An experimental investigation of facilitation in an EMS decision room

Abstract

Electronic meeting systems (EMS) provide a way for information technology to support groups meeting together for a variety of tasks. Some systems have been designed to depend on facilitators to guide groups through EMS use, whereas others have been designed to be used without facilitators. Yet little empirical research has been conducted to determine the differences between facilitated and nonfacilitated EMS use. This article describes an experiment that compared facilitated and nonfacilitated EMS groups. No differences were found between these two modes of EMS use for the number of alternatives generated, decision quality, ability to reach consensus, or satisfaction with the group process. However, if the number of alternatives generated is treated as a covariate, facilitated groups made better decisions, but nonfacilitated groups were more likely to reach consensus.