When does the medium matter? Knowledge-building experiences and opportunities in decision-making teams

Abstract

The purpose of this investigation was to examine whether temporal scope—the extent to which teams have a past or expect to have a future together—affects face-to-face and computer-mediated teams’ ability to communicate effectively and make high quality decisions. Results indicated that media differences existed for teams lacking a history, with face-to-face teams exhibiting higher openness/trust and information sharing than computer-mediated teams. However, computer-mediated teams with a history were able to eliminate these differences. These findings did not extend to team-member exchange (TMX). Although face-to-face teams exhibited higher TMX compared to computer-mediated teams, the interaction of temporal scope and communication media was not significant. In addition, openness/trust and TMX were positively associated with decision-making effectiveness when task interdependence was high, but were unrelated to decision-making effectiveness when task interdependence was low.