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Table 5. Average number of comments by group leader by content
leadership-related comments were classified as
being in one of the content categories based on
previous studies of leadership functions (Roby,
1961; Schutz, 1961): defining objectives, providing
interaction structures, facilitating interaction, or
maintaining group cohesion.
Of these, the category providing interaction
structure shows the greatest difference in terms of
the average number of comments between group
leaders in parallel communication groups (5.2
comments) and those in sequential communication
groups (3.8 comments). It appears that for groups
interacting through CMCS, there is a need to pro-
vide a certain number of interaction requirements.
In parallel communication groups, group leaders
were effective in dealing with what could have
been chaotic interaction due to the lack of social
presences and concurrent discussion. They did
so by providing more interaction structure, such
as initiating further discussion on some topics
or summarizing and pointing out explicit dif-
ferences in the underlying assumptions of group
members. Indeed, Ho, and Raman (1991) found
that leadership in GSS settings appears more ef-
fective when there is a need to bring structure into
group interaction. In sequential communication
groups, where the interaction structure of what
to discuss and when was known throughout the
experiment, additional leader-initiated interaction
requirements might have created too restrictive of
an interaction structure, which negatively affects
group performance (Kim et al., 2002).
The timing of each content category is also
worth mentioning. In both sequential and parallel
communication groups, group leaders tended to
generate more comments on defining group ob-
jectives and providing interaction structure in the
early stages of the experiment. The frequency of
these comments diminished toward the middle of
the experiment. On the other hand, group leaders
started making comments on facilitating interac-
tion and on maintaining a group shortly before the
middle of the experiment and continued through
the later stages of the experiment. It seems that
in asynchronous interaction through CMCS, the
role of a group leader in the early stages is to
make clear the decision strategy by which group
interaction is coordinated. As all group members
come to understand the interaction requirements
of the decision strategy, however, the role of a
group leader tends to change to that of a facilita-
tor. This facilitation encourages uncooperative
members to improve their participation in order
to increase group cohesiveness and to deal with
the critical mass activity phenomenon associated
with negative feedback, if the participation rate
is too low (Turoff et al., 1993).
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