The Effect of Structure on Convergence Activities Using Group Support Systems

Facilitating group decision and negotiation is a broad topic and has received considerable attention (see chapters by Ackermann and Eden, and Richardson and Andersen, this volume). As research on Group Support Systems (GSS) has evolved over the past decades, a good deal of useful knowledge on group processes, idea generation and decision making has been found (see the chapter by Lewis, this volume).Particular attention has been given to aspects of decision making structure (for example, see chapters by Salo and Hamalainen, Hujala and Kurttila, this volume). See the chapter by Kolfshoten et al., this volume: they consider a number of aspects related to collaboration engineering.However, there are still areas that require in-depth research to remove uncertainties and move computer-mediated group process research forward into the second decade of the 21st century.For example, the ability to converge on the most worthy ideas to translate into knowledge has been generally neglected in this research literature.This is regrettable given its group process importance, especially given the volume of ideas generated by GSS.In this chapter, our focus is on the effects of structure on convergence activities using GSS.Experience shows that convergence dynamics are affected by facilitation (e.g., protocol) as well as specialized technological support (e.g., a “dashboard”).This chapter gives a brief overview of the research and presents an empirical study to illustrate the sort of issues that remain (and the possible solutions) plus directions for future study.