Attention to Ideas
The second variable that affects synergy is attention to ideas. Recent research indicates that even small EBS groups can experiences process gains from synergy when participants receive instructions to focus their attention and memory on the ideas presented by others (Dugosh, Paulus, Roland, & Yang, 2000; Paulus & Yang, 2000). Each of these studies serves to emphasize the value of synergy in EBS while simultaneously suggesting additional moderating variables on the effect of group size on synergy.
Social facilitation
is the ability of the presence of others to affect one's performance (Allport, 1920; Levine, Resnick, & Higgins, 1993; Zajonc, 1965). If individuals are experienced in performing a task, or expect that they can perform the task well, working in the presence of others improves performance (Robinson-Staveley & Cooper, 1990; Sanna, 1992). However, if individuals have low expectations about performance, working in the presence of others impairs performance (Robinson-Staveley & Cooper, 1990; Sanna, 1992). For relatively simple tasks such as those commonly used in brainstorming, social facilitation is typically seen as a potential process gain (Pinsonneault et al., 1999) but one with only a small effect (Bond & Titus, 1983).
Potential Process Losses
Production blocking
refers to the need to take turns speaking in verbal brainstorming (Diehl & Stroebe, 1987). When participants are prevented from contributing an idea when they first think of it, they may forget it or suppress it because the idea later seems less relevant or original. If they try to retain the idea, they must focus on remembering it, which prevents them from generating new ideas or attending to the ideas of others (Diehl & Stroebe, 1991).
Production blocking in verbal brainstorming groups increases as the size of the group increases, because the probability of occurrence increases directly with the number of participants and because more participants are blocked as size increases (Dennis & Valacich, 1993; Gallupe et al., 1992; Valacich et al., 1994). Production blocking is essentially non-existent in EBS groups because all participants can contribute ideas simultaneously (Dennis & Valacich, 1993; Pinsonneault et al., 1999; Valacich et al., 1994).
Evaluation apprehension
may cause participants in verbal brainstorming to withhold ideas because they fear a negative reaction from other participants (Diehl & Stroebe, 1987; Lamm & Trommsdorff, 1973). Osborn's (1957) advice to withhold criticism tries to reduce evaluation apprehension. Evaluation apprehension in verbal brainstorming should increase as group size increases because there are more participants who might criticize an idea (Gallupe et al., 1992). EBS can be designed so that participants contribute ideas anonymously which should reduce or eliminate evaluation apprehension (Cooper, Gallupe, Pollard, & Cadsby, 1998; Dennis & Valacich, 1993).
There is some empirical evidence that participants in anonymous conditions contribute more controversial and non-redundant ideas than those in non-anonymous conditions (Cooper et al., 1998).
Social loafing
(or free riding) is the tendency for individuals to expend less effort when working in a group than when working individually (Karau & Williams, 1993). Social loafing may arise because participants believe their contributions to be dispensable and not needed for group success and/or because responsibility for completing the task is diffused among many participants (Harkins & Petty, 1982; Karau & Williams, 1993; Latane, Williams, & Harkins, 1979). Social loafing is reduced when participants believe they are being evaluated as individuals, rather than collectively as a group (Karau & Williams, 1993). Social loafing can be expected to increase as group size increases because perceived dispensability and diffusion of responsibility increase as the number of participants increases. Social loafing is also made stronger when anonymity is provided in EBS. In fact, anonymity is one of the basic manipulations of early social loafing studies (Bartis, Szymanski, & Harkins, 1988; Karau & Williams, 1993).
