The Impact of Group Size and Social Presence on Small-Group Communication

TLDR

The study evaluates how group size and social presence affect small‑group communication. The authors compare face‑to‑face, face‑to‑face with computer‑mediated communication, and virtual groups with CMC across group sizes of three and six. Smaller groups and face‑to‑face with CMC support achieve higher communication quality, while CMC mitigates the negative effects of larger group size and reduces process losses, offering guidance for project managers in virtual settings.

Abstract

This study evaluates the impact of varying group size and social presence on small-group communication. It compares key communication factors—faceto-face (FtF) without computer-mediated communication (CMC) support, FtF with CMC support, and virtual with CMC support—on two different small group sizes (3 and 6). Results indicate that smaller groups establish and maintain higher levels of communication quality, and FtF with CMC support groups have higher levels of communication quality than virtual with CMC support groups; however, no significant difference between traditional FtF groups and virtual groups with CMC support was found. Also, CMC minimized the impact of increased group size. Process losses that a larger FtF group might ordinarily experience can be reduced through the use of CMC. These results should help project managers plan for and deal with the difficulty of communication between project group members in virtual environments.