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IT support for marketing planning can aid in the use of marketing tools, facilitate group planning, and support moves towards continuous planning based on a live marketing model of the business. But, amongst other factors, achieving these benefits depends on the style of support provided by the system. After a review of relevant decision support system (DSS) literature, describes here the findings relating to support style from a qualitative evaluation of a system named EXMAR. The findings support Little’s classic rules of “decision calculus”, such as the importance of ensuring that managers understand and can control the system, rather than the objective influenced by management science of prescribing an optimal recommendation. Also emphasises the role of systems in enhancing mutual understanding in a cross‐functional planning team, and hence in building commitment to the resulting plan.

The use of visual templates has proven instrumental in supporting group meetings. The purpose of this paper is to explore whether visual templates enable culturally diverse groups to achieve greater task precision in face-to-face meetings.

Building on Adaptive Structuration Theory, it is argued that visual templates provide structuration for face-to-face meetings, even more so when they are embedded in computer-supported collaborative systems. In particular, it is hypothesized that the higher the degree of structuration imposed by visual templates, the higher the degree of task precision will be. It is also hypothesized that this relationship is positively moderated by group cultural diversity: higher cultural diversity will further sustain the positive effects of visual templates that provide higher structuration.

Results of an experiment with 229 managers from 49 countries confirm that facilitating groups with visual templates embedded in a computer-supported collaborative system significantly increases task precision at high levels of cultural diversity.

This study contributes to Positive Organizational Scholarship (POS) by investigating the use of visual templates as a contingency factor that increases performance – specifically task precision – of co-located, culturally diverse groups.

Results indicate that visual templates embedded in a computer-supported collaborative system are an effective method for increasing task precision in face-to-face meetings of culturally diverse groups.

Theories from information systems and visualization are integrated into cross-cultural management with a view to sustaining the effectiveness of culturally diverse groups. The study sample is characterized by highly culturally diverse groups interacting in face-to-face meetings.

A hybrid approach for integrating group Delphi, fuzzy logic and expert systems for developing marketing strategies is proposed in this paper. Within this approach, the group Delphi method is employed to help groups of managers undertake SWOT analysis. Fuzzy logic is applied to fuzzify the results of SWOT analysis. Expert systems are utilised to formulate marketing strategies based upon the fuzzified strategic inputs. In addition, guidelines are also provided to help users link the hybrid approach with managerial judgement and intuition. The effectiveness of the hybrid approach has been validated with MBA and MA marketing students. It is concluded that the hybrid approach is more effective in terms of decision confidence, group consensus, helping to understand strategic factors, helping strategic thinking, and coupling analysis with judgement, etc.

The purpose of this paper is to present the design and first results of the integration of a web‐based system person‐centred group‐activity support system (PEGASUS) in university instruction, as a means for advancing person‐centred learning by supporting group activity. The PEGASUS is expected to help students and teachers in two distinct objectives: enhancing metacognition (students and teachers are supported to identify their learning and teaching preferences, which in turn is used as a framework for reflection), and group formation (the system suggests homogeneous or heterogeneous workgroups, supporting also teacher‐students negotiations of the final group synthesis).

First, a theoretical framework is built to reflect the process of transforming the principles for learner‐centred learning into a pedagogical model which becomes the basis for defining the PEGASUS specifications. Then, qualitative field evidence is provided from the initial integration of the system into the teaching process to support students' group activity.

From the pilot testing of PEGASUS it is evident that learning style‐based group formation might not be acceptable to all students in the typical classroom setting where students already know each other. The early implementation data indicate that not every student might accept the theory‐based grouping suggestions of the instructor.

The research is limited to qualitative and preliminary results from undergraduate as well as postgraduate students.

Systems like PEGASUS can initiate fruitful discussions among students and teachers on the role of learning styles in learning. However, group activity is a complex socio‐cognitive phenomenon that cannot be approached simply on the basis of students' learning styles. Still, such a system can help identify how students' learning styles can be of significance under certain conditions.

The paper describes the development of a web‐based system for personalised learning and system integration in everyday teaching.

Face‐to‐face business meetings are a widely used method of group interaction, and a rich source of data on what actually happens in group discussions. Active participation in a meeting is usually perceived to be making an oral contribution of some kind to the discussion. This paper describes a field study of ten face‐to‐face business meetings which were videotaped and subsequently analysed. Participant contributions were coded, and the data summarized. The mean contribution was approximately 12 seconds and 18 words. The most common contribution type was information giving. The highest single contributor in each meeting captured, on average, about 30% of the available airtime, while the two highest, combined, captured over half of the airtime. These findings are discussed within the context of requirements for designers of collaborative technology systems to support group interpersonal communication through the use of computing and data communication technologies.

