A Cross-Cultural Comparison of GSS and Non-GSS Consensus and Satisfaction Levels Within and Between the U.S. and Mexico

Relatively few studies have considered cultural dimensions in their analysis of Group Support Systems (GSS) and even fewer have employed empirical data to test their hypotheses. A cross-culturalfleld experiment was used to measure the effects of “‘national culture” (U.S. andMexican) upon group consensus levels and individual satisfaction levels in GSS environments and non-G%’ environments. Experimental results indicate that within the U.S. culture, there were no signiJicant dtfferences in consensus levels between GSS and Manual groups in the ranking of ideas, but that U.S. GSS groups reported greater changes in consensus levels. Results within the Mexican culture, reported higher ranking consensus levels for manual groups, but greater changes in consensus leveb for GSSsupported groups. With regard to satisfaction levels, while U.S. groups reported no dfferences between treatments, Mexican GSS groups reported higher satisfaction levels than Mexican manual groups. While U.S. groups reported no differences in perceived participation equity, Mexican GSS groups reported higher participation equity than Mexican manual groups. There were no dfferences in perceived participation equity between GSS and non-GSS groups reported within either the U.S. or Mexico. However, in comparing U.S. with Mexican groups there were signtficant differences in satisfaction and perceivedparticipation equity between both cultures across all experimental treatments.