- Email: [email protected]
Experience with and future challenges in GDSS (group decision support systems): Preface
115
Experience with and Future Challenges in GDSS (Group Decision Support Systems): Preface J.F. N U N A M A K E R , Jr.
The issue provides a state-of-the-art description of G D S S research. The papers represent recent advances in systems architecture, laboratory experiments and field studies in GDSS. Insights that have emerged over the past 10 years are described along with the grand challenges motivating the research. The fundamental principles and self-evident truths (the ones we can't prove but we observe to be true) that govern group support systems are discussed. The papers as a group explore the lessons learned and the insights gained from building GDSS systems, experimenting with them and observing their use. Research concerning G D S S is entering its second decade. In its broadest context, group decision support has been around for a long time. We are merely attempting to improve that process. Specially designed meeting rooms for decision making have a history as old as mankind. The Greeks and Romans had special purpose facilities for planning and decision making. Decisions are produced in special meeting rooms in the Senate and the House of Representatives of the United States and in other social institutions. Winston Churchill had a special decision room in London to chart progress and to plan strategy during World War II. Even though the concept of decision support is well known, I find that I must constantly remind people that G D S S are support systems, not decision making systems. Decision support by computers is very difficult and, despite their problems
and hmitations, h u m a n beings still far outperform computers in accomplishing m a n y unstructured tasks. However, G D S S are being used to support activities such as collaborative writing and drawing, communication, deliberation, negotiation, evaluating alternatives, planning, consensus building and even decision making. The G D S S approach provides a new way for people to work together and to communicate. The coming generations of G D S S will offer functionality whose impact can only be imagined. I tend to think of G D S S in terms of the expanded functionality we will define in terms of Electronic Meeting Support. Webster's defines a meeting as, " a n act or process of coming together." The definition does not imply that only one type of task is performed in a meeting (e.g. decision-making), nor does it imply that the people participating in the meeting must come together in a central location at a specific time. It says only that they come together. Since the definition of a meeting is so broad, it makes sense to use a term that matches the definition to designate the information technology systems that support meetings. The term we propose is electronic meeting systems (EMS). Electronic Meeting System 1 is: An information technology (IT)-based environment that supports group meetings, which may be distributed geographically and temporally. The I T environment includes, but is not limited to, distributed facilities, computer hardware and software, audio and video technology, procedures, methodologies, facilitation, and applicable group data. G r o u p tasks include, but are not limited to, communication, planning, idea generation, problem solving,
North-Holland Decision Support Systems 5 (1989) 115-118
1 Dennis, George. Jessup, Nunamaker, Vogel, Information Technology to Support Electronic Meetings, to appear in MIS Quaterly.
E d i t o r - S p e c i a l I s s u e on G D S S
0167-9236/89/$3.50 © 1989, Elsevier Science Publishers B.V. (North-Holland)
116
J.F. Nunamaker, Jr. / Preface
issue discussion, negotiation, conflict resolution, systems analysis and design, and collaborative group activities such as document preparation and sharing. This definition is intended to clarify system boundaries and to break down the conception that GDSS sessions must be held face to face (FTF) in a meeting room. We are concerned with meetings which can take place anywhere and anytime as opposed to assembling groups in F T F meeting rooms. What are the challenges facing group communication and decision making? We must create a vision for the future which is exciting and challenging but at the same time one that can be used by managers, staff and line personnel to solve real problems. This expanded EMS concept holds many possibilities: EMS distributed into individual offices, interconnected decision rooms and the distribution of functionality across time and space. Recognizing that F T F meetings will always be important, my vision of the next generation of EMS is that they will move beyond F T F support, but not eliminate F T F meeting support. EMS will include the capability of exploiting parallel processing. AI and expert systems will enhance the functionality of all the tools devised to enhance idea generation, organization and analysis. Data bases and knowledge bases will permit users to search through analysis, design and feasibility domains in an effort to solve problems. Systems will be distributed and meeting rooms connected electronically. Audio and video capabilities will be integrated with computing and information systems technology. The EMS systems will be used to facilitate managerial and staff functions as well as to integrate the design of manufacturing processes. Under these conditions, we hypothesize the frequency of meetings will be reduced, time spent in meetings will be reduced, more people will participate in the process and in the end the quality of the product will be improved and the time interval between initial meeting and decision will be shortened appreciably. Systems with these capabilities can be realized by bringing to bear new advances in systems building techniques using AI and expert systems. It is clear that success with EMS depends on advances in system usability, software design, interface design, and an understanding of the issues related to the effectiveness of collaborative work.