Mobile technology research focuses on supporting the individual mobile worker. CCSW research has primarily focused on supporting distributed, but fixed‐site workers. This research bridges both research foci by expanding to include mobile, anytime, anyplace support. The VLab (Virtual laboratory) provides anytime, anyplace process support for mobile software development teams. A longitudinal evaluation of group interactions in multiple extant teams establishes a baseline that helps to identify process support requirements. This baseline can be used to judge the effect of introducing process support technology that addresses specific context variables in group interactions.

Virtual project teams are teams whose members use technology to varying degrees in working across locational, temporal, and relational boundaries to accomplish an interdependent task. Work in virtual project teams is a challenge for many organizations. Having studied the issue for several years, the authors propose in this paper to delve deeper into the question from the point of view of organizational support. More specifically, this paper seeks to focus on the organizational support systems and mechanisms provided by firms to their virtual project teams and their impacts on the components of these teams. The objective is to identify the structural factors and processes related to virtual teams that are affected by organizational support systems and mechanisms.

The paper reports exploratory empirical case studies of two Canadian‐based international high‐tech companies. In‐depth interviews were conducted with managers with experience in virtual project team management.

The same organizational support systems and mechanisms were found to exist in both companies. Functional processes were found to be the virtual team components that were most affected by the implementation of support systems and mechanisms. They are followed by communicational processes, which were substantially supported by various support systems and mechanisms in Company A but less supported in Company B. To a lesser extent, the relational processes of both firms were also affected, while structural factors affecting virtual project teams were almost entirely unsupported.

Virtual project teams require various kinds of commitments by corporate management. For example, we find that top management supports virtual project teams by means of human resources (HR), resource allocation, coordination, and communication support systems. These support systems facilitate project coordination and monitoring, information exchange and access, trust building and cohesion between team members. These findings enable practitioners to better understand the effects of organizational support on the components of virtual teams, so that greater attention is paid to the configuration of these components and support systems can be better designed to improve virtual project team performance.

Organizational support is considered to have a strong impact on project success. Few publications have examined organizational support for virtual project teams, and even fewer have focused on its effects on such teams. This paper should contribute to fostering a better understanding of the effects of organizational support on the components of virtual project teams.

This paper presents the findings based on a survey conducted to examine the status and extent of the use of computer‐based technology (CBT) to support “quality”, including such aspects as quality control, quality assurance and quality management, in Hong Kong. Five main categories of CBTs, namely decision support systems (DSSs), group support systems (GSSs), executive information systems (EISs), expert systems (ESs) and artificial neural networks (ANNs), in support of quality are surveyed. The survey findings indicate that CBT usage to support quality in Hong Kong is low, particularly ESs and ANNs. This is partly due to a lack of awareness regarding the potential of CBTs in supporting quality among their potential users, and partly because of a lack of availability of suitable software to support their use. This paper represents a first attempt to examine the real‐life use of CBTs in support of quality. Based on the research findings, we have identified several opportunities for further research and suggested a number of research directions for CBTs to support “quality”in practice.

In the current global competitive environment, if an organization is to be successful, it has to be a learning organization. Organizations learn from their assertive and adaptive interaction with the environment and from their internal dynamics. Organizational learning needs to be supported as external environments and internal dynamics of organizations become more complex. Discusses different learning processes and the different intelligent systems which can support and enhance organizational learning. Finally, presents a conceptual framework of an integrated intelligent system for supporting organizational learning. Intends to be useful to both organizational theorists/ practitioners and IT managers, who are involved in the development and implementation of learning organizations.

Organization efforts in groups generate interaction and procedural structures, or “rules of behavior”. The type and extent of structuring are affected by preexisting preferences among group members for a desired degree of procedural order, as well as by the communication media available in the meeting environment. Analysis of thirty partially‐distributed groups that met over a series of four sessions was conducted by using two methods. Questionnaires were administered to ascertain perceptions of satisfaction and procedural practices. Content analysis was used to determine actual procedural behavioral patterns. It appears that preferences for procedural order does affect structuring behaviors, but do not affect their satisfaction with the group process. Interestingly, and counter to the expectations elicited from a history of media richness theory and studies, results here indicate that interaction media (video conferencing vs. audio conferencing) have no affect on either members’ perceptions of procedural structuring, their satisfaction, or their actual procedural structuring practices. Implications of these results are discussed.