A longitudinal field study was conducted to provide interpretation and understanding as to how perceptions of a group of participants changed with repeated use of a Group Support System (GSS). This is a more in-depth and participant-orientated focus than some past research. Past GSS research has been dominated by single occasion usage with settings often involving student subjects. Longitudinal research is necessary because changes take place over time and groups, teams, and meetings are ongoing. Research in field settings is necessary to acknowledge the complexity of real world GSS activity and improve the relevance of findings to GSS practice and research.An original and significant aspect of the research was that the inquiry process was conducted in an interpretivist paradigm where emphasis was placed on participants' constructions of the GSS experience. An inductive approach was adopted where findings were grounded in, and generated from, qualitative data. The criteria for assessment of the relevance and rigour of the research were credibility, transferability, confirmability and dependability (Guba & Lincoln, 1989). The primary research data came from in-depth interviews with participants.The field setting concerned a group of seven participants from a local government organization, meeting face-to-face, and undertaking a strategic planning task. The process of the strategic planning task involved five GSS sessions held at the GSS Facility at Curtin University in Perth. Active process and technical facilitation was provided by an experienced two person facilitation team, who were external to the client organisation.There were two major findings. The first was a process finding of familiarisation that occurred over the first two GSS sessions. Participants were initially confronted with a foreign environment including unfamiliar people, roles, task, process, and ++ / technology. As participants experienced the GSS session, their feelings changed from fear and nervousness, to comfort and confidence. Associated with the improvement in comfort, there was improved participation, manifest as broader and greater participation at the second GSS session. The recommendation for GSS practice is to prepare participants in advance for the unfamiliar environment so as to realise the benefits of GSS more rapidly. Based on the identified changes in perceptions and behaviour, the recommendation for GSS research is to study contexts beyond single occasion usage.The second finding was a process finding of emerging confusion. Despite familiarisation with the environment, participants, when confronted with a radical change in process, as well as a difficult task about which they had preconceptions, became confused about the task, the goal, and the process. The behaviour of a participant, identified as playing the role of the farrago (Stohl & Schell, 1991), led to further confusion. Consequences included a perceived lack of achievement, and negative feelings. The recommendation for GSS practice is for facilitators to clarify the goals, the task and the process for participants. Further research is needed to ascertain what form that clarification might take. A suggestion is that it can be facilitated by maintaining familiar processes, and preparing participants in advance for difficult tasks. There are two recommendations for further GSS research. The first is to study in a field setting in order to uncover complex phenomena that are relevant to GSS practice. The second is to employ research methodologies and designs that permit discovery of emerging theory which is grounded in data.In addition to the two major findings, tentative but powerful, was the identification of ways in which the GSS ideal of even participation could be compromised. Firstly, ++ / an uneven distribution of verbal participation in an established group seems likely to persist in the GSS environment. Furthermore, the GSS facilitator may struggle against the existing group norms to alter the distribution of participation. Secondly, in groups where participants differ in their level of computer skills, computer experienced participants may be able to dominate written participation compared to computer novices. Computer novices may also suffer from computer anxiety further compromising their ability to participate. Thus equal access to GSS resources may not be sufficient to ensure even participation. The tentative nature of this finding is a signal for further research.

With the rapid advance of information technologies, human beings increasingly rely on computers to accumulate, process, and make use of data. Knowledge discovery techniques have been proposed to automatically search large volumes of data for patterns.Group Support Systems (GSS) play an important role in streamlining group activities and improving group outcomes. Various attempts have been made to help automate several tasks in group activities under GSS environment. One of the approaches is to apply automatic approach to idea organization task in GSS.This research designed and tested an SVD-enabled system to automate the idea organization task in GSS. Specifically, this research was conducted to examine how the idea organization task, typically regarded as the most labor-intensive and cognitively demanding in group problems solving, can be automated using a system enabled by singular value decomposition techniques. For the purpose of evaluation, we compared the performance of our automated approach using SVD algorithm against that of human subjects. Two separate experiments were conducted to evaluate the performance of the automatic approach on two essential components of an idea organization; namely, generation of topic categories and placement of relevant comments into their respective categories.The general conclusion that can be made from this research is that idea organization in group problem solving can be facilitated both efficiently and effectively with the SVD-enabled system that can automatically generate topic categories and place relevant comments into their respective topic categories. Therefore, our automatic approach may provide a useful and promising tool for the idea organization task in GSS.

