Supporting distributed team-building using GSS: A dialogue theory-based framework

Abstract

Literature review on Group Support Systems (GSS) shows that most prior GSS research focuses on supporting face-to-face team work, relatively less research has been conducted on the support of distributed team work, and even less research has been conducted on the support of distributed team-building. When global team work is becoming more common in organizations, how GSS can be used to enhance distributed team-building is another important research issue. This paper proposes a dialogue theory-based team-building framework, which aims to support distributed team-building. Based on this framework, a set of testable propositions is formulated. Implications of the derived framework are discussed in serving to provide some suggestions for researchers of team behavior and organizational users of GSS.