Rachel Porter

Document Type

Honors Thesis

Publication Date

5-2012

Abstract

Increasing the effectiveness of meetings in dispersed teams is crucial to the success of many businesses today. The virtual aspect of meetings conducted with teams of people who are not in the same geographical space has the potential to create communication barriers. Although research has been done on face-to-face, audio, and video meetings, little has been done to compare the effectiveness of audio and video conferencing amongst these teams. Since effectiveness is such a subjective term, the effectiveness of the meetings will be determined by the four mediating constructs: level of multitasking, time management, participation and accomplishment. Participating in the study is a team of no more than ten employees from a Semiconductor company in southern Maine who regularly communicate with other team members in Singapore. A survey of twenty questions was created using SurveyMonkey.com, which was subsequently completed by those employees in attendance. Although the sample size was too small to run any statistical data, observations were made about general trends to explore in further research. From the data that was collected, it can be assumed that video conferencing is the more effective form of communication for dispersed teams, but requires a lot more preparation and practice than audio conferences.

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