Abstract

Organizational work is increasingly conducted by geographically dispersed individuals working as groups. Geographic dispersion and simultaneous membership in multiple groups often make it impractical to bring decision groups together for traditional, face-to-face meetings. Therefore, group decisions need to be carried out by physically and temporally dispersed asynchronousgroups. This paper describes the development of computer support for asynchronous groups performing a specific task type. Group decision support systems have focused on computer support for face-to-face decision groups and have been the subject of extensive research (e.g., Jessup and Valacich, 1993). In contrast, research on physically and temporally dispersed groups has been limited (e.g., Turoff, et al., 1993). To developeffective computer support for asynchronous groups we apply a system analysis and design approach: First, we employ a Requirements Analysis and then we proceed to develop an appropriate Systems Design to meet the identified requirements. Our ultimate goalis to test the effectiveness of the system under conditions of experimental control.

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