An Empirical Study of the Effectiveness of Telepresence as a Business Meeting Mode

Abstract

Telepresence is a technology that has emerged as a promising mode for conducting business meetings with distributed participants, since it enables an immersive lifelike experience. However, telepresence meetings are substantially more expensive than audio- and video-conferencing meetings. This paper examines the justification of using telepresence for meetings. Based on an extensive literature review, two research questions about the effectiveness of telepresence for achieving meeting objectives are formulated. These are then addressed in an empirical study consisting of two phases, conducted in a large multinational corporation in which telepresence is widely used. In Phase 1, a list of meeting objectives is compiled. In Phase 2, the effectiveness of telepresence is analyzed relative to audio-conferencing, video-conferencing, and face-to-face for these objectives, based on input from 392 meeting organizers. The results of the analysis indicate that although the effectiveness of telepresence is higher than the effectiveness of audio- and video-conferencing for several meeting objectives, it is not significantly different from the effectiveness of face-to-face for any objective.

Full text

An empirical study of the effectiveness of telepresence
as a business meeting mode
Willem Standaert
1
•Steve Muylle
2,3
•Amit Basu
4
Published online: 1 April 2015
ÓSpringer Science+Business Media New York 2015
Abstract Telepresence is a technology that has emerged
as a promising mode for conducting business meetings with
distributed participants, since it enables an immersive
lifelike experience. However, telepresence meetings are
substantially more expensive than audio- and video-con-
ferencing meetings. This paper examines the justification
of using telepresence for meetings. Based on an extensive
literature review, two research questions about the effec-
tiveness of telepresence for achieving meeting objectives
are formulated. These are then addressed in an empirical
study consisting of two phases, conducted in a large
multinational corporation in which telepresence is widely
used. In Phase 1, a list of meeting objectives is compiled.
In Phase 2, the effectiveness of telepresence is analyzed
relative to audio-conferencing, video-conferencing, and
face-to-face for these objectives, based on input from 392
meeting organizers. The results of the analysis indicate that
although the effectiveness of telepresence is higher than the
effectiveness of audio- and video-conferencing for several
meeting objectives, it is not significantly different from the
effectiveness of face-to-face for any objective.
Keywords Technology-enabled distributed meetings 
Telepresence Video-conferencing Meeting objectives 
Communication media effectiveness
1 Introduction
A business meeting is an organizational activity which in-
volves synchronous
1
interaction between two or more people
to achieve shared objectives in business [74,96]. Meetings
are essential in business operations and are traditionally or-
ganized in a face-to-face setting [18,29]. For organizations
that require distributed meetings between people across
multiple and possibly distant locations, technology-enabled
communication media such as audio- and video-conferencing
offer an alternative. While being less costly and more envi-
ronmentally friendly, the use of such technologies is con-
sidered to be less effective than the setting of a face-to-face
meeting, because of deficient functionalities [19,22,46,77].
Recently however, telepresence has emerged as a po-
tentially effective alternative for conducting distributed
meetings [79,80]. Telepresence has been defined as ‘‘the
use of technology to establish a sense of shared presence or
shared space among geographically separated members of
a group’’ [9, p. 27]. The number of telepresence installa-
tions in organizations worldwide is currently about 15,000
and 21,000 new installations are projected for 2015 [16].
Electronic supplementary material The online version of this
article (doi:10.1007/s10799-015-0221-9) contains supplementary
material, which is available to authorized users.
&Willem Standaert
willem.standaert@ugent.be
Steve Muylle
steve.muylle@vlerick.be
Amit Basu
abasu@smu.edu
1
Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Ghent
University, Tweekerkenstraat 2, 9000 Ghent, Belgium
2
Vlerick Business School, Ghent, Belgium
3
Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium
4
Cox School of Business SMU, Dallas, TX, USA
1
Research on Electronic Meeting Systems incorporates the notion of
temporal dispersion in meetings and also considers asynchronous
meeting support [24,62,87].
123
Inf Technol Manag (2016) 17:323–339
DOI 10.1007/s10799-015-0221-9

Telepresence installations are set up to closely resemble a
face-to-face meeting: participants at different locations see
each other in true life size, can make eye contact, and each
person’s voice comes from the direction of their screen
image (spatial audio). In addition, lighting and furniture
across locations are matched for a seamless look and feel of
local presence [1,15].
This paper examines the effectiveness of telepresence as
a meeting mode, by comparing it with two technology-
enabled meeting modes (audio- and video-conferencing),
as well as with face-to-face, for achieving a broad set of
business meeting objectives. In this study, meeting mode
effectiveness is considered to follow from a match between
characteristics of the meeting mode and the requirements
of the meeting objectives [84]. It is important to note that
the ultimate selection of a meeting mode may be influenced
not only by meeting mode effectiveness considerations, but
also by the cost of utilizing a meeting mode, which in-
cludes travel-related expenditures, participants’ time, and
the cost of hardware and software [67].
It is important to recognize that in any meeting mode,
interpersonal communication can be combined with the
use of software applications and tools such as desktop
sharing and white-boarding. However, the focus of this
work is not on the use of such e-collaboration tools, but
rather on the primary mode of interpersonal communica-
tion between meeting participants. Furthermore, it is im-
portant to distinguish between meeting mode effectiveness
and the broader notion of meeting effectiveness. In par-
ticular, meeting effectiveness is not only influenced by the
meeting mode used, but also by cultural, organizational,
temporal, and situational factors [50]. Hence, for two
business meetings conducted in the same meeting mode
and with the same objectives, meeting effectiveness may
still differ because, for example, some participants arrive
late for one of the meetings, or some participants are
under time pressures, etc. [73]. Since such factors are
difficult to control or even detect in the empirical ap-
proach used in this study, its scope is limited to an ana-
lysis of the extent to which different technology-enabled
distributed meeting modes (and the face-to-face meeting
mode) facilitate the achievement of different types of
meeting objectives.
