You have to be careful if you don't know where you are going,
because you might not get there.
-Yogi Berra
The main point as I see it is that studying group behavior is hard.
Most traditional studies are invalid because group dynamic studies that
hold some activities constant influence the study because group activities
are interdependent and concurrent. In other words, taking a group activity
out of the context provided by the rest of the group activity context invalidates
any observations about that activity.
The paper explicity states this as "Most systems of observing and coding
interaction processes ... are built on the implicit assumption that a given
act has the same meaning (in terms of the coding system being used) no
matter who performs it and no matter where it occurs in the group's activity.
" ...and this paper is just as guilty as it ignores all lobbying that goes
on before and after meetings happen in my NSHO...
Of the eleven propositions presented, proposition 7 seems to have the most
insight: "One major form of temporal patterning is social entrainment.
Entrainment refers to synchronization (temporal
condition) of phase and periodicity of two or more processes." Think
of this as the "cue ball"effect. Events on a pool table are synchronized
when the cue ball is hit such that some rebounding ball will sink another
ball into a pocket (hopefully). Group behavior in this paper is viewed
much the same way, where the focal point of the meeting is "sinking a ball
in the pocket" and the various "ball collisions" are the temporal events
deliberately synchronized to obtain this event. In this light, sinking
a ball with many balls on the table will require a completely different
shot than if only one ball is on the table. This is the idea behind TIP,
social entrainment, and the importance of including context in group behavior
studies.
Key insight from this paper, in my opinion, is that problem solving
for telephone conversation and other media "at the level of the processes
leading up to the final solution, effects can be observed ... [but] no
effect on the [final solution] will be observed." This is in agreement
with the above mentioned TIP theory where paths to goals will change as
group dynamics change, but people will learn new "entrainment" processes
to achieve the final result.
However, it
was pointed out in class there are certain kinds of visual problems which
are not solvable over the phone. This is in agreement with what I suppose
is the leit-motif of the paper: tasks which are best suited (and
least sensitive) to multi-media are "tasks which would be insensitive to
medium of communications (tasks with little need for rapid feedback about
the other person's reactions). "
The paper observed
"the usefulness of a strange system such as a closed-circuit television
might therefore be expected to increase with experience." In accordance
with their theme they also observe when "Information transmission does
not require a close interpersonal relationship to be succesful, then we
will find no effect of medium of communication for such tasks is likely
to be confirmed."
There
are also dramatic tradeoffs with using different mediums (supporting the
notion of learning new entrainment per new medium). The salient supporting
fact was "despite observations that the impact of the spoken word is as
great or greater, comprehension is generally found to be greater with the
written word."