C.A.P. Smith

Decision Making under Time Pressure: An Investigation of Decision Speed and Decision Quality of Computer-Supported Groups

A quasi-experiment was conducted in which groups made business decisions under time pressure. Half of the groups were supported with a group support system (GSS) called the Electronic Discussion System; half had no computer support. The groups consisted of college students who had considerable experience with the GSS and the decision task and had worked together for the previous 10 weeks. Decision quality, decision speed, and leadership emergence were measured. All groups received significant financial rewards in direct proportion to their decision quality and decision speed. GSS groups used more time to arrive at their decisions but made decisions of higher quality than non-GSS-supported groups. In addition, there was some evidence that, under time pressure, GSS-supported groups used a more leader-directed decision process than did other typical users of GSS.

Who Wins on eBay: An Analysis of Bidders and Their Bid Behaviours

Online auctioning is one of the more successful business innovations on the Web. The auction format at eBay, the leading online auctioneer, has some unique characteristics including a fixed closing time for the bids and the use of a proxy bidding system that that is capable of acting as a bidders agent. These features, coupled with third party products such as sniping software, have introduced novel bidder behaviours that may not occur in more traditional auction formats. In an attempt to study these behaviours, we collected and analysed data from over 11,000 eBay auctions. This paper presents the results of the analyses including descriptive information about the auctions and the classification of bids and bidders based on bid timing, frequency and strategy employed. The different types of bidders and their success rates offer insights into the nature of bidder participation in eBay auctions. In addition, chi‐square analyses reveal significant differences among the bidding strategies with respect to auc...

The effectiveness of groups recognizing patterns

An experiment was conducted in which groups made resource allocation decisions while physically dispersed and supported with a shared virtual work surface (What You See Is What I See--WYSIWIS). The task required groups to recognize patterns of information and collaborate to allocate their resources appropriately. The experimental treatment involved the use of a tool specifically designed to minimize the cognitive effort required to recognize and share patterns among group members. Dependent measures included outcome quality, time-to-decision, consensus of pattern recognition, and the number of resource allocation moves required to reach consensus. All groups received significant financial rewards in direct proportion to their outcome quality. Groups supported with the patternsharing tool had significantly higher outcome quality and significantly less resource movements. These results extend the theory of Recognition-Primed Decision-Making by applying it to groups.

A distributed system for crisis management

The paper describes the architecture of a distributed system to support crisis management. The system is designed to reduce the time required to make decisions, while maintaining decision quality. The design combines a number of technologies that have been proven useful in other applications, including computer supported idea generation, parallel processing, and data pipelining. In addition, the system provides a mechanism to filter information for use by an individual decision maker. It is expected that the system will improve the response to, recovery from, and mitigation of crises.<<ETX>>

The Relationship Between e-Collaboration and Cognition

Recent research has proposed that groupware performance may be strongly affected by the fit between the task and the groupware structures selected for use. We suggest that the link is deeper; there needs to be a fit between the task and the group’s cognitive structures as mapped to the groupware structures. In this paper, we address this shortcoming by integrating recent theories of cognition (distributed cognition, transactive memory, and template theory) from the perspective of electronic collaboration. We refine the concept of cognitive fit as applied to group work and offer propositions for further study. We suggest that template core data is used during situation assessment and that slot data refines response selection. Finally, we propose several techniques by which the group cognitive effort can be minimized, thereby leaving more capacity for the collective task. This approach is especially applicable to naturalistic group decision situations.

The use of pattern-communication tools and team pattern recognition

This study extends the theory of recognition primed decision-making by applying it to groups. An experiment was conducted in which teams made resource allocation decisions while physically dispersed and supported with a shared virtual work surface (What You See Is What I See-WYSIWIS). The task required teams to recognize patterns and collaborate to allocate their resources appropriately. The experiment explored the use of tools (item versus chunk level communication) designed to minimize the cognitive effort required to recognize and communicate patterns among team members. Dependent measures included pattern communication correctness, pattern communication time, resource allocation time, and outcome quality. All teams received significant financial rewards in direct proportion to their outcome quality. Teams supported with the pattern-communicating tools had significantly higher outcome quality and significantly less resource movements and allocation time than teams in the control condition. Further, the teams that used the chunk-communicating tool performed significantly better than the teams supported with an item-communicating tool.

Team Pattern Recognition: Sharing Cognitive Chunks Under Time Pressure

This study extends the theory of Recognition Primed Decision-Making by applying it to groups. Furthermore, we explore the application of Template Theory to collaboration. An experiment was conducted in which teams made resource allocation decisions while physically dispersed and supported with a shared virtual work surface (What You See Is What I See - WYSIWIS) both with and without time-pressure. The task required teams to recognize patterns and collaborate to allocate their resources appropriately. The experiment explores the use of a cognitively aligned tool (memory chunks) designed to minimize the cognitive effort required to for teams to recognize and share recognized patterns. Dependent measures included outcome quality, resource allocation time, and resource allocation ordering. All teams received significant financial rewards in direct proportion to their outcome quality and decision speed. Teams supported with the pattern-sharing tool had high outcome quality even under time pressure.

Experiences with electronic and voice mail

Organizational computing tools are often developed and managed with an eye toward increasing efficiency. Two of todays most widespread tools are electronic mail and voice mail. They are often considered similar asynchronous communication systems, one less rich than the other. We report usage results from a single firm which adopted both electronic mail and voice mail at the same time. Survey respondents view technologies as vital to accomplishing business, but use them in quite different ways. Electronic mail was utilized to communicate with all personnel equally. In contrast, respondents communicated with their peers using voice mail more than they did up or down the corporate hierarchy. The technologies were used differently for internal and external communication. Both of these results fly in the face of information richness theory.

Choice and judgment - The future of flight training

Improvements in pilot judgment training have the potential to save hundreds of lives every year. Based on the Applied Learning Theory and the Recognition-Primed Decision model, we introduce an inexpensive computer simulator that incorporates actual flight video segments to provide pilots with judgment training. Emphasis is place on making choices because research shows a potential benefit of framing decisions in this way. Furthermore, the simulator incorporates an element of time pressure to make the training more realistic. Practice with realistic scenarios and continued reinforcement of correct behavior will hopefully lead to improved judgment training for general aviation pilots