Understanding Group Effectiveness in a Newly Formed Online Community

Опубликовано 7 сентября 2016, 16:34

This research in progress study investigates the joint effects of group development and social capital on the effectiveness of a newly formed online community. Despite over four decades of research on the group development-performance relationship and over five decades of research on the network-performance relationship there is still confusion as to why some groups outperform others. For example, linear and non-linear models of group development provide competing explanations on the developmental trajectories of groups. In an effort to shed light on this problem, a conceptual framework is developed that identifies the relationships among group maturity, social capital, group processes and long term group effectiveness of a newly formed group of historians from diverse organizations that are in the process of integrating technology into their work practices. This new knowledge is translated into principles and guidelines to inform the design of technologies to support groups across time and space.