Web Lecture 4

Technology & Teams

Discusses: pervasive communication environment; virtual v. real communication; and the communication imperative.

Introduction

A group of college students uses Facebook, text messaging, and Instagram to organize their spring break vacation. They arrange who is going, whose car they are taking, and where they will stay. Organizations rely on globally-distributed work groups to bring together employees from around the world. Rather than search for individuals who live near each other to complete a project, companies identify people with the needed skills and knowledge—no matter where they live—and connect them via the internet, cell phones, and other new communication technologies (Baba, Gluesing, Ratner, & Wagner, 2004). Entrepreneurs form online groups to brainstorm, exchange ideas, and develop marketing strategies. Using email, videoconferencing, and instant messaging, these innovators launch new successful businesses (Matlay & Westhead, 2005). Therapy groups for children whose relatives and friends died in the 9/11 attacks provide crucial support in the bereavement and adjustment process. Children engage in activities such as storytelling and puppet play to express themselves and provide encouragement to others in the group (Webb, 2005). Using individual and group interviews, five graduate nursing students conduct a community health assessment in San Antonio, identifying unmet health needs. The team's work leads to substantial policy changes in the city and improved services in areas such as dental care and counseling (Reifsnider, Dominguez, Friesenhahn, Hodges, Chapin, & Sims, 2005).

Welcome to group and team communication in the 21st century—both different and the same as group and team communication in the 20th century. Although the authors of your text discuss virtual teams in Chapter 7, few teams in organizations only meet online. And the more important issue isn't whether or not teams meet online or offline, but how they use the tools available to meet their communicative goals.

In this web lecture, I first discuss the implications of today's pervasive communication environment for groups and teams. Second, I address the issue of "real" versus "virtual" communication. Finally, I introduce the notion of the communication imperative and how it applies to teams and groups.

Living in a Pervasive Communication Environment

You probably associate new communication technologies with the internet, smart phones, tablets, and similar digital media. But the printing press, telegraph, and telephone were all new communication technologies in their time. What's different this time?

The printing press allowed the mass distribution of information from one person or party, such as a newspaper publisher, to many people. With the telegraph, people for the first time could send brief messages almost instantaneously across long distances. The telephone provided voice transmission and a person-to-person connection from people's homes and businesses. The internet gave individuals a wide variety of ways to communicate and share information, but initially still left them tied to wire and specific locations. However, with WiFi (wireless fidelity) enabled laptops, cell phones, and similar devices, you can access the internet from an increasing number of locations.

You probably can't imagine life without your cell phone. In less than a decade, cell phones have gone from a search-for-a-signal tech-toy for the wealthy to the most pervasive mobile computing platform on the planet. In some countries, there are more cell phones than people. Nearly all the world has cell phone coverage—about 80% currently. With 2.6 billion subscribers world wide and a predicted 4 billion subscribers by 2010, mobile phones have become an integral part of daily life no matter where you live (Nystedt, 2006). Moreover, cell phones have evolved from simple portable telephones to mobile devices that allow you to text message, take photos or even video, play music and video games, check email, and surf the web. The combination of mobility and more computer power in the palm of your hand than the Apollo spacecraft that first visited the moon has greatly altered the communication terrain. Now you can send text, images, audio, and video to one person or millions while you relax in your room or even ride the bus.

In the second decade of the 21st century, you can communicate nearly anywhere at anytime to anyone. You live in a pervasive communication environment that gives you multiple access points to an integrated communication structure with text, audio, video, and voice capabilities (Coopman, 2009). So what does this mean? Much more than chatting with your friend in Hong Kong while you are stuck in Chicago traffic. A pervasive communication environment gives communicators the ability to access, create, and share information in multimedia from almost anywhere, at anytime, for any reason. The social impacts of such a development are staggering. And I'm not just talking about online shopping and getting friends together for happy hour. Mobile devices connected to the internet played important roles in organizing political protests that toppled governments. Websites such as Meetup.org enable thousands, if not millions, of people to unite over common interests and concerns. Because they so permeate your everyday lives, new communication technologies have formed an increasingly invisible network connecting individuals and groups.

