Bresciani S., Eppler M. and Subramanian S.V. (2010). Enhancing Group Information Sharing Through Interactive Visualization: Experimental Evidence. Academy of Management Meeting, August 6-10 2010, Montreal, Canada. [Presentation]
Abstract: Managers spend a considerable amount of time in meetings that are often unproductive and unfocused. Yet there is ample evidence that information visualization can support cognitive and communicative tasks. Still these two areas have never been combined. This study aims to extend prior findings on group communication mediated by information technology, by investigating the benefits of interactive visualization for information sharing in meetings. Our experiment with 131 managers, analyzed with a multilevel approach, reveals that interactively visualizing the group discourse has a significant positive impact on the quantity and quality of shared information and on group learning.
Keywords: information sharing; collaboration; visual representation