The equalizing impact of a group support system on status differentials

Authors:
Bernard C. Y. Tan;Kwok-kee Wei;Richard T. Watson
Affiliations:
National Univ. of Singapore, Singapore, Republic of Singapore;National Univ. of Singapore, Singapore, Republic of Singapore;Univ. of Georgia, Athens
Venue:
ACM Transactions on Information Systems (TOIS)
Year:
1999

Citing 6
Cited 5

Reducing social context cues: electronic mail in organizational communication

Management Science
Organizational information requirements, media richness and structural design

Management Science
Using a GDSS to facilitate group consensus: some intended and unintended consequences

MIS Quarterly
Applied multivariate statistical analysis

Applied multivariate statistical analysis
An experimental investigation of the effect of a group decision support system on normative influence in small groups

ICIS '91 Proceedings of the twelfth international conference on Information systems
Yin and Yang, Social Forces, and Meeting Desgin

Proceedings of the IFIP TC8/WG8.4 Working Conference on The Open Systems Future: Leveraging the LAN: Local Area Network Applications

Enhancing information sharing in group support systems (GSS)

Computers in Human Behavior
Investigating the Moderators of the Group Support Systems Use with Meta-Analysis

Journal of Management Information Systems
The CMC Interactivity Model: How Interactivity Enhances Communication Quality and Process Satisfaction in Lean-Media Groups

Journal of Management Information Systems
Review: a cognitive-affective model of organizational communication for designing IT

MIS Quarterly
The adoption and use of GSS in project teams: toward more participative processes and outcomes

MIS Quarterly

Quantified Score

Hi-index	0.00

Visualization

Abstract

This study investigates the impact of the electronic communication capability of a group support system (GSS) on status differentials in small groups. A laboratory experiment was used to answer the research questions. Three support levels were studied: manual, face-to-face GSS, and dispersed GSS. Two task types were examined: intellective and preference. Five dependent variables reflecting different aspects of status differentials were measured: status influence, sustained influence, residual disagreement, perceived influence, and decision confidence. The results show that manual groups had higher status influence, sustained influence, and decision confidence, but lower residual disagreement than face-to-face GSS and dispersed GSS groups. Preference task groups also produced higher status influence and sustained influence, but lower residual disagreement compared to intellective task groups. In addition, manual groups working on the preference task reported higher perceived influence than face-to-face GSS and dispersed GSS groups working on the same task. These findings suggest that when groups are engaged in activities for which status differentials are undesirable, a GSS can be used in both face-to-face and dispersed settings to dampen status differentials. Moreover, when a task amplifies status differentials, the use of a GSS tends to produce corresponding stronger dampening effects.