A field study of the effects of asynchronous groupware support on process improvement groups

Abstract

Process improvement (PI) groups have been among the main change instruments of widely adopted and publicized organizational development approaches such as total quality management and business process re-engineering. Asynchronous groupware tools, such as electronic messaging systems, have found widespread use in organizations yet very little field research exists on how PI groups are affected by such tools. We try to fill this gap with a field study of the effects of asynchronous groupware support on seven PI groups in two New Zealand organizations. Our study indicates that, while not having perceived negative effects on group effectiveness, asynchronous groupware support was perceived as increasing process adoption, hierarchy suppression, departmental heterogeneity and contribution length and decreasing discussion duration, cost and interaction in PI groups. We argue that, based on these findings, the use of asynchronous groupware tools is likely to be beneficial in PI projects, particularly where a large number of PI groups proposing incremental process changes is conducted.