While the role and effectiveness of communication
media has been studied before, this study makes three
contributions to the field. First, although both practitioners
and researchers have highlighted the importance of un-
derstanding how and why managers use new communica-
tion media [31,52,58], there is as yet a lack of research on
the effectiveness of telepresence. By addressing this gap,
this research can provide valuable insight for organizations
that are considering the acquisition of telepresence
systems.
Second, while the effectiveness of communication me-
dia for multiple objectives in different organizational set-
tings has been examined in the literature, prior studies have
not examined these objectives in the specific context of a
business meeting. In this study, the intended meeting ob-
jectives are considered as a basis for assessing meeting
mode effectiveness, using a list of 19 different meeting
objectives, which were identified in the literature.
A final distinction of this work is the empirical ap-
proach, in that the analysis is based on data about actual
business meetings in a large global corporation. As telep-
resence is widely used by the employees of the corporation
in this study, it provides a unique opportunity to examine
this new technology in relation to conventional meeting
modes and discern the meeting objectives it is suited for
[28,53,69]. Since the data concerns actual, real-life
meetings and objectives, it is distinct from most prior
studies on media choice and media effectiveness, in which
either hypothetical choices for specific situations or out-
comes of experiments have been examined [25,58].
This paper is organized as follows: In the next section,
the related literature on communication media effective-
ness and communication objectives is reviewed. Section 3
discusses audio-conferencing, video-conferencing, telep-
resence, and face-to-face and formulates research questions
on the effectiveness of telepresence as a business meeting
mode. In Sect. 4, the empirical work, analysis and results
are presented. Finally, Sect. 5concludes by discussing the
findings and addressing the implications, limitations and
further research directions.
2 Related work
This study draws upon a wide array of literature, including
theories on social presence, media richness, media
naturalness, and media synchronicity, and research on
group support systems and technology adoption. In this
section, this literature is reviewed, and then a list of com-
munication objectives that have been identified therein is
assembled.
2.1 Effectiveness of communication media
Several theories on the effectiveness of communication
media have been proposed in the literature. Two influential
perspectives are social presence and media richness theory,
both of which characterize communication media in terms
of their functionalities and consider a medium to be ef-
fective to the extent that its characteristics match the re-
quirements of the task.
The social presence of a medium involves the extent to
which it conveys the actual presence of communication
324 Inf Technol Manag (2016) 17:323–339
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partners and enables them to experience psychological
presence, and is comprised of several factors such as the
medium’s capacity to transmit information about tone of
voice, gestures, facial expression, direction of looking,
posture, touch, and nonverbal cues [77]. The underlying
principle of social presence theory is that, to communicate
effectively, the level of personal involvement and attention
that is required for the communication task should be
matched with the social presence of the medium [77].
Social presence is closely related to the concept of media
richness [13,70]. A medium is considered to be richer if it
has the capacity to convey multiple verbal and nonverbal
cues, allows for immediate feedback, uses natural lan-
guage, and has personal focus [19]. Media richness theory
highlights that ambiguous (or equivocal) and non-routine
messages are open to interpretation, and therefore richer
media are needed to communicate them effectively [19].
However, the principles of social presence and media
richness theory are contradicted by findings in several
studies [22,46,66,82]. For example, in Markus [58],
managers found lean media to be effective for equivocal
communication. In a similar vein, Dennis and Kinney [25]
found that using richer media does not improve perfor-
mance for equivocal tasks. Such findings have motivated
further theoretical developments. Based on an extensive
literature review, and as a remedy for the inconclusive
findings in prior studies, Te’eni [84] presented a cognitive–
affective organizational communication model, which
breaks away from ‘integrated perceptions’, such as social
presence and media richness, and instead examines what
each characteristic of the medium affords separately.
Dennis and his colleagues have developed media syn-
chronicity theory, introducing specific media attributes [22,
23,26]. Synchronicity refers to a shared pattern of coor-
dinated behavior among individuals as they work together,
and is determined by five media attributes: symbol sets,
parallelism, transmission velocity, rehearsability, and re-
processability. Two micro-level communication processes
in tasks were found to have different synchronicity needs—
low synchronicity for conveyance of information, and high
synchronicity for convergence of meaning. Since com-
pleting a task involves both processes, they concluded that
the use of a variety of media, either concurrently or con-
secutively, improves communication effectiveness [22].
A number of theory refinements have further enhanced
views of effective communication. Kock [46] proposed
media naturalness theory, based on Darwinian evolution.
Media naturalness refers to the (dis)similarity of the
medium to the face-to-face setting, and is characterized by
the extent to which the medium supports co-location,
synchronicity, and the transmission of facial expressions,
body language, and speech [46,48]. His ‘‘psy-
chobiological’’ model predicts that lower naturalness leads
to higher cognitive effort in a collaborative task, preventing
effective communication. In a similar vein, Ferran and
Watts [31] used dual-process cognitive theory to show that
there is an increased cognitive workload in video-confer-
encing versus face-to-face communication, and as a result
people are less influenced by argument quality and more by
heuristic cues such as source likeability. Likewise, Robert
and Dennis [71] presented a cognitive-based view of social
presence based on the elaboration likelihood model and
identify a paradoxical impact of social presence on per-
formance, which is that high social presence increases the
motivation to process a message, but decreases the ability
to process it.
The context in which a medium is used has been found
to influence the medium’s perception and effectiveness [7,
66]. Carlson and Zmud’s [12] channel expansion theory
posits that the perceived richness of a medium is influenced
by the experience the user has with the medium, with other
users, and with the task and the organizational context at
hand. Likewise, electronic propinquity theory [93] incor-
porates the influence of the perceived choice set of media
available to an individual, on perceived social presence of a
medium. The perception of social presence is negatively
impacted when the alternative medium supports a wider
variety of cues, and vice versa. In addition, Hollingshead
et al. [41] suggested that work groups develop communi-
cation norms with regards to media which can compensate
for limitations of the medium (e.g., caps and emoticons in
e-mail). Also, the compensatory adaptation model by Kock
[45,47] suggests that users of lean media overcompensate
for the obstacles encountered and as a result generate better
outcomes than expected.
