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- Chapter 13
- Information Systems Management In Practice 5E
- McNurlin & Sprague
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- Groups, rather than individuals, and the systems and technologies that
support the communication and interaction among people as they work as
groups
- Key differences between GSS and GDSS are more recognizable when divided
into two generic categories
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- Communication: the transmission of information from one person to
another or several others; and interaction: repetitive, back-and-forth
communication over time
- Decision making or problem solving: members of a group reach a decision
or form a consensus; encompasses communication, to aid coordinating
activities
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- Computer-supported cooperative work
- Work group computing
- Collaborative computing
- Cooperative computing
- Interpersonal computing
- Coordination technology
- Decision conferencing
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- Computer conferencing
- Computer-supported groups
- Group decision support systems
- Computer-assisted communication
- Augmented knowledge workshops
- Inter-functional coordination
- Data interpretation systems, ….and others
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- Figure 13-1: A matrix showing intersection of proximity of group members
(together or dispersed) with duration of their interaction (limited or
ongoing)
- Figure 13-2: Predominant characterization: time (same time/different
time) on one dimension and place (same place/different place) on the
other.
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- Membership: groups can be open, where almost anyone can join, or closed,
where membership is restricted
- Interaction: group can be loosely coupled, where the activity of each
member is relatively independent of the other members, or tightly
coupled, such as a project team where the work of each member is tied
closely with the work of the other members
- Hierarchy: group can be just one part of a “chain of command”; ex.
conference planning committees
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- Authority groups: involve formal authority (and often hierarchy), such
as boss and subordinates; membership closed; coupling tight
- Intradepartmental groups: can have members all doing essentially the
same work, often under the same boss; membership closed; interaction can
range from tight to loose coupling; hierarchy
- Project teams: generally have members who work full-time to accomplish a
goal within a specific schedule; membership closed; coupling tight;
hierarchy
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- Interdepartmental work groups: pass work from department to department
(purchasing, receiving, accounts payable) in a chain, forming a super
group; membership closed; coupling tight; no hierarchy
- Committees and task forces: formed to deal with a subject area or issue,
then disband; does not require full-time work by the members; membership
not too closed; interaction not as tightly coupled
- “Communities of practice”: group of people who work or play together for
so long that they have developed an identifiable way of doing things;
ex. volunteer organization
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- Business relationship groups: relationships with customers, groups of
customers, suppliers, and so on; membership open; interaction loosely
coupled; no hierarchy
- Peer groups: meet to exchange ideas and opinions; activities of each
member are largely independent of the activities of the other members;
membership can range; interaction loosely coupled; no hierarchy
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- Networks: groups of people who socialize, exchange information, and
expand the number of their personal acquaintances
- Electronic groups: include chat rooms, multi-user domains, user groups,
and virtual worlds, all forms of groups that have formed on the Internet
to socialize, find information, entertain themselves, gain comfort, or
just experiment with the new online world; membership wide open; no
hierarchy; loosely coupled
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- Teams may be the basis for future organizations: organization will be
composed mainly of specialists who direct their own performance through
feedback from others (colleagues, customers, HQ); like a hospital
- Move being driven by three factors:
- Knowledge workers are becoming the dominant portion of labor, and they
resist the command-and-control form of organization
- All companies need to find ways to be more innovative and
entrepreneurial
- Information technology is forcing a shift
- Thus, organizations are becoming flatter, with fewer HQs staff and many
specialists out in operating units
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- Coordination theory may guide organizational design: use of IT to reduce
costs of coordination could have these effects (in sequential order):
- IT replaces some forms of human coordination, such as middle management
- May increase the overall amount of coordination
- May encourage a shift toward more coordination-intensive organizational
structures, such as highly networked, decentralized organizations
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- Companies want to “manage” knowledge
- tacit knowledge exists within a person’s mind and is private and unique
to each person; explicit knowledge has been articulated, codified, and
made public; ex. “The Rudy Problem.”
- Discovering “who” has the problem is a step in the right
direction. Create environment
that supports knowledge sharing and emergence of knowledge brokers.
- Successfully transferring knowledge depends 90% of having the right
culture, and 10% on technology.