We need to assess the bottom line: what savings in man hours result from using the process and what are the intangible benefits such as improved decisions, more consensus, greater participation and satisfaction with the process. The system builders must interact with the experimenters and the behaviorists in order to yield new insights that are crucial to the ultimate success of the entire organization. All this will not happen casually. Resources will be required. The entry cost to this research domain will be high. The costs of facilities, equipment, software, and personnel will prevent individual researchers from making significant impacts upon EMS research unless they are well funded. Research in EMS is clearly a team project. The fact that prototype systems such as Colab from Xerox PARC, Capture Lab at EDS, and PLEXSYS at the University of Arizona are useful has promoted widespread interest in the research. However, wider fundamental understanding of EMS environment, technology, processes, tasks and outcomes is required to make EMS work in real life settings. The EMS concept has proved to be remarkably robust and applicable to a variety of problems, group tasks and technologies. The GDSS experience reported in this issue has had an impact on groups, projects and individuals. One of the more useful side benefits of EMS research is that it provides behavioral scientists with a test setting for field and laboratory experiments. Ten years ago, when the first GDSS were built, many people naively assumed that functional systems would follow. What we have learned is that there are many barriers to implementation. Organizations don't have the skills and have yet to be convinced they should expend the resources required to build the systems necessary for effective support. We are only beginning to understand this new process for meeting and working together electronically. However, it is clear from the research presented in this issue that GDSS and now EMS are changing the way people work in groups. The issues of industrial productivity and economic competitiveness are of major significance in the world today. By advancing the concept of collaborative or group work and by creating a broad computer based methodology for supporting the group work process we can attain dramatic improvements in productivity. I hope you enjoy reading the papers.
J.F. Nunamaker, Jr. / Preface
Summary of the Papers The papers are divided into two sections. The first section is concerned with design and implementation issues involved in building GDSS and the second section is concerned with empirical and experimental studies of GDSS. We will continue to use the term G D S S in the discussion of other papers in this special issue.
Design, Implementation, and Use of GDSS Recent advances in G D S S research have been driven by the effort to develop G D S S by applying new i n f o r m a t i o n system t e c h n o l o g y . T h e widespread use of LAN, E-Mail, and decision support packages has accelerated the process. The increasing challenge faced by managers has required them to not only use IS technology as a competitive weapons but to use IS technology to manage their work. There are four papers in this section. " T h e User Interface in G r o u p Decision Support Systems" by P. G r a y and L. Olfman, illustrates the design issues through discussion of four GDSSs: PLEXSYS at University of Arizona, the GDSS in the Claremont Graduate School, S A M M at the University of Minnesota, and Colab at Xerox PARC. The PLEXSYS system was designed to support large and real world group decision making and planning. Claremont Graduate School G D S S uses touchscreens to create a nearly typewriterless system. S A M M was built for small group decision making experiments. Colab is designed to explore how the computer can support collaborative work in small face-to-face meetings. The discussion of international GDSS in this paper illustrates the issues of language translation and culture differences. Design issues of user friendliness, flexibility, portability, and intelligence in user interface design are discussed. " A Study of Executives Using a Computer Support Meeting E n v i r o n m e n t " by Marilyn Mantei discusses the design decisions that were made during the construction of the Capture Lab, a computer supported meeting environment. This paper, which should be required reading for anyone planning to build a computer supported meeting environment, discusses room design issues such as shape of the meeting table, position and angle of the terminal display, room coloring, and so on.