Prior research on group support systems and on the
acceptance of information technology also provides useful
insights. These systems are found to be especially useful
for the generation, organization, and prioritization of ideas
[62] and their use is associated with less social inhibition
and status equalization [2,62]. Group support systems in-
volve a set of tools to enhance the achievement of group
tasks through communication, process structuring, and in-
formation processing support, across time and space [24,
30,62,97]. The ability to interact and collaborate asyn-
chronously enhances the utility of group support systems.
For example, Ocker et al. [63,64] found that groups using
asynchronous group support systems produced more cre-
ative solutions than did face-to-face groups, due to group
members having more time to develop and present diverse
opinions. The theory of task-technology fit underscores the
importance of achieving a fit between the task and the
supporting technology for performance [36,97]. The fit-
appropriation model [27], states that beyond fit, the ap-
propriation support received in the form of training, fa-
cilitation, and software restrictiveness, further enhances the
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effective use of group support systems. Testing the fit-ap-
propriation model, Fuller and Dennis [34] found that teams
using poor-fitting technology improved performance over
time by innovating and adapting structures.
The Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) hy-
pothesizes perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use
to be fundamental determinants of user acceptance of
technology [20,21]. Perceived usefulness, which includes
items such as perceived effectiveness, productivity, quality
of work, and job performance, is considered to be the most
important driver of intentional as well as actual technology
usage [43,51]. This model has been extended to account
for the impact of social influence processes, facilitating
conditions, pre- and post-implementation interventions,
collaboration-related constructs, gender, age and experi-
ence [6,88–90].
The above literature provides valuable insights into the
effectiveness of communication media. First, every medi-
um provides distinct functionalities, and media can be ar-
rayed along a continuum accordingly, with the face-to-face
setting providing the most advanced functionalities [19,22,
46,77]. Second, communication effectiveness follows
from a match between the functionalities of the medium
and the requirements of the task at hand. With some ex-
ceptions [33,78,92], the face-to-face setting is considered
the standard relative to which technology-enabled com-
munication media are compared. As the functionality of the
medium increases, it is found to be more effective [19,22,
47,69,76,77]. Finally, although prior research on asyn-
chronous collaboration and interaction provides valuable
insights, it should be noted that this study focuses solely on
synchronous interaction in business meetings.
2.2 Communication objectives
A number of communication objectives have been identi-
fied in prior research on the effectiveness of communica-
tion media. In this section, these studies are reviewed and
then a list of objectives is presented in Table 1, listed in the
order in which they first appeared in the literature.
2
In an empirical study on social presence, Short et al.
[77] identified the following set of objectives, referring to
them as recurring office activities: exchange information,
ask questions, exchange opinions, make decisions, give or
receive orders, solve a problem, generate ideas, persuade,
generate buy-in or consensus, resolve conflicts and dis-
agreements, maintain friendly relations/stay in touch, bar-
gain, and get to know someone. In a later study, Fish et al.
[32] studied many of the objectives identified by Short
et al. [77], and added the following: exchange confidential
information, explain a difficult concept, exchange time-
sensitive information, make commitments, schedule
meetings, and check project status. Likewise, Rice [70] and
King and Xia [44] added exchange routine information, as
well as exchange important information.
Straus and McGrath [83] examined three objectives,
drawing from McGrath’s task ‘‘circumplex’’ [59]: generate
ideas, solve a problem, and resolve conflicts. Lengel and
Daft [53] applied the richness matching hypothesis to
routine and non-routine messages. Routine messages are
straightforward, contain no surprises and a common frame
of reference is established; non-routine communications
involve novel events for which a common frame of refer-
ence has not been established. Also, Markus [58] studied a
set of hypothetical communication tasks, drawing upon
media richness theory and content analysis by Trevino
et al. [85], which included the following objectives: com-
municate feelings or emotions, show personal concern or
interest, show authority, status, position, and to exchange
confidential, private or delicate information.
Te’eni [84] examined four communication goals, in
keeping with Habermas [37]: instructing action, managing
interdependent action, managing relationships, and influ-
encing. Watson-Manheim and Be
´langer [94] identified five
purposes: simple and complex coordination, knowledge
sharing, information gathering, relationship development,
and conflict resolution. Finally, attention has been drawn
recently to the preference and choice of media for decep-
tive communication in organizations [11,35].
To summarize, these studies offer insight on the effec-
tiveness of communication media for a variety of com-
munication objectives. However, although prior research
has often compared technology-enabled media with the
face-to-face setting [32,44,58,70,77,94], it has not ex-
amined the effectiveness of different communication media
in the specific context of a business meeting (as noted
earlier, this study focuses on business meetings, involving
synchronous interaction to achieve specific objectives). In
addition, as prior research did not consider telepresence,
there is a lack of guidance on how to use this new tech-
nology-enabled communication medium effectively.
3 Business meeting mode effectiveness
This section discusses four synchronous business meeting
modes in terms of their functionality: audio-conferencing,
video-conferencing, telepresence, and face-to-face. The
research questions that form the basis for analyzing the
effectiveness of telepresence, audio-conferencing, video-
conferencing and face-to-face meetings, for different
business meeting objectives are then formulated.
2
Prior research does not provide a theoretical basis to classify these
objectives.
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3.1 Business meeting modes
In keeping with Te’eni [84], meeting modes are charac-
terized in terms of their attributes. Also, in keeping with the
literature, four meeting modes are ordered in terms of the
progressive communication functionalities they provide:
audio-conferencing, video-conferencing, telepresence, and
face-to-face (see Table 2).
3
Communication in audio-conferencing between meeting
participants is based on voice transmissions (speech and
vocal tone). In video-conferencing meetings, visual cues
are added to the interaction, which enable the transmission
of nonverbal cues, such as gestures and body language. The
extent to which video-conferencing transmits these cues
depends on the image size and quality [55]. Telepresence
systems are designed to closely resemble the face-to-face
setting and to create the ‘‘perceptual illusion of non-me-
diation’’ [55]. The immersive experience of telepresence is
illustrated by the following comment from a user: ‘‘The
detail you can see is that high, that when a cup of coffee is
spilled in the one room, you can see every drop on the table
from the other room, and you feel the urge to go and clean
it up. It is that lively.’’ Hence, the functionality of telep-
resence approaches that of the face-to-face setting [29].
