1. ¹Bauer College of Business Administration, University of Houston, Houston, TX, U.S.A.
2. ²Department of Information Technology and Decision Sciences, College of Business and Public Administration, Old Dominion University, Norfolk, VA, U.S.A.

Correspondence: Randolph B. Cooper, Bauer College of Business Administration, University of Houston, Houston, TX 77204-6282, U.S.A. Tel: +1 713 743 4732; E-mail: rcooper@uh.edu

Received 5 February 2008; Revised 25 May 2008; Re-revised 6 October 2008; Accepted 9 October 2008.

Abstract

Workspace awareness is an understanding of members' interactions within a shared workspace, and has been a fundamental concern to researchers examining how groups using group support systems can be more effective as they design and develop physical artifacts. We provide theoretical and empirical evidence that workspace awareness can be a significant factor influencing the effectiveness of groups employing group support systems for the development of intangible artifacts, such as decision quality and consensus. The workspace awareness literature typically does not examine causal relationships within awareness. We develop a theoretical model that divides workspace awareness into three elements (presence, behavior, and insight awareness), which are important for group decision tasks, and provide empirical evidence that: (1) understanding the reasons behind group member behaviors (insight awareness) is key to increasing decision quality and consensus; (2) greater insight awareness can be obtained when an individual is better able to track and characterize others' behaviors (behavior awareness); and (3) behavior awareness depends on an individual's ability to identify and distinguish among the different individuals within the group (presence awareness). Empirical support is derived from a laboratory experiment.