Electronic Meeting Systems: Results from the field

The findings of an exploratory field study concerning the effects of implementing an Electronic Meeting System (EMS) at an IBM manufacturing site are presented. A comparison of an electronic work group infrastructure with its corresponding manual practice is the primary basis of the study. The first section summarizes the University of Arizona’s background in the EMS field and goes on to describe the particular EMS used in this study. The next section details the experimental background, the research model, and the data collection methods used. The effects of the implementation were measured by their impacts on the technology, work group performance, group and task characteristics, and the organization. A summary of the contributions made to the knowledge accrual process in terms of insights concerning the implementation and future study of EMS concludes this study.