This study examines the impact of organisational culture and GSS (Group Support Systems) on small group decision-making as measured by group decision outcomes. Laboratory experiments were designed to investigate how two types of groups selected on the basis of having apparently different organisational cultures make decisions on a preference task, in situations where they were given one of two different means of support (face-to-face GSS support or manually structured support) to aid their decision-making. Organisational culture and GSS are the independent variables, whilst the dependent outcome variables were perceived decision quality, decision process satisfaction, decision satisfaction, unified commitment, collaborative climate, and group cohesiveness. The research results showed that manually-supported groups, those who were given simple physical decision-support aids and worked face-to-face, had higher perceived decision quality and decision process satisfaction but no significant differences in unified commitment, decision satisfaction, collaborative climate, and group cohesiveness were found when compared to face-to-face GSS???supported groups who were given electronic aids. One of the two groups drawn from environments where organisational culture was expected to be quite different, that is the Kensington Campus group had higher perceived decision quality, decision process satisfaction, unified commitment, and group cohesiveness but no significant differences in decision satisfaction and collaborative climate when compared with groups drawn from a campus of the same university, ADFA (Australian Defence Force Academy) Campus, one which is attended only by military students. Whilst compared with those of manually structured support on group outcomes, the impacts of GSS on group outcomes weakened when they performed a preference task, organisational culture was found to have a significant impact on group outcomes when both face-to-face GSS and manual settings were considered.

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This study examines the impact of organisational culture and GSS (Group Support Systems) on small group decision-making as measured by group decision outcomes. Laboratory experiments were designed to investigate how two types of groups selected on the basis of having apparently different organisational cultures make decisions on a preference task, in situations where they were given one of two different means of support (face-to-face GSS support or manually structured support) to aid their decision-making. Organisational culture and GSS are the independent variables, whilst the dependent outcome variables were perceived decision quality, decision process satisfaction, decision satisfaction, unified commitment, collaborative climate, and group cohesiveness. The research results showed that manually-supported groups, those who were given simple physical decision-support aids and worked face-to-face, had higher perceived decision quality and decision process satisfaction but no significant differences in unified commitment, decision satisfaction, collaborative climate, and group cohesiveness were found when compared to face-to-face GSS???supported groups who were given electronic aids. One of the two groups drawn from environments where organisational culture was expected to be quite different, that is the Kensington Campus group had higher perceived decision quality, decision process satisfaction, unified commitment, and group cohesiveness but no significant differences in decision satisfaction and collaborative climate when compared with groups drawn from a campus of the same university, ADFA (Australian Defence Force Academy) Campus, one which is attended only by military students. Whilst compared with those of manually structured support on group outcomes, the impacts of GSS on group outcomes weakened when they performed a preference task, organisational culture was found to have a significant impact on group outcomes when both face-to-face GSS and manual settings were considered.

An experiment was conducted to determine the effects of varying amounts of peer group support on discussion and opinion change in a two-person verbal interaction. The results indicated that males speak more than females, subjects in groups where there was unequal support spoke more and made more positive and fewer neutral statements than subjects in groups with equal support. The most neutral and fewest positive statements were emitted in groups where subjects each had a moderate amount of support. / Thesis / Master of Arts (MA)

This research presents a co-developing service innovation imagery system that considers the service innovation imagery can be designed and created with their customers and appropriate collaborators in co-creation network. Default imagery reasoned by analyzing SMEs information, interaction pattern and cultural behavior so as to represent current status quo of the service to co-develop toward service innovation. In addition, we use metaphor statement as the representation of different kinds of user value (i.e., emotional, social-cultural environmental value) so as to build a knowledge based imagery bank for the co-developing process. The mechanism of the open group support system facilitates the interactions between different interpreters that derive and imply a set of value, such as emotional, social-cultural-environmental dimensional consumption values for the SME’s customers. In this research, our main goal is to propose an IT-based systematic approach for SMEs to co-developing their service innovation imagery with other actors and interpreters. The co-developing journey would facilitate SMEs to derive the service innovation imagery for service innovation.

