Group Dynamics of collaborative participation

For those  regular readers who have been following this blog since inception, you will recall I mentioned the reason for starting this blog was for requirement of the individual assignment in the Social Media Strategy module. I should mention now that we also have a group assignment to complete. The task requires collaborative effort among the distance MBA students assigned to group of six members who will analyse the social media strategies of one company and develop a short video presentation with the findings and post it on Google Hangouts. 

While the analysis component by itself is relatively simple to complete, the challenge lies in the collaborative part. While collaborative effort among candidates is commonly applied in assignment completion in full time MBA programs and other professional designations, what makes this task challenging within the SMS module is the distance factor involved. For instance, our group has six members who are located in different countries and time zones and most of us have never met the rest in person. So some in the group are participating and engaging through social media platforms regularly, while others have been absent (to date).

My intention behind mentioning the above situation is not to complain about the non-participants. Rather, it is to highlight three interesting facets of collaborative tasks done remotely. 

1. Such a task would be virtually impossible to do before the advent of the Internet no doubt, but even during the early days of Internet adoption and before the existence of VOIP telephony and other social chatting platforms, such tasks were onerous even in the best case scenario. Programs like Google Hangouts and Google Docs allow for instant face-to-face chat time with cohorts and a live working document that is edited and reviewed by all involved instantly.
2. Group dynamics, whether in real-time or virtually, however, remain the same. For instance every group will demonstrate the emergence of a leader, moderator, critic, doer, and slacker. The last one is of particular importance to me, cause quite frankly, I was just that during my undergrad studies! It requires the moderator to effectively facilitate collaboration in order to get the task complete.
3. Effectiveness of group collaboration is further dependent on positive reinforcements (recognition, personal gratification, salary increase, promotion) and punitive reinforcements. Both reinforcements may exist implicitly. Thus in company setting, there are obvious direct benefits and damages that comes with group dynamics of collaborative tasks. In full-time MBA programs, such benefits/damages may be more implicit. Nevertheless, the group cohesion exists. However, in distance learning environment, there is reduction of both direct and implicit benefits/damages. This may suggest that the hype of telecommuting may be just that - hype! The most notable instance of declaration of war on telecommuting was the banning of flexible remote work benefits of Yahoo employees by its newly appointed CEO, Marissa Mayer. The event occurred in early 2013, and it caused a huge uproar on social media and regular media. The debate raged on for a while on pros and cons of flexible working environments and telecommuting. The biggest reason cited by the CEO was requirement of having "face-time" to increase productivity. Back then, Yahoo was in dire need for improving it's productivity. Incidentally, Yahoo stock was at $20/share prior to the ban. As of my writing date, Yahoo stock is at $35/share. Could this increase be attributed to some extent on the ban? 

Social Media is dynamically changing the working habits of the contemporary worker. As with any new invention, there will be benefits and there will be pitfalls. The successful longevity of any invention then lies in the net benefits achieved. What this means for the various social media platforms in existence today, is something that is being written but unknown. Scarily enough, it is happening remotely!

-Abi