Task/Technology Fit and the Effectiveness of Group Support Systems: Evidence in the Context of Tasks Requiring Domain Specific Knowledge

Research on the effectiveness of group support systems (GSS) technology has begun to explore the “task/technology” fit hypothesis, which suggests an interaction between task type and communication mode. Some limited research employing generic tasks and ad hoc groups has found that GSS-mediated groups perform about the same as their face-to-face counterparts on creative tasks but significantly worse on intellective tasks. This research extends prior work by investigating the task/technology fit hypothesis using groups with a shared history and business-oriented idea generation and problem-solving tasks. Consistent with the predictions of task technology fit theory, the results revealed a significant disordinal interaction—subjects performed significantly better when communicating face-to-face for the problem-solving task and when communicating via the GSS for the idea generation task. Echoing the findings of much prior research, subjects tended to prefer face-toface communication over GSS-mediated communication.