This research compared the use of an electronic meeting system tool to a manual group process in large and small groups in a controlled laboratory experiment. Outcomes measured include the quality of decision, the time taken in various stages of the decision making process, and group member satisfaction. A research model of the variables influencing group decision making was developed. The six independent variables included in this model are group size, the rule by which the group makes a decision, the incentives driving the group, the distribution of useful information within the group, the task complexity, and the meeting support (electronic or manual). In this research group size and method of support were manipulated, while the other variables were controlled. A decision-making task was developed for this research to specify and manipulate the six independent variables. The task described a product mix problem in which information on each product was given to group members. The group shared information and jointly determined an outcome. The group used an unanimous decision rule to choose a solution. A numerical outcome was used to objectively measure decision quality. Each member of the group received a cash payoff determined by the group's solution as incentive in accomplishing the task. All groups found the optimal solution. The simplicity of the task may have minimized the differences found between groups. There was no significant difference in general member satisfaction or time to decision. Prior knowledge was found to influence general member satisfaction and the time needed for the group to share information. Members of large groups perceived more uneven distribution of participation than members of small groups. Voting differences were very large: large groups took significantly more votes than small groups, and electronic groups took significantly more votes than manual groups. "Conjunctive" and "disjunctive" task descriptions are used to discuss task/tool interaction.

The current study investigated if condom outcomes vary as a function of perceived group support (from members of the group) and ethnic identity among participants in an HIV prevention intervention. The peer-led intervention consisted of an empirically supported curriculum, Sisters Informing Sisters on Topics about AIDS (SISTA) with an additional component that addressed the role of alcohol/drugs in risky sexual behavior. Participants included 263 unmarried, heterosexual, African American women who were recruited from three universities. At post-test, perception of a supportive group environment was associated with positive attitudes towards condom use. In addition, ethnic identity was associated with positive attitudes toward condom use and with higher condom negotiation efficacy. However, the study hypotheses were not supported because after controlling for pre-test scores, partner status, and relationship length these associations were no longer significant. The findings also indicated that participants reported more consistent condom use and condom protective attitudes at post- than at pre-test. Findings suggest that further research is needed to understand the role that support and ethnic identity plays in interventions for African American women.

This thesis has two distinct research threads. One thread examines the effectiveness of technology support on the performance of focus groups. Unlike previous research, the work described in this thesis addresses the fundamental issue that groups are social systems, and that comprehensive measurement of the effectiveness of group activities requires assessment of both the task-oriented and social aspects of the group activity. In this research, four different communication modes are used to compare group effectiveness. The second research thread in this thesis is the use of Systems Thinking, and specifically Soft Systems Methodology (SSM), as the framework for inquiring into the effects of technology support on group effectiveness. The strategy in this thesis for developing and evaluating hypotheses extends the general descriptions and guidance in the literature on using SSM for hypothesis testing. Systems thinking also provides the basis for examining the prevailing ???profile deviation??? view that the better the fit between the group task and the technology support the greater the group performance. Using the six perspectives of fit developed by Venkatraman (1989), the most common GSS models and other models developed to examine Task-Technology Fit (TTF) are analysed. The results show that group performance models are most often tested from a ???profile deviation??? perspective and TTF models developed from a profile deviation perspective claim to have predictive and descriptive validity for assessing the level of group performance. To assess whether an SSM based approach can improve the predictive and/or descriptive analysis of the impact of technology support on group work, a field experiment was conducted at the Australian Defence Force Academy. Twenty focus groups of officer cadets assessed their military training program using a GSS in one of four communication modes. The results showed little predictive or descriptive support for the profile deviation perspective of TTF when measuring the group???s overall effectiveness, task effectiveness, participant satisfaction or group relations. The alternative ???gestalt??? perspective, operationalised in this research by using SSM, provided a more comprehensive approach to examining the effectiveness of technology support for group work.