Face-to-face interaction, however, also enables the trans-
mission of other stimuli such as touch and smell.
3.2 Research questions
In the context of business meetings, effectiveness can be
defined as the extent to which the meeting mode facilitates
achieving the objectives set for the meeting [8,39,95].
Consistent with prior research, the meeting objective is
considered to be a key factor in the evaluation of meeting
Table 1 List of communication
objectives with references to the
literature
Communication objective References
Exchange information [32,44,70,77]
Ask questions [32,44,70,77]
Exchange/share opinions or views on a topic or issue [77]
Make a decision [32,44,70,77]
Give or receive orders [77]
Find a solution to a problem that has arisen [77,83]
Generate ideas on products, projects or initiatives [32,44,70,77,83]
Generate buy-in or consensus on an idea [77,84]
Resolve conflicts and disagreements within a group [32,44,70,77,83,94]
Build trust and relationships with one or more individuals [32,44,70,77,84,94]
Maintain relationships with one or more other people and stay in touch [32,44,70,77]
Negotiate or bargain on a deal or contract [32,44,70,77]
Communicate positive or negative feelings or emotions on a topic or issue [58,85]
Show personal concern about or interest in a particular issue or situation [58,85]
Assert and/or reinforce your authority, status, position to your team or others [58,85]
Give or receive feedback [85]
Assemble a team and/or motivate teamwork on a project [85]
Routine exchange of information [44,53]
Non-routine exchange of information [44,53]
Clarify a concept, issue or idea [32,44]
Exchange confidential, private or sensitive information [32,44,58,70]
Exchange time-sensitive information [32,70]
Make commitments [32]
Schedule meetings [32]
Check project status [32]
Exchange important information [70]
To deceive someone [11,35]
3
Notably, each successive meeting mode provides the communica-
tion functionality of the previous mode, with equal or better quality.
For example, the quality of auditory cues transmission in audio- and
video-conferencing is the same, on the other hand, the transmission of
visual cues in telepresence is typically through higher quality video
than in video-conferencing.
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modes, and the effectiveness of meeting modes is expected
to increase with their communication functionality [19,69,
77]. However, with the increase in effectiveness typically
comes an increase in the cost of using the meeting mode
[14,56,69,72,75]. Therefore, the aim is to identify the
meeting objectives for which the distinct features of
telepresence are justified from an effectiveness standpoint.
In particular, this study investigates how the effectiveness
of telepresence compares to the effectiveness of less ex-
pensive technology-enabled meeting modes (audio- and
video-conferencing) and to the effectiveness of face-to-
face meetings, which potentially require extensive travel.
Hence, the following research questions are used to frame
the study:
Research Question 1: For which business meeting ob-
jectives is telepresence a significantly more effective
meeting mode than audio- and video-conferencing?
Research Question 2: For which business meeting ob-
jectives is telepresence a significantly less effective meet-
ing mode than face-to-face?
4 Research method
This section describes the research approach for the em-
pirical study, which was conducted in a large publicly
traded global company, headquartered in the United States
of America. The company employs over 60,000 people
worldwide and the nature of its business requires frequent
interaction between employees across the globe. For
scheduled meetings, the company uses the following
modes, which are employed on a relatively broad basis:
audio-conferencing, video-conferencing, telepresence, and
face-to-face. In addition, every meeting organizer has ac-
cess to all of these modes and has the freedom to choose
between them for each meeting. Therefore, this research
context provides a unique opportunity to study telepresence
in relation to conventional meeting modes, in a field set-
ting. The study was conducted in two phases, which are
described next.
4.1 Phase 1
In a first phase, exploratory interviews were conducted
with 39 upper and middle level managers in the company.
Each interview was conducted in a separate session lasting
about an hour. First, an open-ended question was asked
about the objectives relevant to the interviewees’ meetings.
Then, the interviewees were asked to review the objectives
listed in Table 1, and to offer feedback about the adequacy
and completeness of this list in the context of their business
meetings.
From the interviews, no additional meeting objectives
emerged and hence the list of business meeting objectives
included all objectives of the interviewees’ meetings.
Conversely, based on their feedback, the list was shortened,
from 27 to 19 objectives, with 8 objectives being consid-
ered redundant and/or irrelevant for meetings in the com-
pany. The resulting list, presented in Table 3, consists of
diverse objectives, which cannot be easily classified. Fi-
nally, some of the interviewees noted that a meeting usu-
ally serves more than one objective and furthermore, that
different participants in a meeting may have different
objectives.
4.2 Phase 2
Drawing from the insights gained in Phase 1, a brief online
questionnaire was developed (see Appendix, ESM). This
questionnaire asks each respondent to identify a specific
business meeting that he or she had organized
4
recently (to
minimize recall decay bias), and to indicate the meeting
mode that he or she had selected for that specific meeting.
In addition, each respondent was asked to identify the
relevant objectives for that business meeting from the list
of potential meeting objectives (see Table 3), and to
evaluate the effectiveness of the business meeting mode,
which was defined as the extent to which the business
meeting mode that was selected facilitated the achievement
Table 2 Communication functionalities of the business meeting modes (X refers to the functionality being supported by the meeting mode)
Audio-
conferencing
Video-
conferencing
Telepresence Face-to-
face
Transmission of auditory cues (speech, vocal tone) X X X X
Transmission of visual cues (gestures, body language) X X X
Life-size presence in a shared space (eye-contact, spatial audio) X X
Transmission of haptic and olfactory cues in an actual physical space X
4
In addition, as discussed below, responses were also sought from
other attendees of a subset of the meetings, to analyze the effect of
common method bias.
328 Inf Technol Manag (2016) 17:323–339
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of each of the business meeting objectives for that specific
meeting. A five-point scale was used to measure the per-
ceived effectiveness
5
of the business meeting mode, rang-
ing from 1: ‘‘Not at all effective’’ to 5: ‘‘Very effective’’
[69,95].
