Using Technology to Persuade: Visual Representation Technologies and Consensus Seeking in Virtual Teams

How do virtual teams reach consensus when there is disagreement among team members and the consequences of making the wrong decision are high? To answer this question, the authors examine the daily chat room discussions and decisions of a virtual team responsible for air quality forecasting for the 5-million-person Atlanta region in the United States. They show that team members increase their use of visual representation technologies (VRTs),...