117
All of these can influence the interaction patterns and focus of the group. The paper discusses tradeoffs that were made in the design of the room. For example, one design objective was to build a room environment as similar as possible to the meeting environment to which the user population was accustomed. "Interaction of Task and Technology to Support Large G r o u p s " by J. Nunamaker, D. Vogel and B. Konsynski provides a description of the Arizona group support environment and reports on how this setting facilitates larger operational groups working on a variety of tasks. The authors' descriptions are derived from experiences with more than 90 public and private organizations. The support of large groups, as well as the interaction of groups and organizations addressing a variety of tasks, is discussed. The paper presents several perspectives for studying automated group environments, including: systems theory, organizational, human communication, decision making, and management science. Research opportunities are discussed for each perspective. The authors argue that a multidiscipline approach is necessary for studying this complex phenomenon. "Negotiation Support Systems: An Overview of Design Issues and Existing Software" by M.T. Jelassi and A. Foroughi. In this article, the authors present an examination of the issues involved in the design of Negotiation Support Systems (NSS), based on a review of previous literature. They also discuss current systems that could be used to support the negotiation process. This article begins to lay the foundation for the development of a wide range of individual and group support tools for use in negotiation. After contrasting the differences between " h a r d " (zero-sum) and " s o f t " (win-win) negotiations, the authors outline five factors important to the design of NSS. They then provide an overview of six systems to support negotiation (CAP, Decision Maker, N E G O , Decision Conferencing, Mediator, and Rune). Most of these systems are single workstation systems with limited capability to support electronic information exchange and parallel processing. Most have concentrated on providing a DSS to support the mediator or one side, rather than providing a F T F GDSS. There is a real opportunity to build on these ideas to produce a conceptual design for a full features NSS.
118
J.F. Nunamaker, Jr. / Preface
Empirical and Experimental Studies of GDSS " T h e Impact of Technological Support on Groups: An Assessment of the Empirical Research" by A. Pinsonneault and K.L. Kraemer. This article presents a structured review of the major research papers in this area by grouping previous research into two broad categories: Group Decision Support Systems (GDSS), which attempt to introduce structure into the decision process, and Group Communication Support Software (GGSS), which attempt to reduce communication barriers. This grouping enables the authors to draw stronger inferences about the effects of these two technologies on group work. Several pages of tables provide a detailed overview of the variables examined in these previous studies. From their overview, these authors draw several general conclusions about outcomes associated with each group. They also discuss issues that have affected previous research and implications for future research. "Interaction Analysis in GDSS Research: Description of an Experience and Some Recommendations" by I. Zigurs reviews the interaction analysis technique as a tool for GDSS research. Bales (1950) developed the Interaction Process Analysis (IPA) system to observe group interaction directly and systematically. The IPA focuses on the study of group process instead of group outcome. Zigurs's literature review showed that generic interaction analysis schemes should be adapted and refined for research of different purposes and domains. She then presents an experiment which studied the impact of computer support on the behavior of decision makers in small groups. Using this example, she explains the reasons for selection and modification of Putnam's (1981) Procedural Messages coding system for her study. She also discussses procedures used in conducting the interaction analysis such as the validation of a scheme, the unit to be coded, the selection of data to be coded, and the reliability of code's analysis. Interaction analysis provides GDSS designers with insight in to the nature of group interactions. "Experiences at IBM with Group Support Systems: A Field Study" by Nunamaker, Vogel, Heminger, Martz, Grohowski and McGoff. This study describes the Implementation of a GDSS in
an operational environment at an IBM Manufacturing site. The GDSS was developed at the University of Arizona and through a research partnership with IBM the usage of the GDSS during the first nine months of operation was analyzed. Results indicate that the system at IBM was perceived to be effective, efficient and acceptable for use in the IBM environment. A comparison of man-hours expended resulted in a reported 56% savings attributable to Group Support System use. "Evaluation of GDSS Effectiveness" by McCartt and Rohrbaugh. This paper used the Competing Values Approach to organizational analysis as a conceptual framework to evaluate both the nature of group processes and outcomes achieved. A cross-section of decision conferences hosted by Decision Techtronics Group of the State University of New York between 1982 and 1985 were selected for analysis. The decision conferencing in this study employed one single-user computer system. The groups were assisted by a facilitator, an analyst, and a correspondent. The study showed different perceptions of decision conference effectiveness. However, the reasons for these differences are not very clear. Nevertheless, the evaluation of GDSS in a field study setting is an important issue that must be addressed as part of the successful promotion and implementation of GDSS in organizations. This paper demonstrates that a conceptual framework can be used as a foundation for a research design to study the effectiveness of GDSS. "Experiments in Group Decision Making, 3: Disinhibition, Deindividuation, and Group Process in Pen Name and Real Name Computer Conferences" by S.R. Hiltz, M. Turoff and K. Johnson. The use of information technology to support group meetings provides many opportunities for changing the way people work together. One of these is allowing people to make comments and suggestions anonymously. This article reports the results of an early study of the effects of anonymity. Although it demonstrates only a few of the potential effects of anonymity, the authors conclude that anonymity is an important design feature. The paper reports the results of the third of three laboratory experiments that were conducted in 1981. The results of the other experiments have been published earlier.