Cognitive interference
is in many ways the inverse of synergy. Cognitive interference occurs when the ideas generated by other participants interfere with an individual's own idea generation activities (Pinsonneault & Barki, 1999; Straus, 1996). Cognitive interference may be due to the need to attend to ideas presented by others as they appear (e.g., in verbal brainstorming, a spoken idea disappears as soon as it is uttered so a missed idea is a lost idea). Cognitive interference may also be due to the content of the ideas contributed by others because ideas from others serve to stimulate cognitive activity in one area while limiting the flexibility of idea production (Nijstad, Diehl & Stroebe, this volume); that is, brainstorming may suffer from cognitive inertia by focusing idea generation on only one aspect of the overall task (Dennis & Valacich, 1993; Pinsonneault & Barki, 1999). The effect of cognitive inertia is strengthened by social influence processes and social convergence (Festinger, 1954; Larey & Paulus, 1999). When there is not a strong performance incentive, they tend to converge at the level of the least productive members (Camacho & Paulus, 1995; Larey & Paulus, 1995; Paulus & Dzindolet, 1993).
Process losses in verbal brainstorming groups due to cognitive interference should increase with group size, because more people are contributing more ideas which increase potential interference. Electronic brainstorming is less susceptible to cognitive interference because ideas are stored in the system as they are contributed so participants need not attend to them as they arrive, but instead can generate ideas as they choose and only interrupt their individual idea generation process when they desire the stimulation from other's ideas. While electronic brainstorming may still suffer from cognitive inertia, the ability to provide for -- or to intentionally induce -- multiple simultaneous dialogues or threads of conversation means that it is quite unusual for groups to focus on one narrow set of ideas (Dennis et al., 1997; Dennis, Valacich, Connolly, & Wynne, 1996). In other words, EBS allow group members to carry on multiple, potentially unrelated conversations concurrently. Group members are thus free to choose when and if they participate in each conversation stream. The ability of EBS to structure and direct participants’ cognitive focus may be one of its most powerful contributions.
Communication speed
is another potential process loss that is found in EBS and to some extent in nominal group brainstorming. Communication speed is influenced by the need to type or write rather than speak. For most people, speaking is faster than typing or writing (Williams & Karau, 1991) so the need to type may inhibit idea generation by slowing down communication (Nunamaker et al., 1991). To date, no studies have examined this potential process loss of GSS in detail. It should be noted that in prior studies, sometimes members of nominal groups have written their ideas, sometime they have typed their ideas, and sometimes they have spoken their ideas. Members of EBS groups can either type or speak their ideas, although in practice all research studies have required participants to type their ideas.
Summary of GSS Advantages
Group support systems have several advantages over traditional group communication processes. While traditional group communication processes support serial communication, where each participant speaks in turn, GSS allows simultaneous entry into group communication. Any or all participants can enter the conversation simultaneously without queuing for their turn to speak.
Another unique feature of group support systems is the support of groups that are not co-located geographically or temporally. Although the original GSS were room-based, the rise of the net-enabled organization and the Internet has enabled the formation of groups that were not conceivable thirty years ago. GSS enable groups to form and operate without ever experiencing face-to-face communication. These so-called “virtual teams” (Lipnack & Stamps, 1997) have been the focus of extensive research (for a review of recent work see Saunders, 2000).
Additionally, GSS avoid the communication problems associated with peer evaluation (Camacho & Paulus, 1995) by allowing anonymous involvement of participants. With anonymous participation, group members are able to evaluate communication without regard to the source. Another benefit is that GSS support parallelism or multiple simultaneous communication processes. This eliminates the competition for speaking time that burdens interactive groups (Diehl & Stroebe, 1991). Because GSS are enabled by networked computers they support the automatic storage of all communications. All communications that occur during the group session are automatically recorded by the computer for later review and analysis.
IMPLICATIONS AND CONCLUSIONS
We believe that the use of electronic brainstorming can play a key role in enhancing group creativity, particularly for larger groups that suffer from the process losses inherent in verbally interacting groups. Several conclusions can be drawn from EBS research. First, it is clear that EBS and GSS can improve group creativity in certain situations. The advantages of synergy and social facilitation as well as the ability to bridge time and space make GSS an invaluable tool for many groups. We recommend that large groups seeking to generate ideas choose first to work together using electronic brainstorming, either in special-purpose meeting rooms equipped with computers or over the Internet using Web-based brainstorming tools or simply electronic mail. For smaller groups, the use of nominal groups or their organizational cousin (Nominal Group Technique: (Delbecq, Van de Ven, & Gustafson, 1975; Van de Ven & Delbecq, 1971) still seems appropriate. However, given the ubiquitous use of computing technology in modern organizations, most nominal groups will most likely use computer-based tools to record ideas thus making the sharing of ideas very simple using electronic brainstorming tools or electronic mail.
