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This chapter explores communication processes within online support groups. Online support group researchers have drawn upon a variety of theories in the decades of empirical research that has been conducted within this context. The chapter focuses on motivations for using online support groups, key theoretical frameworks that have been applied to the study of online support groups, supportive messages and communication processes within these groups, and the relationship between social support and health outcomes for online support group participants. The chapter concludes with several key limitations of previous work as well as a number of areas for theory development and future research studies.

Looks at new communications technologies, such as videoconferencing systems, which have enabled the creation of “virtual organizations” and “virtual teams”. Investigates the hypotheses that both “social presence” and “media richness” associated with a communication medium used to support geographically‐dispersed software development teams, will have a significant impact on team productivity, perceived interaction quality, and group process satisfaction. Results supported the predicted superiority of the face‐to‐face setting over the videoconferencing setting with regard to team productivity. They also indicated that a communication medium characterized as high in both “media richness” and “social presence” can engender a greater sense of interaction quality. There were no significant differences between the face‐to‐face and videoconferencing settings for group process satisfaction.

This chapter focuses on techniques and technologies to aid groups in making decisions, with an emphasis on computer-based support. Many office workers regularly meet colleagues and clients in virtual meetings using videoconferencing platforms, which enable participants to carry out tasks in a manner similar to a face-to-face meeting. The development of computer-based platforms to facilitate group tasks can be traced back to the 1960s, and while they support group communication, they do not directly support group decision making. In this chapter we distinguish four technologies developed to provide support to group decisions, clustered into two main traditions. Technologies in the task-oriented tradition are mainly concerned with enabling participants to complete tasks to solve the group's decision problem via computer-supported communications. Group Decision Support Systems and social software technologies comprise the task-oriented tradition. Alternately, in the model-driven tradition, participants use computers to build and use a model that acts as a referent to communicate, mostly verbally, about the group's decision problem. System modeling and decision-modeling technologies constitute the model-driven tradition. This chapter sketches the history and guiding ideas of both traditions, and describes their associated technologies. The chapter concludes with questioning if increased availability of online tools will lead to increased use of group decision support technologies, and the differential impact of communication support versus decision support.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the ways to encourage members in QQ knowledge-communication groups to persistently share knowledge in terms of contexts and autonomous motivations.

Based on self-determination theory, three important contextual factors of QQ knowledge-communication groups were selected as exogenous variables and three typical autonomous motivations as mediating variables to construct a knowledge-sharing model. Internet questionnaire surveys and data collection were conducted to test proposed hypotheses by means of structural equation modeling with AMOS.

Reciprocity, learning, and altruism have significant positive influence on persistent sharing willingness, and the degree to which each factor influences persistent sharing willingness differs considerably. Autonomy support, perceived usefulness, and relatedness support have no significantly direct influence on persistent sharing willingness, but they indirectly influence the persistent sharing behaviors by the mediating effect of different autonomous motivations.

This study contributes theoretically and practically. First, the results suggest that a particular motivation in different contexts has a different degree of autonomy. In addition, explanations are offered for the phenomenon that suggest that controlled motivations directly affect autonomous motivations. It was found that the contextual factors of competence support and relatedness support also have influence on different autonomous motivations, and hence encourage knowledge-sharing behaviors. Specific suggestions for QQ group managers and information seekers are proposed.

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.

Group communication as an area of intellectual interest had its beginnings in communication pedagogy with the goal of helping students to become more effective decision makers. A by-product is that group decision making became and remained a central research focus for many years. In the last 20 years, group communication research has facilitated the development of theory, research methods, and technology. Since 2000, group communication scholars have developed research lines on (1) virtual/digital team communication; (2) information sharing, hidden profile, and transactive memory systems; and (3) group participation. This chapter also explores the way in which group communication scholars have become connected with other disciplines that study groups and teams. The chapter concludes with current research methods trends, including interaction analysis, multilevel modeling, and qualitative methods.

In spite of regular occurrence of product returns, research into determinants of returns services in retail businesses is still limited. To fill the gap, the purpose of this paper is to investigate critical determinants of customer to business type product returns services in the retail industry.

