Audiovisuella beslutsmöten ur ett användarperspektiv

Abstract

Using conferencing software tools for meetings has become a viable alternative for organizations wanting to increase productivity and decrease cost. In this study, we look at how a public authority uses audiovisual technology for decision-making meetings from a user perspective. The overall purpose of the study is to examine the users view on audiovisual decision-making meetings within an authority, between one or two participants in geographically diverse places. We want to study the benefits and obstacles that the staff sees when using audiovisual technology for internal decision-making meetings. We find this interesting to study as we see a trend where companies globalize and become geographically spread all over the world, this results in a cost increase in form of time, money and productivity. Creating teams in organizations to gather expertise within a certain area is common. The group members in these teams can belong to different organizations and places and also have different functions in the group. These kinds of cooperative teams have then grown to become virtual teams as companies have become global and the members are spread in different geographical places and often meet with the help of electronic cooperation technology. The study is a case study with qualitative character and the data collection was done through two interviews with users of internal audiovisual decision-making meetings in a larger organization. The result shows that the users of the audiovisual technology are generally positive to the way of working where the benefits are that they don't have to travel as much and the meetings seems to be more flexible and efficient comparing to physical meetings. Concerning quality of decision making our study resulted that there is no difference between audiovisual meetings and physical meetings. If the technology works there are no barriers handling audiovisual meetings. The conclusion that can be done from our study is that education regarding meeting technology is very important so that the users can use the technology in a working way. It's especially important with education and guidelines for elderly users because of their unaccustomed with the way of work. The study also shows that as much preparation is required for both audiovisual decision-making meetings as physical meetings. There has to be an agenda with clarity of what is to be discussed during the meeting and that a chairman and secretary are required at internal audiovisual meetings.Validerat; 20110620 (anonymous