Experience with and Future Challenges in GDSS (Group Decision Support Systems): Preface J.F. N U N A M A K E R , Jr.
The issue provides a state-of-the-art description of G D S S research. The papers represent recent advances in systems architecture, laboratory experiments and field studies in GDSS. Insights that have emerged over the past 10 years are described along with the grand challenges motivating the research. The fundamental principles and self-evident truths (the ones we can't prove but we observe to be true) that govern group support systems are discussed. The papers as a group explore the lessons learned and the insights gained from building GDSS systems, experimenting with them and observing their use. Research concerning G D S S is entering its second decade. In its broadest context, group decision support has been around for a long time. We are merely attempting to improve that process. Specially designed meeting rooms for decision making have a history as old as mankind. The Greeks and Romans had special purpose facilities for planning and decision making. Decisions are produced in special meeting rooms in the Senate and the House of Representatives of the United States and in other social institutions. Winston Churchill had a special decision room in London to chart progress and to plan strategy during World War II. Even though the concept of decision support is well known, I find that I must constantly remind people that G D S S are support systems, not decision making systems. Decision support by computers is very difficult and, despite their problems
and hmitations, h u m a n beings still far outperform computers in accomplishing m a n y unstructured tasks. However, G D S S are being used to support activities such as collaborative writing and drawing, communication, deliberation, negotiation, evaluating alternatives, planning, consensus building and even decision making. The G D S S approach provides a new way for people to work together and to communicate. The coming generations of G D S S will offer functionality whose impact can only be imagined. I tend to think of G D S S in terms of the expanded functionality we will define in terms of Electronic Meeting Support. Webster's defines a meeting as, " a n act or process of coming together." The definition does not imply that only one type of task is performed in a meeting (e.g. decision-making), nor does it imply that the people participating in the meeting must come together in a central location at a specific time. It says only that they come together. Since the definition of a meeting is so broad, it makes sense to use a term that matches the definition to designate the information technology systems that support meetings. The term we propose is electronic meeting systems (EMS). Electronic Meeting System 1 is: An information technology (IT)-based environment that supports group meetings, which may be distributed geographically and temporally. The I T environment includes, but is not limited to, distributed facilities, computer hardware and software, audio and video technology, procedures, methodologies, facilitation, and applicable group data. G r o u p tasks include, but are not limited to, communication, planning, idea generation, problem solving,
North-Holland Decision Support Systems 5 (1989) 115-118
1 Dennis, George. Jessup, Nunamaker, Vogel, Information Technology to Support Electronic Meetings, to appear in MIS Quaterly.
E d i t o r - S p e c i a l I s s u e on G D S S
0167-9236/89/$3.50 © 1989, Elsevier Science Publishers B.V. (North-Holland)
116
J.F. Nunamaker, Jr. / Preface
issue discussion, negotiation, conflict resolution, systems analysis and design, and collaborative group activities such as document preparation and sharing. This definition is intended to clarify system boundaries and to break down the conception that GDSS sessions must be held face to face (FTF) in a meeting room. We are concerned with meetings which can take place anywhere and anytime as opposed to assembling groups in F T F meeting rooms. What are the challenges facing group communication and decision making? We must create a vision for the future which is exciting and challenging but at the same time one that can be used by managers, staff and line personnel to solve real problems. This expanded EMS concept holds many possibilities: EMS distributed into individual offices, interconnected decision rooms and the distribution of functionality across time and space. Recognizing that F T F meetings will always be important, my vision of the next generation of EMS is that they will move beyond F T F support, but not eliminate F T F meeting support. EMS will include the capability of exploiting parallel processing. AI and expert systems will enhance the functionality of all the tools devised to enhance idea generation, organization and analysis. Data bases and knowledge bases will permit users to search through analysis, design and feasibility domains in an effort to solve problems. Systems will be distributed and meeting rooms connected electronically. Audio and video capabilities will be integrated with computing and information systems technology. The EMS systems will be used to facilitate managerial and staff functions as well as to integrate the design of manufacturing processes. Under these conditions, we hypothesize the frequency of meetings will be reduced, time spent in meetings will be reduced, more people will participate in the process and in the end the quality of the product will be improved and the time interval between initial meeting and decision will be shortened appreciably. Systems with these capabilities can be realized by bringing to bear new advances in systems building techniques using AI and expert systems. It is clear that success with EMS depends on advances in system usability, software design, interface design, and an understanding of the issues related to the effectiveness of collaborative work.