Figure 1 represents a model of small group communication in a pervasive communication environment. As with all human communication, individuals interacting form the basis of the model. At the center of any small group or team is members exchanging verbal and nonverbal messages. Group members may use various channels or modes of communication, including face-to-face, print, and electronic. As group members communicate with each other, they provide feedback or responses to others' messages. Noise refers to any interference with a message, such as not paying attention to other group members or a poor internet connection garbling a web chat. Thecontext for group and team communication is the place or setting in which members interact, such as a conference room. The environment includes the larger situation surrounding the group, such as the organization, society, and culture in which the group or team is embedded.

Figure 1, Small Groups and Teams in a Pervasive Communication Environment

Adapted from: Coopman (2009).

The pervasive communication environment in which you live influences all these aspects of group and team communication. Location specific media, especially telephones and desktop computers, allow group members to interact with each other without being in the same physical space. Although group and team members often rely on analog media such as paper magazines, newspapers, and books for their research, new communication technologies have greatly increased the ease of identifying relevant materials within these media. In addition, print and radio become multi-directional when combined with new media devices such as complex mobile or cell technologies, WiFi-enabled portable computers, and digital recording devices. These mobile technologies link into a larger and increasingly more integrated communication infrastructure broadly construed as the internet. This digital infrastructure brings together older media forms, both mobile and location specific, into a larger pervasive communication environment. Of course, at the model's center is the fundamental interaction and production of human interaction. All these elements combine in an interactive dance with each part of the communication structure linked in a multitude of ways with every other part.

This pervasive communication environment has changed how group and team members communicate in fundamental ways. Many groups still meet at least a few times face-to-face. But they also use email, net meeting, chat, text messaging, instant messaging, and other media to exchange ideas, solve problems, and make decisions. With the internet linking technologies and people together, time and place no longer constrain a group's activities.

Virtual or Real Communication?

If team members meet online, such as via email, chat, or discussion board, does that mean the communication isn't real? Initial distinctions between real and virtual have subsided as scholars develop a better understanding of how groups and teams use new media. Early research on computer-mediated communication (CMC) and teamwork focused on differences between CMC and face-to-face groups. More recent research recognizes that most groups use a mix of communication tools—phone, email, text-messaging, instant messaging, net meeting, face-to-face. Rarely do team members communicate using a single method, such as only email or only face-to-face.

Calling face-to-face real and all other communication virtual presents a problem. If you instant message (IM) a friend, isn't that real communication? When you email a family member, do you think of your message as not real? How about phone conversations. Are they real or virtual? For this class, we meet online—is it real? When practically every device from a telephone to a baby monitor has a computer in it, even the idea of computer mediated communication seems a little antiquated. These situations highlight just a few of the problems with the real-virtual distinction.

Recent research found that teens use IM to begin, maintain, and end romantic relationships (Lenhart, Madden, & Hitlin, 2005). These relationships—and the feelings that go along with them—are quite real. Categorizing IMing, emailing, podcasting, blogging, and the like as virtual suggests that these communication forms lack substance, impact, and meaning. Yet these messages produce actual effects. When you start thinking about what you do with various communication technologies rather than what they are, you're better able to use them in the best ways for group and team communication.

The Communication Imperative

In the late 1960s the U.S. Department of Defense developed ARPANET, the precursor to the internet. This early network of computers allowed researchers to transfer large data sets and access computers from remote locations. Then in early 1970s, programmers added an email function to ARPANET, providing a way for researchers to exchange ideas as well as data. Email soon came to dominate the traffic on the network. And to the surprise of ARPANET's designers, much of the email communication focused on personal topics—family, friends, interests, current projects—and not on data analysis (Adams & Scollard, 2006). In fact, a group of science fiction fans using ARPANET formed the first listserv group.

