Computer Support and Facilitated Structure in Meetings - An Empirical Comparison of their Impact

This paper explores, if computer support provides benefits beyond facilitation, one of the kqs to success in GSS environments and one of the possible explanations of inconsistent GSS results. The analysis is based on an empirical study of 40 meetings with 360 participants in the Hohenheim CATeam Meeting Room. Teams of different size worked on an experimental task under one of three working conditions. They had either fill computer support a structured und nwderated meeting process including manual support tools or no support at all. This experimental design allowed the isolation of the impact of compurers, a structured intervention in the meeting process by a facilitator and an increasing number of meeting participants. Results show that overall the introduction of GSS into meetings has stronger effects rhan merely facilitation or moderation without GSS support though the type of effects diff*ers for the observed variables. As most important effects which computer usage introduces to meetings an increased perceived speed of the meeting process and stronger anonymizarion as well as more directness of the participant contributions were identified. Facilitated structure improves rask understanding, reduces dominance of meeting participants and enables teams to stay focused on the issues at hand. In consequence computer supported meetings are especially worth their additional effort over moderated meetings, when speed and anonymous as well as direct input are more important to meeting success than equal participation and a straightforwurd discussion among meeting participants. Moderators should consider adding computer supported meeting tools to their toolset CSCW researchers are mainly interested in the impact of information technology based tools and methods to improve meetings [20]. Most of their empirical studies of impact assessment examine a particular Group Support System (GSS) applied in a particular ‘Electronic Meeting Room’, which support teams to generate, structure, evaluate, and communicate information. In GSS studies other interventions such as structured procedures applied by a facilitator or moderator are usually controlled so that they are not a source of confounding variance. However, previous research identified significant effects on team performance for both types of interventions in group processes, facilitation and computer support, and in practice including flexible and active facilitation is typical in GSS environments to take the fluidity and unpredictability of group interaction into consideration [I]. There is a need to compare and differentiate the degree and the type of improvements these interventions in the meeting process can offer. Therefore this study tries to answer the following question with an investigation under experimental conditions: “Compared to structured facilitation. what is the contribution of computer support to the success of meetings?” Based on the previous research findings the hypothesis is: “Facilitated structure improves meetings, but in general to a lesser degree than a computer supported facilitated structure would do. ” 1 Motivation Meetings make up an important part of the office workers’ everyday life (and not only theirs). However, meeting problems like a lack of meeting preparation, dominance of meeting participants, lack of enough ‘air time’ for everybody to contribute sufficiently, unfocussed discussions, etc. make these meetings very unproductive [28, p. 46; 331. For this reason, people have always looked for tools and methods to help them make their meetings more productive. Meetings have quite a productivity gain potential. It is one of the most important yet untapped productivity gain potential for organizations. Various types of interventions into group processes have been studied to assess their contribution concerning meeting improvements. Two very common types of interventions are computer support and facilitated structure. Facilitated structure is the combined application of meeting moderation by a facilitator who assists the group interaction and manual tools to put some structure on the issues at hand and on the meeting process. In computer supported meetings the manual tools are complemented by information-technology based tools. 1060-3425/96 $5.00