Anita L. Blanchard

Online mentoring and computer-mediated communication: New directions in research

While there has been a veritable explosion of online mentoring websites and opportunities within a wide variety of professions, very few academic articles to date have addressed this phenomenon. The purpose of this article is to remedy this gap in our knowledge by: (a) suggesting that the Internet can provide a viable context for mentoring within defined roles, (b) presenting a new typology of mentoring based on the computer-mediated-communication (CMC) literature, and in doing so suggest new opportunities and challenges, and (c) providing recommendations for researchers and practitioners to explore online mentoring. Past research has found that within the three functions of mentoring (psychosocial, vocational, and role modeling), a mentor can play a number of roles such as business coach, friend, counselor, and/or teacher to a prot e e We extend past research by assessing the major issues applicable to these mentor roles through an examination of CMC literature. We provide specific research propositions to inspire future research into online mentoring and its related contexts, roles, opportunities, and challenges. 2003 Elsevier Science (USA). All rights reserved.

Virtual Behavior Settings: An Application of Behavior Setting Theories to Virtual Communities

Virtual communities are a new social phenomenon in computer-mediated communication (CMC). Within these communities, a sense of place is emerging that may provide a key to understanding them. This paper proposes that virtual communities can be better understood as operating within an emerging environmental form: virtual behavior settings, a concept informed by Barkers (1968, 1978a) and Wickers (1987, 1992) theories of (face-to-face) behavior settings, altered by considerations of the distinctive qualities of time, place, and objects in CMC. Virtual behavior settings are examined in terms of the emergence and maintenance of setting programs, their participants, and their operation within physical behavior settings.

Motivations in virtual health communities and their relationship to community, connectedness and stress

This study explores the relationships between motivations for joining virtual health communities, online behaviors, and psycho-social outcomes. A sample of 144 women from two virtual health communities focusing on infertility completed survey measures assessing motivations, posting and receiving support, connectedness, community, and stress. Our results indicate that socio-emotional support motivations for joining the community were associated with posting support within the virtual community, while informational motivations were related to receiving support. Further, receiving support was associated with greater sense of virtual community as well as more general feelings of connectedness, which was related to less stress. Implications for virtual health community research are discussed.

Supportive communication, sense of virtual community and health outcomes in online infertility groups

Women are turning to online health groups to deal with the stresses and complications of infertility. Online groups may provide a resource that is potentially absent in their face-to-face communities. This study examines how the sense of virtual community (SOVC) that develops in these groups serves as a buffer between perceived stress and physical health symptoms. A sample of 122 women from two virtual communities completed an online survey. Results show that observing the exchange of emotional support was positively related to SOVC while observing informational support was negatively related to SOVC. Further, SOVC was negatively related to physical health symptoms and additionally, served as a buffer between stress and physical health symptoms. Implications for SOVC and virtual health community research are discussed.

Followership Styles and Employee Attachment to the Organization

Successful followership is an important but understudied characteristic of employees. Following Kelleys (1992) followership conceptualization, we propose that there are two dimensions of followership: independent critical thinking and active engagement. Additionally, we argue that these two dimensions of followership interact and are associated with important work outcomes, particularly job satisfaction and organizational commitment. We surveyed 331 university employees. Results indicate that there are two followership behavior dimensions from Kelleys model that align with critical thinking and active engagement constructs. Active engagement is positively associated with job satisfaction and organizational commitment. Independent critical thinking is negatively associated with organizational commitment and extrinsic job satisfaction. Interaction effects between these constructs are also discussed.

Technology and Community Behavior in Online Environments

The literature on virtual or online communities contains two largely disjoint bodies of scholarship. One, which we call the “communities” literature, is concerned primarily with the social and psychological processes observable within groups of people that interact regularly in online environments. The other, concerned primarily with the effects of technological environments on individual and group behavior, we call the “environments” literature.

Influence tactics in virtual teams

Virtual team members use FtF influence tactics in new ways with ICT.Ambiguity reduction techniques is a new influence tactic in virtual teams.Lower status virtual team members successfully influenced higher status members.Peer virtual team members were less successful influencing each other.Strategies of documenting information and developing relationships emerged. Most current studies of influence tactics in virtual teams assume that these constructs operate in a similar manner as they do in the face-to-face (FtF) environment. However, important differences between these contexts may alter how influence tactics are expressed in virtual teams. Using status characteristics as the theoretical lens, this study intensively examines how influence tactics are manifested in virtual teams and which are most successful. Twenty-three members of different virtual teams were interviewed about their previous attempts to influence team members. The main findings are that while some influence tactics are present in both FtF and online environments, there is a tendency to use harder (i.e., more assertive) influence tactics in virtual teams. Second, some influence tactics used in both FtF and virtual environments are enacted in novel ways in virtual teams. Further, virtual team members have developed a new technique which reduces the ambiguity of virtual communications in order to influence their team members. Finally, status affects influence success in novel and unexpected ways.

Listserv Implementation and Sense of Community: The Relationships with Increased Knowledge and Face-to-Face Interaction

This study examines how a listserv affects its members’ sense of community (SOC) with the sponsoring organization. It was expected that the listserv would increase members’ knowledge about and participation in the sponsoring organization department, which, in turn, would increase their SOC. The study examined listserv members and non-members before and after implementation of the listserv. As expected, listserv membership increased knowledge and face-to-face activity, and knowledge and face-to-face activity increased a sense of community. However, ironically, there was no effect of listserv membership on sense of community. These findings challenge previous theories about the development of sense of community while nonetheless demonstrating the positive effects of listserv membership.

Managing Entitativity through Social Media

Abstract Purpose This chapter examines the affordances of social media to understand how groups are experienced through social media. Specifically, the chapter presents a theoretical model to understand how affordances of social media promote or suppress entitativity. Methodology Participants (N=265) were recruited through snowball sampling to answer questions about their recent Facebook status updates. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was used to examine the goodness of fit for our model. Findings We validate a model of entitativity as it occurs through the affordances offered by social media. Participant’s knowledge that status update responders were an interacting group outside of Facebook affected their perceptions of interactivity in the responses. Interactivity and history of interactions were the strongest predictors of status update entitativity. Further, status update entitativity had positive relationships with overall Facebook entitativity as well as group identity. Practical implications To encourage group identity through social media, managers need to increase employees’ perceptions of entitativity, primarily by enabling employees to see the interactions of others and to contribute content in social media platforms. Originality/value This is the only study we know of that empirically examines how groups are experienced through social media. Additionally, we draw from an affordance perspective, which helps to generalize our findings beyond the site of our study.

Developing an entitativity measure and distinguishing it from antecedents and outcomes within online and face-to-face groups

Entitativity, an individual’s recognition of a social unit as a group, is a fundamental group characteristic. However, past entitativity measures have not demonstrated their psychometric validity. We create and demonstrate initial psychometric validity for a new measure of entitativity as well as several of its antecedents. We demonstrate convergent and divergent validity of our entitativity measure (and the antecedents) in three studies of online and face-to-face groups in which people either observe a group or are members of a group. Results demonstrate that our measures of entitativity and its antecedents are robust across different group contexts. We also discuss the implications of the results of this research to advance entitativity theory.