Distributed online groups have great potential for generating interdependent and complex products like encyclopedia articles or product design. However, coordinating multiple group members to work together effectively while minimizing process losses remains an open challenge. We conducted an experiment comparing the effectiveness of two coordination strategies (simultaneous vs. sequential work) on a complex creative task as the number of group members increased. Our results indicate that, contrary to prior work, a sequential work structure was more effective than a simultaneous work structure as the size of the group increased. A mediation analysis suggests that social processes such as territoriality partially accounts for these results. A follow up experiment giving workers specific roles mitigated the detrimental effects of the simultaneous work structure. These results have implications for small group theory and crowdsourcing research.
['Paul André', 'Robert E. Kraut', 'Aniket Kittur']
Effects of simultaneous and sequential work structures on distributed collaborative interdependent tasks