December 24, 2014
Professor Alan R. Dennis is the John T. Chambers Chair of Internet Systems in the IU Kelley School of Business and among the top 10 most productive researchers in information systems worldwide. He is also a major contributor to the study of computer-mediated communication. He became interested in CMC over 25 years ago as a Ph.D. student at the University of Arizona. Together with his advisor J.F. Nunamaker and a fellow student, Joe Valacich (who later became an assistant professor at Indiana University), he began publishing papers on Group Support Systems (GSS). GSS are interactive, computer-based systems that use elaborate communications infrastructure and heuristic and quantitative models to help teams solve problems and make decisions; they include tools for brainstorming, commenting on ideas, organizing information, and voting. Dennis’s research, which usually employs experimental methods, evolved as GSS transitioned from local area networks to the Internet. In 1995, he developed one of the first Internet-based GSS called TCBWorks, which was installed on six of the seven continents before it was licensed by a consulting firm under the name of Consensus @nywhere. Today this class of tools is represented by a diverse range of collaborative CMC applications, including email, chat, wikis, and Google Docs.
Alan Dennis is also well known for his contributions to CMC theory, especially Media Richness Theory (MRT). In a much-cited 1999 article (later expanded and published in MISQ in 2008) which he co-authored with Joe Valacich, titled “Rethinking media richness: Toward a theory of media synchronicity,” the authors advance an alternative explanation for communication effectiveness in work groups, Media Synchronicity Theory (MST). Whereas Media Richness Theory (MRT) proposes that task performance is improved when task needs are matched to a medium's ability to convey information, in MST, communication effectiveness is influenced by matching the media capabilities to the needs of the fundamental communication processes. This requires taking into consideration factors in the communication situation such as the individuals, task, and social context within which they are interacting, as well as whether the group is established or new.
In recent years, Alan Dennis has researched a range of topics including trust in virtual teams, individual cognition in teams, and Neuro IS. In addition to continuing his research on CMC, he is currently investigating how technology can influence subconscious cognition and change behavior to improve team creativity, increase student test scores, increase (or decrease) the amount paid in online Auctions, and lose weight.
Alan enjoys traveling and has presented research papers (or just vacationed) in Scotland, England, France, Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, Turkey, Morocco, South Africa, and Botswana, all in the past few years. He’s also a regular attendee of the Hawai’i International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS), where he has co-organized the ‘Internet and the Digital Economy’ track for over a decade.
For more information see Alan’s webpage.