The data provide ‘‘a realistic context and point of ref-
erence’’ [86, p. 169], which is distinct from most prior
studies on media choice and effectiveness, in which hy-
pothetical choices or perceived appropriateness of different
media for specific situations were examined [25,58].
Given that this study is based on actual business meetings,
it was not possible to control for meeting agendas and
participants. It was also not possible to consult recordings
or minutes of the meetings, or to solicit input from an
organizer before each meeting. Likewise, it was not fea-
sible to have an independent observer attend the meetings
and rate meeting outcomes. In addition, the questionnaire
was anonymous and the respondents were assured that the
results would be reported in the aggregate only and without
any attribution.
An overview of the key variables and the number of
respondents is provided in Table 4, and described below.
1. For 392 business meetings, responses to the online
questionnaire were obtained from meeting organizers,
which were contacted by email. This data included 171
responses for audio-conferencing, 122 for video-con-
ferencing, 56 for telepresence, and 43 for face-to-face
(as shown in Table 5).
2. For 155 of the total of 392 meetings, data was collected
from the online calendaring and meeting scheduling
systems on the number of meeting participants and the
scheduled duration of the meeting. Also, the organizer
was asked to indicate the number of prior times he or
she had used the selected meeting mode.
3. Finally, data from 139 attendees of 86 out of the 155
meetings referred to in point (2) was obtained. These
attendees were identified from the same online calen-
daring and meeting scheduling systems, and invited by
email.
4.2.1 Data description
Table 6shows the distribution of meeting modes for the
155 meetings for which additional data was obtained, the
average number of meeting participants, and the average
duration, across the four modes. In line with prior research
[10], there was a slight decrease in the average number of
meeting participants, going from low functionality to high
Table 3 List of business
meeting objectives based on the
literature review and the
exploratory interviews
1 Exchange/share opinions or views on a topic or issue
2 Make a decision
3 Give or receive orders
4 Find a solution to a problem that has arisen
5 Generate ideas on products, projects or initiatives
6 Generate buy-in or consensus on an idea
7 Resolve conflicts and disagreements within a group
8 Build trust and relationships with one or more individuals
9 Maintain relationships with one or more other people and stay in touch
10 Negotiate or bargain on a deal or contract
11 Routine exchange of information
12 Non-routine exchange of information
13 Communicate positive or negative feelings or emotions on a topic or issue
14 Show personal concern about or interest in a particular issue or situation
15 Assert and/or reinforce your authority, status, position to your team or others
16 Give or receive feedback
17 Assemble a team and/or motivate teamwork on a project
18 Clarify a concept, issue or idea
19 Exchange confidential, private or sensitive information
Table 4 Overview of the key variables and respondents in Phase 2
Key variables Number of respondents
1. Meeting mode, objectives, and
meeting mode effectiveness
392 Meeting organizers
2. Same as 1. above, as well as meeting
duration, size, and prior use
155 Meeting organizers
3. Same as 1. above for meeting
attendees that could be tied to the
responses of a meeting organizer
139 Meeting attendees for
86 meeting organizers
5
Measuring the perceived effectiveness bears similarity with the
construct of perceived usefulness, which is key in the TAM [20].
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functionality meeting modes, however, these differences
were not statistically significant [ANOVA: F(3,
153) =0.56; p[0.05]. In addition, face-to-face meetings
were longer than mediated meetings on average and an
ANOVA revealed that the average duration differed sig-
nificantly across the modes [F(3, 153) =8.06; p\0.001].
This finding is in line with prior research [29,49]. Post-hoc
tests indicated that the duration of audio-conferencing
meetings indeed differed significantly from the duration of
telepresence and face-to-face meetings (p\0.05). How-
ever, the observed average durations cannot be interpreted
as being related to any inherent characteristics of the
meeting modes themselves, since most telepresence meet-
ing rooms had very high utilization levels, and therefore
had to be reserved for specific durations for meetings. It is
possible that these meetings could have been longer if the
facilities were more freely available.
The number of times the meeting participant had used
the selected meeting mode before, is shown in Table 7.
The table shows that the large majority of meeting orga-
nizers had used the meeting mode more than 10 times in
the past.
The extent to which each business meeting objective
was considered to be relevant by the 392 business meeting
organizers is shown in Table 8, in decreasing order of
frequency. Overall, 15 out of the 19 objectives were indi-
cated as relevant for more than 50 % of the meetings. The
two most frequently cited business meeting objectives in
the sample were ‘‘Clarify a concept, issue or idea’’, and
‘‘Exchange opinions’’ (81 and 79 % of meetings respec-
tively). Next, ‘‘Building relationships and trust’’ and
‘‘Maintaining relationships’’ were considered relevant in
about three quarters of the meetings. Conversely, four
objectives were indicated as being relevant in less than
50 % of the meetings: ‘‘Give or receive orders’’ (44 %),
‘‘Resolve conflicts and disagreements’’ (44 %), ‘‘Assert
and/or reinforce your authority, status, position to your
team or others’’ (40 %), and ‘‘Negotiate or bargain on a
deal or contract’’ (29 %). Given the low relevance of these
four meeting objectives and thus the lack of sufficient data
instances pertaining to them for a meaningful quantitative
analysis, they are not considered further in the analysis.
Table 8also displays the frequency of the relevance of
the objectives for each of the four meeting modes.
Although the ordering of frequencies was fairly consistent
across the modes, there were some observations worth
mentioning. First, for telepresence meetings, the objectives
that involve building and maintaining relationships were
more frequently considered relevant by the meeting orga-
nizers, whereas the objectives that involve making a de-
cision and finding a solution to a problem, were relatively
less frequently considered relevant. Secondly, face-to-face
meetings had fewer stated objectives, as indicated by the
consistently lower frequency numbers in that column (ex-
cept for ‘‘Find a solution to a problem’’). Finally, it is
important to note that this table is specific to the current
data set, and is not intended to represent the overall dis-
tribution of the objectives across all meetings at the
company.
