Organizational Challenges and Research Directions for Distributed Group Support

In designing, implementing, and evaluating distributed group support, it is necessary to consider the organisational considerations that affect the nature of support required for distributed work environments. This paper describes some of the challenges facing organisations using distributed group support and explores alternative approaches for researching these it concludes with a multi-disciplinary research perspective for building improved knowledge. This has implications for both researchers attempting to explain and predict the contextual forces driving the use of and practitioners hoping to support changing organisations with distributed group support systems. Knowledge is becoming a key resource for modern organisations. There is a growing recognition that modern organisations need to support formal and informal groups in order to maximise the potential of this key resource. This move towards supporting groups appears to be fueling the development and accessibility of networking technologies and the use of distributed group support systems. Communication through the computer network can provide a powerful means of linking a group of widely separated people. In this, the support of work processes in which people do not physically meet or see each other can be provided within virtual structures through Computer Mediated Communications Systems (CMCS). As defined by Hiltz and Turoff [24], "these systems use computers and telecommunications networks to store, deliver, regulate and process communication among the group members and between the computer and the group". Although the most common form of CMCS is electronic mail, other computerised conferencing, bulletin board and shared work software is classified under this heading. While the subject of this paper concerns the use of distributed electronic