Joel H. Helquist

Participant-Driven Collaborative Convergence

Traditional GSS workflow leverages the abilities of an expert facilitator to lead groups through the convergence activities. This dependence on a facilitator creates a bottleneck that is difficult to resolve in asynchronous and distributed groups. This paper presents a new framework, participant-driven convergence, which enables the participants to perform the convergence work in parallel. The goal of this approach is to enable each participant to work in parallel and anonymously to drive the group toward some level of convergence consensus.

Participant-driven GSS: Quality of Brainstorming and Allocation of Participant Resources

This paper examines the relationship between time duration and the quality of brainstorming output. Quality of brainstorming output is operationalized using creativity and feasibility measures. Results indicate that brainstorming quality does decrease over the duration of the brainstorming session. Results also indicate the number of off-topic and non-solution brainstorming output increases significantly over time. These findings are discussed in light of participant-driven group support systems

Dynamic collaboration: participant-driven agile processes for complex tasks

Groups and decision makers are increasingly running headlong into complexity as interconnections and interdependencies between individuals and organizations continue to grow, decision time horizons shrink and more work is being performed by distributed teams. These factors are driving up overall problem space complexity and limiting the effectiveness of time-tested decision and collaboration processes. Increases in problem space complexity lead to higher equivocality in collaborative processes and associated products. Electronic collaboration support tools and associated process management schemes have proven successful in many challenging contexts. However, current collaboration process management schemes and tools may not be able to effectively handle more complex tasks. We posit that heightened problem space complexity must be addressed with commensurate process and technological support for collaborative efforts. To achieve truly agile collaborative solutions, we propose Dynamic Collaboration -- a process management scheme that utilizes group consensus, and process evolution via iterative process alignment and product refinement phases to meet the challenges posed by complexity and equivocality.

Synchronicity and Group Ability to Autonomously Cluster Brainstorming Ideas

This article presents an exploratory examination of the impact of synchronicity and quantity of brainstorming ideas on the ability of a group to autonomously cluster brainstorming ideas. Groups were tasked with clustering brainstorming ideas through the use of a group support system (GSS) tool. The tool allowed each participant to create and modify categories to which individual brainstorming ideas could be aligned. No explicit means of coordination were available; each participant worked autonomously to cluster the brainstorming ideas. The results indicated that the groups working synchronously displayed improved performance and satisfaction ratings. Likewise, groups categorizing the smallest quantity of brainstorming ideas performed better than the larger quantities.

Understanding Collaboration Success in Context of Cognitive and Social Presence

Collaboration and the success of collaborative efforts has been the focus of much information systems research. Recent measures of collaboration success include effectiveness, efficiency, productivity, commitment, satisfaction with the process, and satisfaction with the outcome. While the possible antecedents of collaboration success are many and varied, we suggest that constructs from the e-learning literature, that evolved independently from the information systems collaboration literature, can be used to explain differences in perceived collaboration success. Results from a recent exploratory study demonstrate that cognitive presence and social presence explain a large amount of the variance of different collaboration success metrics.

Exploring diverse process and team alternatives through virtual process simulation

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to present a virtual process simulation technique for modeling process alternatives.Design/methodology/approach – The paper proposes modeling method and applies it to an illustrative example.Findings – The method is effective in modeling the illustrative example and provides a method for studying team composition and dynamics a priori.Practical implications – The paper presents an approach to model process alternatives in order to select the best deployment option. The modeling process incorporates measures and metrics relating to global geographic and team issues. Incorporation of these issues affords the process designer the ability to predict more accurately the most successful deployment option.Originality/value – The research contributes to the study of process modeling by examining the potentially neglected or ignored issues relating to geographic and team diversity.

Peer-reviewed Brainstorming to Facilitate Large Group Collaboration

This paper examines the impact of peer-reviewed brainstorming on the quality of brainstorming ideas. Peer-reviewed brainstorming aims to improve the quality of the brainstorming ideas and reduce the number of noisy comments. A pilot study was conducted that compared traditional, free brainstorming to a peer-reviewed brainstorming process, which requires each idea to be reviewed and edited by peers. The peer-review process did reduce the number of low quality ideas. This process was also rated higher in satisfaction ratings than traditional

Analyzing process uncertainty through virtual process simulation

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to propose virtual process simulation as a technique for identifying and analyzing uncertainty in processes. Uncertainty is composed of both risks and opportunities.Design/methodology/approach – Virtual process simulation involves the creation of graphical models representing the process of interest and associated tasks. Graphical models representing the resources (e.g. people, facilities, tools, etc.) are also created. The members of the resources graphical models are assigned to process tasks in all possible combinations. Secondary calculi, representing uncertainty, are imposed upon these models to determine scores. From the scores, changes in process structure or resource allocation can be used to manage uncertainty.Findings – The example illustrates the benefits of utilizing virtual process simulation in process pre‐planning. Process pre‐planning can be used as part of strategic or operational uncertainty management.Practical implications – This paper presents an...

Improving Collaborative Convergence through Distributed and Parallel Sorting

This paper examines a convergence process of organizing ideas that are generated during collaborative idea generation activities. The method presented reduces the impact of organizing brainstorming ideas on individual participants by dividing the convergence activity into smaller, discrete tasks that can be completed individually, and in parallel, by the participants. The entire pool of brainstorming ideas is subdivided into smaller pools and each participant is then tasked with organizing one of the subsets of ideas. The results show that by dividing up the overall activity into subtasks, the subjects experienced a more favorable environment. Furthermore, the subjects were able to work through their subset of ideas and produce results that were similar to those performing the full sort of the entire pool.

Creating and Sustaining Collaborative Efforts for Scientific Idea Exchange through Autonomy, Competence, and Relatedness

Collaborative engagements among scientists and researchers are increasingly becoming dependent on information and communication technologies (ICTs), but there is little focus on developing next-generation technology-based collaboration schemes geared specifically to support and sustain scientific idea exchanges among researchers, because we lack the necessary conceptual frameworks and deeper understanding of the social and group dynamics involved. Building upon initial research leads from disciplines such as psychology, sociology, and management information systems, a novel scientific idea exchange (SIE) collaboration scheme is proposed that is instantiated in a research prototype. Given the need to understand the motivational challenges among researchers collaborating virtually, the SIE scheme takes a participant-driven approach and draws on Social Capital Theory and also Cognitive Evaluation Theory (CET) within the Self-Determination Theory (SDT) framework to address three innate psychological needs (autonomy, competence, and relatedness) to increase the intrinsic motivation of participants to engage in idea exchange. Research propositions based on these theoretical foundations are developed, along with a roadmap for the research program.