The authors develop a framework of product returns services that consists of three major service categories and 16 returns service determinants. The criticality of the determinants of product returns management are assessed employing the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) based multi-criteria decision-making approach. Under AHP set up the authors interview retail operations managers of major retail firms in Australia to identify critical determinants of product returns services.

Results indicate that the most important returns services dimensions are the way in which returns services are handled through interaction, and the outcome of service delivery. The top five critical service determinants of product returns are related to: communication support service for customer, money back for any type of returns, customer support access, user-friendly interaction, and product replacement.

The findings of the study can be considered by senior managers of retail firms as a reference guide for designing efficient and effective returns service systems and developing strategies for competitive advantage through product returns, namely, customer retention.

Smart card-based E-payment systems are receiving increasing attention as the number of implementations is witnessed on the rise globally. Understanding of user adoption behavior of E-payment systems that employ smart card technology becomes a research area that is of particular value and interest to both IS researchers and professionals. However, research interest focuses mostly on why a smart card-based E-payment system results in a failure or how the system could have grown into a success. This signals the fact that researchers have not had much opportunity to critically review a smart card-based E-payment system that has gained wide support and overcome the hurdle of critical mass adoption. The Octopus in Hong Kong has provided a rare opportunity for investigating smart card-based E-payment system because of its unprecedented success. This research seeks to thoroughly analyze the Octopus from technology adoption behavior perspectives.

Cultural impacts on adoption behavior are one of the key areas that this research posits to investigate. Since the present research is conducted in Hong Kong where a majority of population is Chinese ethnicity and yet is westernized in a number of aspects, assuming that users in Hong Kong are characterized by eastern or western culture is less useful. Explicit cultural characteristics at individual level are tapped into here instead of applying generalization of cultural beliefs to users to more accurately reflect cultural bias. In this vein, the technology acceptance model (TAM) is adapted, extended, and tested for its applicability cross-culturally in Hong Kong on the Octopus. Four cultural dimensions developed by Hofstede are included in this study, namely uncertainty avoidance, masculinity, individualism, and Confucian Dynamism (long-term orientation), to explore their influence on usage behavior through the mediation of perceived usefulness.

TAM is also integrated with the innovation diffusion theory (IDT) to borrow two constructs in relation to innovative characteristics, namely relative advantage and compatibility, in order to enhance the explanatory power of the proposed research model. Besides, the normative accountability of the research model is strengthened by embracing two social influences, namely subjective norm and image. As the last antecedent to perceived usefulness, prior experience serves to bring in the time variation factor to allow level of prior experience to exert both direct and moderating effects on perceived usefulness.

The resulting research model is analyzed by partial least squares (PLS)-based Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) approach. The research findings reveal that all cultural dimensions demonstrate direct effect on perceived usefulness though the influence of uncertainty avoidance is found marginally significant. Other constructs on innovative characteristics and social influences are validated to be significant as hypothesized. Prior experience does indeed significantly moderate the two influences that perceived usefulness receives from relative advantage and compatibility, respectively. The research model has demonstrated convincing explanatory power and so may be employed for further studies in other contexts. In particular, cultural effects play a key role in contributing to the uniqueness of the model, enabling it to be an effective tool to help critically understand increasingly internationalized IS system development and implementation efforts. This research also suggests several practical implications in view of the findings that could better inform managerial decisions for designing, implementing, or promoting smart card-based E-payment system.

Exploring the considerations that guide and influence members of Facebook medical support groups to disclose private information.

The sample included 293 participants, aged 18–85 years, who answered an online survey, 155 members of Facebook medical support groups and 138 members of other Facebook groups.

Members of medical support groups attach greater importance to privacy policy, give greater value to privacy and reveal more private information, compared to members of other groups. Members of medical support groups tend to feel that they receive more support and feel that the privacy policy preserves their privacy much more. These feelings are associated with greater self-disclosure of groups' members.

The research insights will help medical support groups' members and admins to put into action the fundamental right to privacy and build a set of rules tailored to their individual and group needs.