We need to assess the bottom line: what savings in man hours result from using the process and what are the intangible benefits such as improved decisions, more consensus, greater participation and satisfaction with the process. The system builders must interact with the experimenters and the behaviorists in order to yield new insights that are crucial to the ultimate success of the entire organization. All this will not happen casually. Resources will be required. The entry cost to this research domain will be high. The costs of facilities, equipment, software, and personnel will prevent individual researchers from making significant impacts upon EMS research unless they are well funded. Research in EMS is clearly a team project. The fact that prototype systems such as Colab from Xerox PARC, Capture Lab at EDS, and PLEXSYS at the University of Arizona are useful has promoted widespread interest in the research. However, wider fundamental understanding of EMS environment, technology, processes, tasks and outcomes is required to make EMS work in real life settings. The EMS concept has proved to be remarkably robust and applicable to a variety of problems, group tasks and technologies. The GDSS experience reported in this issue has had an impact on groups, projects and individuals. One of the more useful side benefits of EMS research is that it provides behavioral scientists with a test setting for field and laboratory experiments. Ten years ago, when the first GDSS were built, many people naively assumed that functional systems would follow. What we have learned is that there are many barriers to implementation. Organizations don't have the skills and have yet to be convinced they should expend the resources required to build the systems necessary for effective support. We are only beginning to understand this new process for meeting and working together electronically. However, it is clear from the research presented in this issue that GDSS and now EMS are changing the way people work in groups. The issues of industrial productivity and economic competitiveness are of major significance in the world today. By advancing the concept of collaborative or group work and by creating a broad computer based methodology for supporting the group work process we can attain dramatic improvements in productivity. I hope you enjoy reading the papers.
J.F. Nunamaker, Jr. / Preface
Summary of the Papers The papers are divided into two sections. The first section is concerned with design and implementation issues involved in building GDSS and the second section is concerned with empirical and experimental studies of GDSS. We will continue to use the term G D S S in the discussion of other papers in this special issue.
Design, Implementation, and Use of GDSS Recent advances in G D S S research have been driven by the effort to develop G D S S by applying new i n f o r m a t i o n system t e c h n o l o g y . T h e widespread use of LAN, E-Mail, and decision support packages has accelerated the process. The increasing challenge faced by managers has required them to not only use IS technology as a competitive weapons but to use IS technology to manage their work. There are four papers in this section. " T h e User Interface in G r o u p Decision Support Systems" by P. G r a y and L. Olfman, illustrates the design issues through discussion of four GDSSs: PLEXSYS at University of Arizona, the GDSS in the Claremont Graduate School, S A M M at the University of Minnesota, and Colab at Xerox PARC. The PLEXSYS system was designed to support large and real world group decision making and planning. Claremont Graduate School G D S S uses touchscreens to create a nearly typewriterless system. S A M M was built for small group decision making experiments. Colab is designed to explore how the computer can support collaborative work in small face-to-face meetings. The discussion of international GDSS in this paper illustrates the issues of language translation and culture differences. Design issues of user friendliness, flexibility, portability, and intelligence in user interface design are discussed. " A Study of Executives Using a Computer Support Meeting E n v i r o n m e n t " by Marilyn Mantei discusses the design decisions that were made during the construction of the Capture Lab, a computer supported meeting environment. This paper, which should be required reading for anyone planning to build a computer supported meeting environment, discusses room design issues such as shape of the meeting table, position and angle of the terminal display, room coloring, and so on.
