The Impact of Group Process Training and Role Assignments on the Performance
Keng Siau, Sid Davis
Many project teams in organizations are highly structured, members have clearly defined roles, and they possess knowledge about how to effectively manage their projects and meetings. On the other hand, students in educational environments lack significant experience working in teams. Therefore student teams are often poorly structured, memberscommonlyhave difficultydevelopingfunctional roles, and communicationand coordinationproblems persist. We demonstrated the impact a/these problems by interjecting two interventions in student project teams: 1) training on group process and 2) role assignment. The results ofa controlled experiment show that both interventions had a positive influence on student project teams. Team members that were assigned roles reported higher cohesion and produced higher quality projects than did team members in the control group. Furthermore, cohesion and project quality were highest in teams that received both training and role assignments. A discussion of the findings and implications for future research are presented.
Brian E. Mennecke is an associate professor of management information Systems in the College ofBusiness at Iowa State University. Dr. Mennecke earned his PhD at IndianaUniversity in management information systems and also holds master degrees in geology and business from Miami University. His research interests include data visualization, electronic commerce, group decision making, technology-supported training, spatial technologies, and spatial data warehouses. He has publisbed articles in academic and practitionerjournals such as the International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, the Journal of Management Information Systems, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processing, the Journal of Computer Information Systems, and Small Group Research.
John Bradley is an associate professor of management information systems in the Department of Decision Sciences at East CarolinaUniversity. His research interests are knowledge based systems, case-based reasoning, and IS implementation and organizational impact. Dr. Bradley has published in journals such as Expert Systems with Applications, Heuristics, Journal of Small Business Management, and others.
Michael McLeod is an associate professor of management information Systems in the Department of Decision Sciences at East Carolina University. He holds a PhD from the University of Georgia and MBA and BSBA from Auburn University. His currentresearch interests are e-commerce implementation, distance education and small group dynamics. He has published in Psychological Reports, College Student Journal, and Georgia State Bar Journal. He is a Certified Data Processor (CDP).
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