examining the impact of communication media on groups, researchers have compared groups utilizing electronic technology to groups meeting without any technological assistance. The underlying assumption of these studies is that groups have the alternative to meet in either a face-to-face or a computer mediated setting. A second common assumption is that the effectiveness of a communication media can be adequately measured by task performance. The model introduced in this study postulates that different types of communication media affect the underlying communication processes. The model separately examines the impact of communication media on a group's strategy decision and cohesiveness from the group's task performance. An experimental research method was used to test the relationships suggested by the model. Results of the study found the addition of video to audio only communication resulted in better strategy decisions. For task performance the study highlighted the importance of providing group with a communication media to enable better decision. The results confirmed that better strategy decisions resulted in higher task performance, and that high task performance resulted in better subsequent strategy decisions. While the results did not report a difference in group cohesiveness across the different media or an impact of cohesiveness on task performance, they did indicate that groups with higher task performance do report a higher level of cohesiveness. These findings suggest that the high group cohesiveness may be a result rather than a cause of task performance. |
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| Item Description: | Vita. "Major Subject: Information and Operations Management". |
| Physical Description: | x, 129 leaves : illustrations ; 28 cm. Issued also on microfiche from University Microfilm Inc. |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references (leaves 81-87). |