Virtual Group Strategic Decision Making Using Structured Conflict and Consensus Approaches

Do procedures that improve face-to-face decision meetings also improve virtual “meetings”? Might the effectiveness of such procedures improve with practice? This longitudinal experiment investigated the efficiency, effectiveness and group member perceptions of dialectical inquiry (DI) and constructive consensus (CC) approaches to strategic decision making in a virtual (distributed) Computer-Mediated-Communications (CMC) environment. There were no differences between DI and CC groups in terms of decision effectiveness. However, this result has not been unusual in CMC research. DI groups had significantly higher perceived depth of evaluation than CC groups. CC groups reported greater decision acceptance and willingness to work together again than DI groups. The results are discussed in terms of their implications for Group Support Systems research and design in the era of the World Wide Web.