In order to compare the frequencies of objectives across
the four meeting modes, an ANOVA of the data from 392
business meeting organizers was conducted. The results of
15 ANOVA tests are shown in Table 9. A conservative
approach was adopted in order to statistically account for
multiple comparisons. In particular, the family significance
level was set at 10 % and divided by the number of tests
(15) [61]. The table below shows that for 3 of the 15 ob-
jectives, the pvalue was below the critical level of 0.0067
(=0.10/15): building trust and relationships, finding a so-
lution to a problem that has arisen, and a non-routine ex-
change of information. Post-hoc tests revealed that the
frequency of ‘‘Building trust and relationships’’ is different
Table 5 Distribution of organizer respondents across the business
meeting modes
Respondents
Audio-conferencing (AC) 171
Video-conferencing (VC) 122
Telepresence (TP) 56
Face-to-face (FTF) 43
Total 392
Table 6 Average number of meeting participants and average
meeting duration across the business meeting modes
Meeting
mode
N Average number of meeting
participants (and SD)
Average duration in
minutes (and SD)
AC 59 5.37 (4.46) 56.69 (23.32)
VC 34 5.21 (4.41) 61.82 (24.52)
TP 30 4.90 (2.83) 85.50 (49.38)
FTF 32 4.25 (3.99) 96.88 (67.75)
Table 7 Number of times the organizer has previously used the
selected meeting mode
How often have you used the selected
meeting mode before within the current
organization?
Number of meeting
organizers
AC VC TP FTF
First time user 0 0 0 0
1–5 times used before 2 3 2 2
6–10 times used before 1 0 3 2
[10 times used before 56 31 25 28
Total (N) 59 34 30 32
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between video-conferencing and both audio-conferencing
and face-to-face, and between telepresence and both audio-
conferencing and face-to-face. In addition, the frequency of
the objective ‘‘Find a solution to a problem that has arisen’’
was found to be significantly different between telepres-
ence and both audio- and video-conferencing. Finally, for
‘‘Non-routine exchange of information’’ the frequency is
different between face-to-face and both video-conferencing
and telepresence.
4.2.2 Analysis of business meeting mode effectiveness
The research questions stated earlier were addressed by
examining the mean effectiveness scores for the 15
Table 8 Frequency of relevance of business meeting objectives (based on 392 meeting organizer responses)
Business meeting objectives % Relevance AC (%) VC (%) TP (%) FTF (%)
Clarify a concept, issue or idea 81 82 84 79 77
Exchange/share opinions or views on a topic or issue 79 81 82 79 60
Build trust and relationships with one or more individuals 74 68 83 86 58
Maintain relationships with one or more other people and stay in touch 74 69 80 84 63
Generate buy-in or consensus on an idea 71 68 77 75 63
Give or receive feedback 71 71 73 73 65
Make a decision 70 73 75 61 56
Generate ideas on products, projects or initiatives 69 67 75 70 60
Routine exchange of information 68 72 74 57 53
Find a solution to a problem that has arisen 67 72 70 48 58
Non-routine exchange of information 64 62 70 70 42
Show personal concern about or interest in a particular issue or situation 62 54 71 68 56
Assemble a team and/or motivate teamwork on a project 59 58 62 68 42
Communicate positive or negative feelings or emotions on a topic or issue 58 57 66 63 37
Exchange confidential, private or sensitive information 52 50 59 48 44
Give or receive orders
a
44 50 45 30 33
Resolve conflicts and disagreements within a group
a
44 44 48 38 35
Assert and/or reinforce your authority, status, position to your team or others
a
40 37 46 46 26
Negotiate or bargain on a deal or contract
a
29 30 33 23 23
a
Not analyzed further, due to insufficient data instances pertaining to this meeting objective
Table 9 ANOVA of
frequencies of objectives across
business meeting modes (based
on 392 meeting organizer
responses)
Business meeting objectives df F pvalue
Clarify a concept, issue or idea (3, 388) 0.44 0.725
Exchange/share opinions or views on a topic or issue (3, 388) 3.27 0.021
Build trust and relationships with one or more individuals (3, 388) 6.18 0.000*
Maintain relationships with one or more other people and stay in touch (3, 388) 3.53 0.015
Generate buy-in or consensus on an idea (3, 388) 1.53 0.207
Give or receive feedback (3, 388) 0.35 0.787
Make a decision (3, 388) 3.01 0.030
Generate ideas on products, projects or initiatives (3, 388) 1.42 0.236
Routine exchange of information (3, 388) 3.50 0.016
Find a solution to a problem that has arisen (3, 388) 4.40 0.005*
Non-routine exchange of information (3, 388) 4.21 0.006*
Show personal concern about or interest in a particular issue or situation (3, 388) 3.45 0.017
Assemble a team and/or motivate teamwork on a project (3, 388) 2.58 0.053
Communicate positive or negative feelings or emotions on a topic or issue (3, 388) 3.77 0.011
Exchange confidential, private or sensitive information (3, 388) 1.33 0.265
*p\0.0067
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meeting objectives. Table 10 shows the mean effectiveness
scores and standard deviations for the organizer responses
for 392 business meetings.
6
Note that the mean effective-
ness scores are specific to the current data set, and are not
intended to represent the general effectiveness of meeting
modes across all meetings at the company.
One-sided Ttests were used to identify significant dif-
ferences between the effectiveness scores of telepresence
and audio-conferencing, and telepresence and video-con-
ferencing (Research Question 1), and between telepresence
and face-to-face (Research Question 2), for each of the 15
meeting objectives. Again, the critical pvalue was divided
by the number of tests, in order to statistically account for
multiple testing [61]. Hence, the effectiveness scores were
considered to be significantly different if the one-sided
pvalues were below 0.0067 (=0.10/15). Table 11 lists the
Ttest statistics of the pairwise effectiveness comparisons,
and highlights (with a ‘*’) the statistically significant
differences.
As to Research Question 1, Table 11 shows that statis-
tically significant differences were found between the ef-
fectiveness of telepresence and the effectiveness of both
audio- and video-conferencing for four meeting objectives.