- Buckman Labs case online forums capture information,volunteer experts
identify valuable knowledge and streams of reasoning-build knowledge
base.
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- Group computing as a new frontier
- People spend 60 to 80% working with others
- People seem to feel most productive when working alone
- New organizational structures need to be created to support: emergence
of teams, need to manage computer-based conversations among people and
machines, and interest in supporting group processes
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- “Same time, same place” cell: in upper left for face-to-face meetings
(electronic meeting support system used by Burr-Brown)
- “Same place, different times” cell: in upper right for supporting teams
in one locale by giving them room tools to use in their team room at
different times
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- “Same time, different places” cell: in lower left for cross-distance
meetings (audio conferencing, video conferencing, and screen sharing)
- “Different times, different places” cell: in lower right for ongoing
coordination, it incorporates communication-oriented systems such as
electronic mail, computer conferencing, and group editing
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- Advanced Workstations: run on IBM compatible PCs or Apple
Macintosh. In the future, more
powerful workstations and high end PCs will be needed to handle the
display, storage, and transfer of multimedia documents
- Local Area Networks (LAN): dominant communication infrastructure. High speed data transfer among
workstations, continue development of client/server and cooperative
processing architectures
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- Operating Environments: collection of software layers defining
environment within which user gets things done on the computer. It includes functions that have been
performed by the operating system, plus a set of “middleware,” plus the
“look and feel” of the user interface
- Integrated Office Suites: final piece of technical infrastructure. They have been around in the form of
DEC’s All-in-1, Wang’s Office, IBM’s Professors and Office Vision, and
HP Desk. New ingredient is UNIX
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- Supporting Same Time/Same Place Groups:
- The problem with meetings: no agenda, or only a superficial one; key
people arrive late or not at all
- Information technology can help:
- Eliminate some meetings: meetings that don’t call for a group
decision, when key people can’t attend, when needed info is not
available
- Better preparation for meetings: computer conferencing; encourage
better planning for those meetings that must be held
- Improve the effectiveness and efficiency of meetings: group commitment
happens more quickly
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- 24 IBM PS/2
- 48 people, 2 per workstation
- Electronic Brainstorming - to generate ideas, simultaneously and
anonymously
- Issue Analyzer - to organize ideas
- Voting tool - to rank ideas
- Topic commenter to attach ideas already in system
- Policy formation software to study alternatives
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- It increased involvement - decision room allowed them to do in three
days what would have taken them months
- The planning process was more effective - because of anonymity and
planning process itself was educational
- Brainstorming effective, anonymity elicited candor and objectivity
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- Supporting Presentations and Discussions:
- More opportunities for discussion: using a GSS would eliminate the need
to divide available airtime among potential speakers because
participants could contribute simultaneously
- More equal participation: because the GSS provides many parallel
communication channels, loud or strong personalities probably would not
dominate the discussion
- Permanent record of discussion: GSS would capture a permanent
electronic transcript of the online discussion
- Improved feedback to presenters: presenters anticipated more comments
as well as more detail in those comments
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- Supporting Presentations and Discussions:
- Improved learning: GSS was expected to reduce attention blocking (the
loss of attentiveness caused by people trying to remember what they
want to say during the presentation)
- Remote and asynchronous participation: people who don’t attend a
presentation could still benefit by reading and contributing after the
event
- Potential negative effects: online discussions might distract
participants to the point where they lose the thread of the
presentation
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- Supporting Dispersed Groups:
- Development of virtual teams: usually disband after their project is
complete
- Same time/same place: team meets face-to-face initially to develop the
basic plan and objectives
- Different time/different place: then they communicate by e-mail and do
data gathering and analysis separately
- Same time/different place: may have audio or video conferences to
discuss developments and progress toward goals
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- Three Major Categories of Use:
- To support project team activities: used the groupware to plan
face-to-face non-groupware meetings
- To support education: to supplement face-to-face teaching or training
- To replace e-mail listserv systems: to support discussions of special
interest groups
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- Advantages of Web-Based Groupware:
- Open network standards
- Open client standards
- Minimal individual learning
- Transformations
- Functions
- Setup costs
- Disadvantages of Web-Based Groupware:
- Features
- Network speed and reliability
- Network security
- Operating costs
- Group learning
- Lack of access
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