I work with many individuals located across the US developing websites, applications, and promoting the ideas of an entrepreneur. To do this we have to be in contact frequently and use many platforms to incorporated our ideas, thoughts, meetings, progress, and documents. We have used various im programs (AIM, MSN Messenger), conferencing software (Skype), desktop sharing programs (Microsoft SharedView), and document control (Google Docs, SVN) to keep communications steady.
I believe everyone in the group realizes the fact that group work and productivity is directly proportional with the distance - the further, less gets done. It is for this reason the established leader has set a mandatory weekly meetings. This meeting is at the same time and only takes 1 to 1.5 hours. It is the constant reminder of our task and duties, keeps expectations clear, and give us the accountability needed in group work. We combat the advs. of in-person meetings by using technologies that cause us to hear, see, or work directly with the person.
During winter break, everyone was in relax mode and though we had a clear cut definition of what should be done before jobs and school began we did not meet those deadlines due to the lack of communication and collaborative work sessions. In this instance we experienced Cummings concepts on how the presence of others and the shared setting affect us. However, in other instances we have been able to pull together and accomplish more in the span of time with the help of programs to facilitate the environment of working directly or in close proximity with each other (one on one if not the whole group).
We have found it important to split up the work and find it is useful for many portions of McGrath's Task Circumplex. But we also realize for the 'Choose' section that it is important to be done initially by a single person and then finalized in a group setting. Since this is a group effort that will last more than a year we are constantly revising our ways of communication to gain the productivity that groups meeting physically together would gain, and it has become our view that we can still be comparable with our outputs to groups in close proximity.
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The group work that you do supports the organizational contingency theory. There are some instances in your group work where the groups were able to accomplish more with the collaboration technology even though distance, in most cases, seemed to hinder group effort.
ReplyDeleteAlso, depending on the tasks, groups use various technologies/methods to support the group. The group uses Google Docs or SVN to work on papers or documents, and use other technologies to talk to each other directly.
You also mentioned that everyone in the group believes that group work and productivity is directly proportional with distance. I wonder how this relationship between group work and productivity change with the current collaboration technologies that enable the group to work synchronously, and what new problems may have to be solved to improve group interactions.
I am also in a similar situation where we use Gmail, company email, blackberry messenger, and skype. I agree with the point of the further the distance the less gets done because if you are an hr drive away, a meeting could be scheduled easily because of proximity but further there is a need to collaborate via technology which doesn't make up for face to face interaction. My group also has chosen to do items individually then get together and collaborate since sometimes 30 minute conversations turn into hours.
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