Using Technology to Persuade: Visual Representation Technologies and Consensus Seeking in Virtual Teams

Abstract

How do virtual teams reach consensus when there is disagreement among team members and the consequences of making the wrong decision are high? To answer this question, the authors examine the daily chat room discussions and decisions of a virtual team responsible for air quality forecasting for the 5-million-person Atlanta region in the United States. They show that team members increase their use of visual representation technologies (VRTs), such as weather maps, during chat room discussions when the initial team consensus is low and the team is deciding whether to issue a smog alert that has large economic and health consequences. More use of VRTs in team discussions is associated with bigger shifts in the initial to final consensus forecasts of the team and greater likelihood that the team changes its forecast to issue a smog alert. Greater use of VRTs is not associated with greater forecast accuracy. Increased VRT use is also associated with greater imagery processing and increased group cohesion. For managers these results show that, in virtual team settings, some information technologies are associated with more persuasion than others and that training teams on the advantages and disadvantages of persuasive technologies is important.