Group Cohesiveness and Extrinsic Motivation in Virtual Groups: Lessons from an Action Case Study of Electronic Brainstorming

One form of group support system that has received much attention from cross-disciplinary research is electronic brainstorming (EBS). While it is generally held that group cohesiveness is lower in virtual settings that in face-to-face interactions, it has also been argued that this does not matter in cognitive work such as idea generation. However, most work on EBS has been carried out in academic settings, and though such environments provide more control, they may be insufficient to capture all nuances of on-going office work. Hence, I describe an action case study of a failing attempt to introduce an EBS prototype in an organisational setting. The analysis suggests that virtual groups, counter to what is previously thought, need to establish and maintain a group identity. One circumstance under which this seems to be the case is in the existence of extrinsic rewards mechanisms. 1. Background and motivation Much of the work done in today’s organisations is performed not by isolated individuals but by groups [9, 29]. Historically, these groups had to meet face-to-face with all the spatial and temporal restrictions associated with physical meetings, but with the advancement of information technology (IT) group work is now becoming increasingly virtual. Research aiming to support group work has largely been targeted at facilitating co-operation and collaboration between people distributed in time and/or space. In doing so, it has been suggested that the resulting applications should be understood not merely as technology to emulate traditional face-to-face meetings, but rather as an entirely new medium for group work [17, 34]. This implies that research on group support system (GSS) should not just provide support for current work practices, but enable possibilities beyond those utilised today. However, when moving into new territories it is important to carefully examine how the displacement of face-to-face work affects different aspects of group work 0-7695-1435-9/02 $17 [17]. One such aspect that is currently largely neglected is motivation. This paper reports from an action case study of what turned out to be an unsuccessful attempt to implement a intranet-based electronic brainstorming (EBS) system prototype in an organisational context. Having analysed the users’ experiences, the author shall compare group cohesiveness in face-to-face and electronic brainstorming, and show how the presence of extrinsic motivation in form of an institutionalised reward system in combination with the differences in cohesiveness negatively affected the group work. More specifically, the focus of the analysis is on the relationship between motivation, cognitive work, and group cohesiveness. Counter to what is suggested in the literature, the conclusion presented here suggests that low cohesion affect group work performance also for work of a more cognitive nature. This means that mechanisms to ensure group cohesiveness must be considered when designing GSS in general and EBS systems in particular. Next, some previous work on aspects of computermediated group work shall be summarised as a theoretical framework for the discussion later. Thereafter the research site and the methodological approach are accounted for. The prototype EBS tool used in this research is described briefly in section four, followed by the presentation of the empirical findings. In section six, these results are then discussed in terms of the relationship between motivation and group cohesiveness. Consequences and implications for future research and design of EBS systems are also discussed, from both an IT and an organisational perspective. 2. Aspects of computer-mediated group work Research regarding groupware and GSS as well as the work of social psychologists have previously shown that computer-mediated intra-group communication is unable to support the fuller range of communicative acts typically employed by face-to-face groups [17, 28]. Examples of such acts and cues difficult to mediate are facial expressions, gestures, and body postures. As a result of