Improving Group Productivity with Group Support Systems and Creative Problem Solving Techniques

Organisations today utilise teams to undertake problem solving and opportunity finding tasks. There have been a number of variables that have been posited by theorists that can influence group productivity. Two of these – namely group technology and creative problem solving (CPS) techniques – are explored in this paper. Studies have found that group support systems tend to improve group productivity because they can reduce evaluation apprehension, production blocking and free riding. These systems, however, tend to utilise Electronic Brainstorming in modes that fail to deliver some advantages of other CPS techniques. The paper suggests how developers of group support systems could incorporate new creative problem solving modules into their software.