Supporting Distributed Groups with Group Support Systems: A Study of the Effect of Group Leaders and Communication Modes on Group Performance

The leadership role facilitates group process by structuring group interaction. How leadership affects group performance in GSS settings remains one of the least investigated areas of GSS research. In this study, the presence of a group leader is found to make a significant difference in objective decision quality and satisfaction with the decision process. At the same time, perceived decision quality and consensus are not significantly different in groups with a leader and those without one. A content analysis of comments by group leaders shows that group leaders are effective when making comments on clear group objectives and interaction structure in the early stages of group interaction. In the later stages, however, it becomes more important for group leaders to offer comments encouraging interaction and maintaining group cohesion. IntroductIon Group support systems (GSS) are information technology-based environments to support group activities that may be distributed geographically and temporally (Dennis, George, Jessup, Nunamaker, & Vogel, 1988). The objective of GSS is to increase the effectiveness and efficiency of group interaction by facilitating the interactive sharing of information among group members (Nunamaker, Dennis, Valacich, Vogel, & George, 1991). These objectives are accomplished by augmenting the group’s information-processing capability, increasing participation, and improving communication by structuring the interaction with technology (Ho & Raman, 1991). In this respect, there are clear parallels between GSS studies and structured group interaction techniques, such as the nominal group technique and the Delphi method (Turoff, Hiltz, Baghat, & Rana, 1993),