However, as to Research Question 2, no statistically sig-
nificant differences were observed between the effective-
ness of telepresence and that of face-to-face. In Sect. 5, the
findings of the study are further discussed.
Table 10 Mean business meeting mode effectiveness scores (and standard deviations) (based on 392 meeting organizer responses)
Business meeting objectives Mean business meeting mode effectiveness scores (and standard
deviation)
AC VC TP FTF
Clarify a concept, issue or idea 4.11 4.18 4.59 4.39
(0.81) (0.67) (0.62) (0.97)
Exchange/share opinions or views on a topic or issue 3.97 4.27 4.34 4.54
(0.85) (0.78) (0.78) (0.65)
Build trust and relationships with one or more individuals 3.58 4.03 4.63 4.52
(1.06) (0.81) (0.61) (0.82)
Maintain relationships with one or more other people and stay in touch 4.01 4.24 4.53 4.37
(0.91) (0.81) (0.65) (0.84)
Generate buy-in or consensus on an idea 3.85 4.05 4.31 4.44
(0.96) (0.79) (0.78) (0.64)
Give or receive feedback 4.00 4.12 4.59 4.29
(0.88) (0.74) (0.63) (0.81)
Make a decision 3.96 4.01 4.21 4.50
(0.87) (0.81) (0.98) (0.78)
Generate ideas on products, projects or initiatives 3.76 4.10 4.05 4.35
(0.94) (0.79) (0.86) (0.80)
Routine exchange of information 4.25 4.21 4.19 3.96
(0.74) (0.79) (0.90) (1.15)
Find a solution to a problem that has arisen 3.92 4.12 4.00 4.48
(0.87) (0.76) (0.92) (0.71)
Non-routine exchange of information 3.88 4.02 4.33 4.17
(1.04) (0.72) (0.70) (1.15)
Show personal concern about or interest in a particular issue or situation 3.74 4.02 4.34 4.25
(0.95) (0.85) (0.88) (0.74)
Assemble a team and/or motivate teamwork on a project 3.68 4.08 4.18 4.33
(1.04) (0.88) (0.87) (0.91)
Communicate positive or negative feelings or emotions on a topic or issue 3.58 3.90 4.43 4.63
(0.96) (0.81) (0.70) (0.62)
Exchange confidential, private or sensitive information 3.63 4.04 4.26 4.37
(1.04) (0.72) (1.10) (0.83)
6
Mean effectiveness scores across all meeting modes were between
3.55 and 4.65 on a scale of 1–5, suggesting that meeting organizers
were familiar enough with the meeting modes to avoid poor meeting
mode choices.
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To examine the relationship between the number of
meeting participants and the effectiveness of the meeting
mode, and between the duration of the meeting and the
effectiveness of the meeting mode, an exploratory analysis
was conducted on the subset of 155 meetings for which
additional data was collected. The tables below show the
correlation coefficients, along with their significance
levels, of the effectiveness scores and the number of
meeting participants (Table 12) and duration of the meet-
ing (Table 13). Each table presents the overall correlation
coefficient, as well as the correlation coefficient for each of
the four meeting modes. After applying a correction for
multiple testing, the critical pvalue becomes 0.0013
(=0.10/(15 95)) [61]. In addition to the critical pvalue,
the 0.05 significance level is also reported in both tables.
As Table 12 shows, three significant correlations were
found. Effectiveness of the telepresence mode was
negatively correlated with the number of meeting par-
ticipants for the objectives ‘‘Communicate positive or
negative feelings or emotions on a topic or issue’’ (at the
0.0013 significance level), and ‘‘Give or receive feedback’’
(at the 0.05 significance level). Furthermore, the overall
effectiveness across all modes was found to be positively
correlated with the number of participants in meetings
scheduled for ‘‘Routine exchange of information’’.
Table 13 presents the correlation coefficients between
effectiveness scores and durations of meetings. It shows
that overall there were no significant relationships between
the duration of the meeting and effectiveness (at the 0.05
significance level). However, in audio-conferencing and
telepresence meetings, longer meetings were negatively
related to effectively exchanging non-routine information
(at the 0.05 significance level). Likewise, longer video-
conferencing meetings were negatively related to the ef-
fectiveness of giving or receiving feedback (at the 0.05
significance level).
In sum, the correlational analyses on a subset of the
meetings suggested that the number of meeting participants
and meeting duration had a limited impact on the effec-
tiveness scores of the business meeting objectives. The
managerial implications of these findings are examined in
Sect. 5.