People use communication technologies to suit their own purposes, just as the researchers sending email on ARPANET chatted about their daily lives. From a communication imperative viewpoint, this finding makes complete sense. A communication imperative suggests that we're social beings, compelled to connect and interact with others (Papacharissi, 2005; Thurlow & Brown, 2003). That is, part of being human is the drive to maximize communication satisfaction and interaction. So instead of being at the mercy of the latest technology, you use it in ways that work for you. Consider the iPod and other MP3 players. Originally designed to play music, college and K-12 teachers now use podcasting to engage students in classroom topics (Pike, 2005; Shen, 2005). Elementary school children develop their own podcasts, reciting original poetry and giving book reports. College professors rely on podcasts to liven up dull lectures with music and other audio files.

Small groups exhibit a communication imperative as well. Group members adapt technology to suit their individual goals and those of the group (Flanagin, Tiyaanmornwong, O'Connor, & Seibold, 2002). For example, a grant writing team whose members were scattered about several countries used an interactive website, a listserv, individual email, and face-to-face meetings to develop and write their proposal. Because they lived far apart, members completed nearly all their work online. The quality of group member communication depended not on the mode of transmission (website, listserv, email, face-to-face), but on how well (or poorly) members used a particular communication tool. The group experienced disagreements and task breakthroughs across communication contexts. Using the listserv or meeting face-to-face didn't cause a conflict; conflict arose from the specific issues the group was addressing at the time (Rasters, Vissers, & Dankbaar, 2002).

Conclusion

Small groups in the 21st century function in a pervasive communication environment that frees participants from the constraints of time and physical location. Rejecting the notion of virtual (online) versus real (face-to-face) communication, the communication imperative suggests individuals make technology work for them. Most groups and teams rely on a blend of tools that integrate online and offline communication.

References

Adams, T., & Scollard, S. (2006). Internet effectively: A beginner's guide to the World Wide Web. Boston: Pearson.

Baba, M. L., Gluesing, J., Ratner, H., & Wagner, K. H. (2004). The contexts of knowing: Natural history of a globally distributed team. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 25, 547-587.

Coopman, T. M. (2009). Coopman, T. M. (2009). Toward a pervasive communication environment perspective.First Monday, 14(1). Retrieved January 16, 2009, from firstmonday.org Links to an external site..

Flanagin, A. J., Tiyaanmornwong, V., O'Connor, J., & Seibold, D. R. (2002). Computer-mediate group work: The interaction of member sex and anonymity. Small Group Research, 29, 66-93.

Lenhart, A., Madden, M., & Hitlin, P. (2005). Teens and technology: Youth are leading the transition to a fully wired and mobile nation. Washington, DC: Pew Internet and American Life Project.

Matlay, H., & Westhead, P. (2005). Virtual teams and the rise of e-entrepreneurship in Europe. International Small Business Journal, 23, 279-302.

Nystedt, D. (2006, November 10). Mobile subscribers to reach 2.6B this year: Researchers say dropping phone prices are responsible for the worldwide jump. PC World. Retrieved April 30, 2007, from pcworld.com Links to an external site..

Papacharissi, Z. (2005). The real-virtual dichotomy in online interaction: New media uses and consequences revisited. In P. Kalbfleisch (Ed.), Communication yearbook 29 (pp. 215-237). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Pike, D. (2005, October 17). Podcasting a new way to plant seeds of knowledge at UIS: A few instructors placing audio on Net. State Journal Register, p. 1.

Rasters, G., Vissers, G., Dankbaar, B. (2002). An inside look: Rich communication through lean media in a virtual research team. Small Group Research, 33, 718-754.

Reifsnider, E., Dominguez, A., Friesenhahn, J., Hodges, P., Chapin, C., & Sims, W. B. (2005). Collaboration with city agencies: A winning approach to community assessment. Journal of Nursing Education, 44(7), 323-325.

Shen, F. (2005, October 20). IPods fast becoming new teacher's pet: Special recording projects nurture students' creativity. Washington Post, p. B1.

Thurlow, C., & Brown, A. (2003). Generation Txt? The sociolinguistics of young people's text-messaging. Discourse Analysis Online, 1(1). Retrieved October 23, 2005, from extra.shu.ac.uk/daol/

Webb, N. B. (2005). Groups for children traumatically bereaved by the attacks of September 11, 2001.International Journal of Group Psychotherapy, 55, 355-374.