The effectiveness of virtual facilitation in supporting GDSS appropriation and structured group decision making

Since their introduction a quarter of a century ago, group decision support systems (GDSS) have evolved from applications designed primarily to support decision making for groups in face-to-face settings, to their growing use for “web conferencing,” online collaboration, and distributed group decision-making. Indeed, it is only recently that such groupware applications for conducting face-to-face, as well as “virtual meetings” among dispersed workgroups have achieved mainstream status, as evidenced by Microsoft’s ubiquitous advertising campaign promoting its “Live Meeting” electronic meeting systems (EMS) software. As these applications become more widely adopted, issues relating to their effective utilization are becoming increasingly relevant. This research addresses an area of growing interest in the study of group decision support systems, and one which holds promise for improving the effective utilization of advanced information technologies in general: the feasibility of using virtual facilitation (system-directed multi-modal user support) for supporting the GDSS appropriation process and for improving structured group decision-making efficiency and effectiveness. A multi-modal application for automating the GDSS facilitation process is used to compare conventional GDSS-supported groups with groups using virtual facilitation, as well as groups interacting without computerized decision-making support. A hidden-profile task designed to compare GDSS appropriation levels, user satisfaction, and decision-making efficiency and effectiveness is utilized in an experiment employing auditors, accountants, and IT security professionals as participants. The results of the experiment are analyzed and possible directions for future research efforts are discussed

Group Decision Support for Resource Allocation Decisions in Three Person Groups

This research studied the effects of a Group Decision Support System (GDSS) for face-to-face negotiations in three-person groups. The GDSS equipped the groups with full information about each other’s individual preferences regarding a resource allocation problem. In a partial replication of a GDSS experiment, we examined the effect of this full information treatment on post-meeting consensus level, the level of integrative behaviour, and the level of distributive behaviour in the groups. 96 threeperson groups participated. Groups using the GDSS reached a higher level of post-meeting consensus compared to groups not using a GDSS. This finding supports the theory that negotiators lower their demands and increase their involvement if full information is available. No support could be found for the hypothesis that the treatment had an impact on integrative or distributive behaviour

Group Support Systems: The Effects of Mixing Support Systems on Information Pooling, Decision Time, and Decision Quality

Most group support systems (GSS) laboratory studies compare face-to-face groups with groups assigned to either a synchronous or asynchronous decision support system. Research findings have been inconclusive. A laboratory study that compared face-to-face groups with mixed support mode groups was conducted to determine the effectiveness of selectively using information technology to support the group process and explain some of the variability in research findings. Groups that shared information using a Web-based asynchronous system and discussed the shared information in a face-to-face meeting environment, assembled more information and made higher quality decisions in less time than groups that shared and discussed information in a face-to-face meeting environment