Group Dynamics

October 7, 2008

Informatics 153 – Fall 2008 – Gillian Hayes

Agenda

• Visitor from Deloitte

• Take your quizzes

• Go over last week’s quiz

• Group Dynamics

• Programming Assignment details

• Upcoming

Informatics 153 – Fall 2008 – Gillian Hayes

Group work: integral to organizations

• Increasingly, organizations are relying more and more on group work

• Broad technology choices in organizations

Informatics 153 – Fall 2008 – Gillian Hayes

The role of proximity in collaboration

• Proximity leads to collaboration because it fosters informal communication (Hagstrom, 1965)

• Allen (1977): if you’re farther away than 30 meters from a colleague, you might as well be several miles away

• Dormitory residents most likely to form friendships when they live in close proximity

Informatics 153 – Fall 2008 – Gillian Hayes

Study to test questions about proximity

• 70 semi-structured, hour long interviews with scientists in 3 fields

• Survey of 66 psychologists• Archival study of 93 members of a large organization• Data collected:

– Whether each possible pair of 93 researchers (4278) published a research report

– Proximity in terms of the org chart– Physical proximity– Research similarity

Informatics 153 – Fall 2008 – Gillian Hayes

Role of similar interests?

Perhaps researchers with similar interests have offices near each other?

But this doesn’t explain it fully

Proximity provides opportunity for informal interaction

Informatics 153 – Fall 2008 – Gillian Hayes

What does informal communication do?

• Proximity leads to frequency of communication– As distance between people increases, phone

communication does as well (Mayer, 1976)

– Same relationship with electronic messages (Eveland & Bikson, ‘87)

• Perhaps people close to each other like each other more (Zajonc, 1968)

Physical proximity related to frequency of communication in planning and writing stage of research

Informatics 153 – Fall 2008 – Gillian Hayes

Quality of communication

• Proximity leads to communication that involves more than one sensory channel

• “Richer” communication can enable researchers to develop ideas, find common interests

• Which stage of research do you think has the most frequent communication?

Informatics 153 – Fall 2008 – Gillian Hayes

Cost of communication

• Proximity enables – “low-cost” communication– quick interactions

• Time savings– For information workers, time is the scarcest

resource

Informatics 153 – Fall 2008 – Gillian Hayes

Communication technology requirements

Communication tools for planned and unplanned interactions in same and different times

• Coordination and management tools

• Task-oriented tools to integrate products

Typically most tools support only a single type of process

Informatics 153 – Fall 2008 – Gillian Hayes

Tools can facilitate unplanned interactions at a low-cost

• As with proximity, tools need to provide frequent communication

• Maintaining and building shared knowledge

• Provide backchannel and feedback mechanisms

Informatics 153 – Fall 2008 – Gillian Hayes

Technology and feedback

• What is backchannel response?• What does it do?• What happens without feedback?

– Multi-channel communication can lead to a lack of feedback, not knowing who might be talking

Emoticons can be used for spontaneous feedback, but are limited :-), LOL, IMHO

Informatics 153 – Fall 2008 – Gillian Hayes

Communication technologies enable different feedback• Webcams, video-conferencing

• Teleconferencing

Informatics 153 – Fall 2008 – Gillian Hayes

Media Spaces

Informatics 153 – Fall 2008 – Gillian Hayes

• Audio space (Ackerman et al.)

• IM

• Email

Informatics 153 – Fall 2008 – Gillian Hayes

Virtual Worlds

And now for stuff from your reading….

Informatics 153 – Fall 2008 – Gillian Hayes

Attributes of Group Behavior

• Cohesiveness• Egocentrism• Extremitization• Groupthink (Janis, 1972)

Name some consequences of bad group decisions

Informatics 153 – Fall 2008 – Gillian Hayes

Face to face and Electronic Groups

• Face-to-face groups often have predictable behavior

• Electronic group behavior is less predictable

Laboratory studies vs. naturalistic observation

Informatics 153 – Fall 2008 – Gillian Hayes

E-groups: more equal participation

• In 3-person electronic groups, each member tended to talk 1/3 of time

• Status cues missing in e-groups

Informatics 153 – Fall 2008 – Gillian Hayes

Flaming

• Groups tend to make more extreme (risky) decisions than individuals

• Electronic discussion-more likely to result in flaming behavior– Expt.: 102 flaming remarks vs. 12 in f2f (24 meetings)

• Electronic groups reduce conformity

Informatics 153 – Fall 2008 – Gillian Hayes

Decision quality• Impacts of high status people

• Who is risk seeking and who is risk averse?

• E-groups– will consult more people– ignore faulty reasoning of those with good social skills or high

status– May experience more conflict– Make riskier choices

Informatics 153 – Fall 2008 – Gillian Hayes

Time to decisions

• Takes four times as long for e-groups as f2f (3-person groups)

• Decisions by e-groups that were rushed were more extreme

• Faster decisions not necessarily better

Informatics 153 – Fall 2008 – Gillian Hayes

Electronic group dynamics

• Technology can change the dynamics of a group

• Moreover, particular kind of computer media can affect group communication

• Organizational/management policies can be used to guide dynamics

Informatics 153 – Fall 2008 – Gillian Hayes

Your programming assignment

• Groups of three• Any language you want• Must be an educational game or experience for kids

(think 12 and under) in schools• Must accept input from multiple kids at once• Must display individual views to each student and

group view to be displayed at front of classroom• Sign up on Wiki… meet with me Wed and Fri

Informatics 153 – Fall 2008 – Gillian Hayes

Upcoming

• This week – small group meetings – BE ON TIME

• Next Tuesday – Grudin’s challenges for groupware

• Next Thursday – Programming for Groupware