DOES THE MEDIUM MATTER - THE INTERACTION OF TASK TYPE AND TECHNOLOGY ON GROUP-PERFORMANCE AND MEMBER REACTIONS

The authors investigated the hypothesis that as group tasks pose great er requirements for member interdependence, communication media that t ransmit more social context cues will foster group performance and sat isfaction. Seventy-two 3-person groups of undergraduate students worke d in either computer-mediated or face-to-face meetings on 3 tasks with increasing levels of interdependence: an idea-generation task, an int ellective task, and a judgment task. Results showed few differences be tween computer-mediated and face-to-face groups in the quality of the work completed but large differences in productivity favoring face-to- face groups. Analysis of productivity and of members' reactions suppor ted the predicted interaction of tasks and media, with greater discrep ancies between media conditions for tasks requiring higher levels of c oordination. Results are discussed in terms of the implications of usi ng computer-mediated communication systems for group work.