Second, it appears that group size is the critical factor in determining the effectiveness of GSS to support productive group creativity. As group size increases the benefits of synergy and reduced production blocking and cognitive interference are more noticeable. Smaller groups however (especially those with 2-3 members) will receive fewer benefits from using GSS over verbal or nominal techniques.
Third, GSS seem to create group environments that have some fundamental differences from those of traditional verbally interacting groups. For instance, unlike verbal groups, GSS groups produce more ideas when participants are critical of the ideas generated by other group members (Valacich & Schwenk, 1985). More research is required to explain why these changes occur, but their presence is well indicated by existing research. We speculate that the anonymity provided by GSS acts to separate ideas from their contributor so criticism is more easily recognized as criticism of ideas, not of people. Anonymity may also shield participants from the faults of an idea as well as the negativity associated with criticism. Therefore participants are more likely to share both ideas and criticisms.
Finally, with the rise of the Internet, GSS tools are increasingly ubiquitous. As tools like Lotus Notes, MSN Messenger, ICQ and others are diffused throughout society people become more accustom to using the computer as a tool for communication. This familiarity should allow them to use GSS tools more effectively.
While we believe our conclusions are reasonable and appropriate, there are also clear needs for future research. One area that we believe is most promising, both for theoretical and applied research is the development of new tools. Most current EBS software tools simply automate existing techniques. However, computer technology enables the creation of a variety of new ways to interact that would not be possible without the computer. For example, Dennis, et al., (1999) investigated the impact of a very simple dialogue structure: participants were simultaneously given three separate windows in which to enter ideas, each focusing on different aspect of the problem. This structure enabled participants to contribute ideas on different aspects of the problem simultaneously, something not possible in verbal brainstorming, in which every participant must listen to every other participant. This simple structure improved performance by about 50%.
The use of electronic brainstorming enables the development and testing of a variety of far more complex structures which may have greater or lesser impacts on performance. We need additional research to develop and test new ways in which groups can work together to generate ideas.
The use of modified forms of electronic brainstorming to test the effects of production blocking, evaluation apprehension, etc. also creates opportunities to test other theoretical effects. Because new electronic brainstorming tools can be created to simulate a variety of different interaction patterns, it is possible to create tools that can act as a test bed for more fundamental theoretical concepts as well. For example, it is possible to create a simulator that acts in the same manner as a real electronic brainstorming tool; participants believe themselves to interacting with the other participants in the “group” but instead of receiving comments and ideas from the other participants, they receive pre-scripted comments and ideas from a database developed by the experimenter. In this way we can create experimental conditions in which participants receive very stimulating ideas or non-stimulating ideas, receive supportive comments or critical comments, receive ideas that induce cognitive inertia (one topic focus) or a diversity of topics. Likewise, such a simulator could be used to deliver identical thoughts and ideas to members of a decision making group but to present the results of pre-scripted group “vote” that purports to show that the participant is a member of a group majority or group minority. Such a test bed could enable far more precise tests of theories of minority and majority decision making, among others.
While this chapter has focused on group creativity, the implications of GSS, EBS and their impact on creativity goes beyond simple idea generation. The essence of creativity is the development and exchange of ideas that ultimately find their way into later stages of organization processes such as decision making or planning. GSS can play important roles in improving performance in these stages as well (Dennis, Wixom, & Vandenberg, 2001), by improving the sharing of information during group discussions (Dennis, 1996). Continued research into the use and usefulness of GSS will provide a richer understanding of how technology can enable more efficient and effective group processes and creativity.
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