117
All of these can influence the interaction patterns and focus of the group. The paper discusses tradeoffs that were made in the design of the room. For example, one design objective was to build a room environment as similar as possible to the meeting environment to which the user population was accustomed. "Interaction of Task and Technology to Support Large G r o u p s " by J. Nunamaker, D. Vogel and B. Konsynski provides a description of the Arizona group support environment and reports on how this setting facilitates larger operational groups working on a variety of tasks. The authors' descriptions are derived from experiences with more than 90 public and private organizations. The support of large groups, as well as the interaction of groups and organizations addressing a variety of tasks, is discussed. The paper presents several perspectives for studying automated group environments, including: systems theory, organizational, human communication, decision making, and management science. Research opportunities are discussed for each perspective. The authors argue that a multidiscipline approach is necessary for studying this complex phenomenon. "Negotiation Support Systems: An Overview of Design Issues and Existing Software" by M.T. Jelassi and A. Foroughi. In this article, the authors present an examination of the issues involved in the design of Negotiation Support Systems (NSS), based on a review of previous literature. They also discuss current systems that could be used to support the negotiation process. This article begins to lay the foundation for the development of a wide range of individual and group support tools for use in negotiation. After contrasting the differences between " h a r d " (zero-sum) and " s o f t " (win-win) negotiations, the authors outline five factors important to the design of NSS. They then provide an overview of six systems to support negotiation (CAP, Decision Maker, N E G O , Decision Conferencing, Mediator, and Rune). Most of these systems are single workstation systems with limited capability to support electronic information exchange and parallel processing. Most have concentrated on providing a DSS to support the mediator or one side, rather than providing a F T F GDSS. There is a real opportunity to build on these ideas to produce a conceptual design for a full features NSS.
118
J.F. Nunamaker, Jr. / Preface
Empirical and Experimental Studies of GDSS " T h e Impact of Technological Support on Groups: An Assessment of the Empirical Research" by A. Pinsonneault and K.L. Kraemer. This article presents a structured review of the major research papers in this area by grouping previous research into two broad categories: Group Decision Support Systems (GDSS), which attempt to introduce structure into the decision process, and Group Communication Support Software (GGSS), which attempt to reduce communication barriers. This grouping enables the authors to draw stronger inferences about the effects of these two technologies on group work. Several pages of tables provide a detailed overview of the variables examined in these previous studies. From their overview, these authors draw several general conclusions about outcomes associated with each group. They also discuss issues that have affected previous research and implications for future research. "Interaction Analysis in GDSS Research: Description of an Experience and Some Recommendations" by I. Zigurs reviews the interaction analysis technique as a tool for GDSS research. Bales (1950) developed the Interaction Process Analysis (IPA) system to observe group interaction directly and systematically. The IPA focuses on the study of group process instead of group outcome. Zigurs's literature review showed that generic interaction analysis schemes should be adapted and refined for research of different purposes and domains. She then presents an experiment which studied the impact of computer support on the behavior of decision makers in small groups. Using this example, she explains the reasons for selection and modification of Putnam's (1981) Procedural Messages coding system for her study. She also discussses procedures used in conducting the interaction analysis such as the validation of a scheme, the unit to be coded, the selection of data to be coded, and the reliability of code's analysis. Interaction analysis provides GDSS designers with insight in to the nature of group interactions. "Experiences at IBM with Group Support Systems: A Field Study" by Nunamaker, Vogel, Heminger, Martz, Grohowski and McGoff. This study describes the Implementation of a GDSS in
an operational environment at an IBM Manufacturing site. The GDSS was developed at the University of Arizona and through a research partnership with IBM the usage of the GDSS during the first nine months of operation was analyzed. Results indicate that the system at IBM was perceived to be effective, efficient and acceptable for use in the IBM environment. A comparison of man-hours expended resulted in a reported 56% savings attributable to Group Support System use. "Evaluation of GDSS Effectiveness" by McCartt and Rohrbaugh. This paper used the Competing Values Approach to organizational analysis as a conceptual framework to evaluate both the nature of group processes and outcomes achieved. A cross-section of decision conferences hosted by Decision Techtronics Group of the State University of New York between 1982 and 1985 were selected for analysis. The decision conferencing in this study employed one single-user computer system. The groups were assisted by a facilitator, an analyst, and a correspondent. The study showed different perceptions of decision conference effectiveness. However, the reasons for these differences are not very clear. Nevertheless, the evaluation of GDSS in a field study setting is an important issue that must be addressed as part of the successful promotion and implementation of GDSS in organizations. This paper demonstrates that a conceptual framework can be used as a foundation for a research design to study the effectiveness of GDSS. "Experiments in Group Decision Making, 3: Disinhibition, Deindividuation, and Group Process in Pen Name and Real Name Computer Conferences" by S.R. Hiltz, M. Turoff and K. Johnson. The use of information technology to support group meetings provides many opportunities for changing the way people work together. One of these is allowing people to make comments and suggestions anonymously. This article reports the results of an early study of the effects of anonymity. Although it demonstrates only a few of the potential effects of anonymity, the authors conclude that anonymity is an important design feature. The paper reports the results of the third of three laboratory experiments that were conducted in 1981. The results of the other experiments have been published earlier.