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

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 using the distributed group support system WebWide Participation in which explanations for meeting involvement (and noninvolvement) were explored. In particular, three 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 who willingly joined in the meeting process. Using two indices of managerial openness, a discriminant analysis was undertaken that correctly distinguished over three-quarters of the participants and non-participants in the targeted WebWide meetings. The importance of this finding for advancing the adoption of other new group support technologies is discussed.