Inquiring Systems' Validation Approaches as Determinants of the Media Richness for Technology Supported Group Work

摘要

A conceptualization of group work (problem solving or decision making) as an inquiry system allows to draw distinctions among various task situations. It was argued that the implicit or explicit approach, adopted by a group to validate group process outcome would be instrumental in determining the communication support features (i.e.. media richness) of a GSS. The advantage of the task conceptualization presented in this paper is that it is applicable to tasks that are realistic and extend over a considerable period of time. An analysis of the task and the group in terms of the characteristics described in this paper can be useful in prescribing the right type of communication support for a group process.