Going mobile in meetings

Tim Green — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 11:00:29 +0000

Jenn Davis and Keri Stephens

Keri Stephens, an assistant professor of communications studies, is in the midst of a research project investigating how people in organizations—businesses, nonprofits, schools and others—use cell phones, smart phones, pagers and similar devices.

Her first results show that when people use their devices in meetings they do so because they see other people doing it. Or if others aren’t using the devices, they won’t either.

Going in, Stephens and her co-author Jenn Davis thought that people were texting and e-mailing and sending tweets during meetings because they were trying to keep up with the information that floods into their electronics in-boxes.

It turned out that wasn’t the case.

“There’s no correlation between that data. Not even close. Not even a ballpark,” she says. “However, 50 percent of the variance is explained in how others view the use of this electronic multitasking. In a social scientific study that’s a whole lot for essentially one category of variables to explain.”

Stephens, who has been on the faculty since 2005, has had a long interest in the use of technology in organizational communications. And she writes a blog about it.

She worked several years for Hewlett-Packard Inc. after she received her bachelor’s of science degree in biochemistry. She explained H-P technology to customers. That meant spending a lot of time in the car going from customer to customer.

In those days (the ’90s) she had a bag phone, which was a mobile phone that came in a briefcase-sized bag and plugged into the lighter outlet in the car. She’s used pagers and the more modern versions of cell phones.

“I experienced a lot of the growing pains with those technologies,” Stephens says. “Now I see exactly the same thing happening with mobile devices in an organizational context. I think this is growing-pain period.”

Much of the commentary on mobile devices is from an etiquette perspective and seems to weigh heavily in favor of banning them from meetings, she says.

“I don’t think that’s the solution,” she says. “I’m looking for more depth and understanding.”

Mobile devices can be valuable in meetings to get information not available in the room. They can even provide an outlet for bored and frustrated people in the meeting, not necessarily a bad thing.

She hopes her research will help organizations sort through their attitudes and policies about communications technologies and help employees, too.

“I really think that many organizations don’t even realize how much they’re being used by their employees because a lot of organizations aren’t paying for them,” she says. “I think the issue’s only going to grow.”

Spring 2009 discoveries revisited

Tim Green — Fri, 29 May 2009 21:22:15 +0000

The spring 2009 semester has ended and that’s a good time to take another look at some of the research that came out of University of Texas at Austin labs in the past few months.

Here’s a roundup of some of the more interesting discoveries in exercise, psychology, business and statistics.

Add crunch to your post workout recovery

In a study of well-trained cyclists, exercise physiologist Lynne Kammer found that a bowl of whole grain cereal is as good as a sports drink for recovery after exercise. The research was supported by the General Mills Bell Institute of Health and Nutrition.

At the tone, say goodbye to that bad memory (someday)

Marie Monfils

Marie Monfils, an assistant professor of psychology at The University of Texas at Austin, has taken advantage of a key time when memories are ripe for change to substantially modify memories of fear into benign memories and to keep them that way. Here experiment manipulated the memory of rodents, but it also could indicate a potential treatment for humans suffering from anxiety-related disorders.

Is that market index half full or half empty?

Nicholas Seybert

Wishful investors who make overly optimistic investments will ultimately harm themselves financially, but they can harm entire markets as well, according to research from business professors Nicholas Seybert, an assistant professor The University of Texas at Austin, and Robert Bloomfield, a professor at Cornell University.

Stocks or Scratch-off game? Same thing for some investors

Alok Kumar

The socioeconomic characteristics of people who play state lotteries are similar to investors who pick stocks with a lottery quality—high risk with a small potential for high return, and just like the lottery, returns on average are lower for those who invest this way in the stock market, research from business professor Alok Kumar shows.

Coffee’s not the only thing mountain grown; Amazon’s frogs are, too

Colorful poison frogs in the Amazon owe their great diversity to ancestors that leapt into the region from the Andes Mountains several times during the last 10 million years, a new study from graduate student Juan Santos suggests.

Been screened at the airport too often? Statistics to the rescue!

William Press

William Press, a computational biologist, has found that secondary security screening at airports is mathematically flawed, and has identified a way to select people for screenings more efficiently and fairly.

Further Findings » business

Going mobile in meetings

Spring 2009 discoveries revisited