Managerial openness and the adoption of distributed group support systems: the case of WebWide participation

ABSTRACT

The full involvement of designated participants in a meeting process is a well-recognized standard of group effectiveness, yet most face-to-face meetings are undertaken without the presence of every group member. The problem of total participation in asynchronous meetings convened with distributed group support systems has been noted frequently but investigated rarely. This paper describes a portion of a large field study of government and non-profit agencies using the distributed group support system WebWide Participation in which explanations for meeting involvement (and non-involvement) were explored. In particular, four WebWide meetings with varying levels of participation were selected, and surveys were sent to all designated participants. The hypothesis was that non-participants have less openness (i.e., one of the key personality dimensions in Big Five personality theory) than active participants in the targeted meetings Using two indices of managerial openness, a discriminant analysis was undertaken that correctly distinguished over four of every five participants and non-participants. The important of this finding for advancing the adoption of other information technologies is discussed.

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INDEX TERMS

General Terms:
Human Factors, Management, Performance

Keywords:
asynchronous meetings, distributed meetings, managerial openness, resistance, virtual teams