4.2.3 Common method bias
Since the data on the selected meeting mode, the objectives
relevant to the meeting, and the perceived effectiveness of
the meeting mode in achieving the objectives relevant to
the meeting were obtained from a single questionnaire,
common method bias could be a concern. To help rule out
common method bias, several measures were taken. First,
the meeting mode selected by the respondent was validated
against, and found to be consistent with, the meeting mode
set for each meeting in the online calendaring and meeting
Table 11 Pairwise comparisons of meeting mode effectiveness (ttest statistics) (based on 392 meeting organizer responses)
Business meeting objectives Effectiveness TP [
Effectiveness AC
Effectiveness TP [
Effectiveness VC
Effectiveness TP \
Effectiveness FTF
Clarify a concept, issue or idea 3.63* 3.52* 1.02
Exchange/share opinions or views on a topic or issue 2.58* 0.50 -1.09
Build trust and relationships with one or more
individuals
7.94* 4.54* 0.62
Maintain relationships with one or more other people
and stay in touch
3.59* 2.11 0.92
Generate buy-in or consensus on an idea 2.76* 1.75 -0.75
Give or receive feedback 3.92* 3.47* 1.72
Make a decision 1.42 1.04 -1.22
Generate ideas on products, projects or initiatives 1.68 0.30 -1.40
Routine exchange of information -0.42 -0.14 0.84
Find a solution to a problem that has arisen 0.43 0.66 -2.09
Non-routine exchange of information 3.02* 2.25 0.68
Show personal concern about or interest in a particular
issue or situation
3.34* 1.91 0.43
Assemble a team and/or motivate teamwork on a project 2.68* 0.61 -0.59
Communicate positive or negative feelings or
emotions on a topic or issue
5.57* 3.37* -0.96
Exchange confidential, private or sensitive information 2.72* 0.96 -0.37
* One-sided pvalue for independent samples Ttest below 0.0067
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scheduling system. Second, the list with objectives for the
meeting was presented in a randomized order for each re-
spondent, to remove a potential order effect. Third, as
mentioned above, the responses of 139 meeting attendees
(i.e., participants who were not organizers of the meeting)
were obtained for 86 meetings for which organizer input
was also obtained (see Table 5). For each of the objectives
that were indicated by both organizer and attendee as
relevant for the meeting, paired sample Ttests revealed no
significant differences (at both the 0.0067 and the 0.05
Table 12 Correlation between meeting mode effectiveness and number of participants (based on subset of 155 meetings)
Business meeting objectives Number of meeting participants
Overall AC VC TP FTF
Clarify a concept, issue or idea -0.02 -0.01 -0.14 -0.24 0.20
Exchange/share opinions or views on a topic or issue -0.04 0.18 -0.35 -0.36 0.17
Build trust and relationships with one or more individuals -0.08 -0.02 -0.19 -0.12 0.13
Maintain relationships with one or more other people and stay in touch -0.08 0.08 -0.43 -0.11 0.26
Generate buy-in or consensus on an idea -0.03 0.00 -0.22 0.04 0.31
Give or receive feedback -0.12 -0.03 -0.26 -0.48* 0.05
Make a decision 0.11 0.33 0.07 -0.45 0.01
Generate ideas on products, projects or initiatives -0.06 0.08 -0.15 -0.40 0.06
Routine exchange of information 0.23* 0.31 0.25 -0.19 0.33
Find a solution to a problem that has arisen 0.11 0.28 -0.47 -0.29 0.36
Non-routine exchange of information -0.05 -0.15 -0.20 -0.21 0.14
Show personal concern about or interest in a particular issue or situation 0.08 0.42 0.03 0.00 -0.06
Assemble a team and/or motivate teamwork on a project -0.08 -0.03 -0.11 -0.47 0.39
Communicate positive or negative feelings or emotions on a topic or issue -0.09 0.14 -0.20 -0.70** 0.07
Exchange confidential, private or sensitive information 0.03 0.15 -0.03 -0.29 0.14
*p\0.05; ** p\0.0013
Table 13 Correlation between meeting mode effectiveness and duration of the meeting (based on subset of 155 meetings)
Business meeting objectives Duration of the meeting
Overall AC VC TP FTF
Clarify a concept, issue or idea 0.00 -0.20 -0.23 -0.26 0.07
Exchange/share opinions or views on a topic or issue -0.02 -0.13 -0.34 -0.41 0.16
Build trust and relationships with one or more individuals 0.12 0.01 -0.09 -0.24 -0.08
Maintain relationships with one or more other people and stay in touch -0.01 -0.18 -0.28 -0.17 0.17
Generate buy-in or consensus on an idea 0.11 0.01 -0.07 -0.17 0.05
Give or receive feedback -0.10 0.02 -0.45* -0.42 -0.11
Make a decision 0.12 0.21 0.20 -0.25 0.15
Generate ideas on products, projects or initiatives 0.10 -0.03 -0.20 -0.07 0.24
Routine exchange of information -0.11 0.04 0.00 -0.48 0.02
Find a solution to a problem that has arisen 0.05 -0.16 -0.11 -0.33 0.30
Non-routine exchange of information 0.01 -0.37* -0.38 -0.48* 0.22
Show personal concern about or interest in a particular issue or situation 0.05 -0.11 -0.40 -0.18 0.27
Assemble a team and/or motivate teamwork on a project -0.11 -0.02 -0.31 -0.38 -0.21
Communicate positive or negative feelings or emotions on a topic or issue 0.11 -0.12 -0.41 -0.37 0.37
Exchange confidential, private or sensitive information -0.17 -0.41 -0.04 -0.42 -0.28
*p\0.05
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significance level) in the perception of the effectiveness, as
shown in Table 14.
7
Thus, common method bias was not a
significant issue in this study.
5 Discussion
The goal of this paper is to analyze the effectiveness of
telepresence as a meeting mode for achieving business
meeting objectives. Drawing from the literature, two re-
search questions were formulated and analyzed through an
empirical study. The findings for each research question are
discussed below.
Research Question 1: For which business meeting
objectives is telepresence a significantly more effective
meeting mode than audio- and video-conferencing?
In line with prior research, the effectiveness of a tech-
nology-enabled communication medium was observed to
increase with the functionalities it provides [19,46,77].
However, these studies did not examine telepresence and
its effectiveness. This empirical study shows that the ef-
fectiveness of telepresence is higher than that of audio- and
video-conferencing for four meeting objectives: build trust
and relationships with one or more individuals; commu-
nicate positive or negative feelings or emotions on a topic
or issue; give or receive feedback; and clarify a concept,
issue or idea. At the same time, telepresence was not found
to be more effective than video-conferencing for 11
meeting objectives and than audio-conferencing for 4
Table 14 Comparison of meeting organizer and attendee scores for meeting mode effectiveness: Ttest statistics
Business meeting objectives Organizer Attendee N Ttest statistic
Clarify a concept, issue or idea 4.31 4.37 81 -0.66
(0.70) (0.68)
Exchange/share different opinions or views of a topic or issue 4.16 4.31 75 -1.29
(0.77) (0.77)
Build trust and relationships with one or more individuals 4.27 4.23 66 0.36
(0.89) (0.86)
Maintain relationships with one or more other people and stay in touch 4.34 4.25 65 0.85
(0.64) (0.75)
Generate buy-in or consensus on an idea 4.09 4.23 56 -1.07
(0.82) (0.71)
Give or receive feedback 4.22 4.37 54 -1.07
(0.77) (0.68)
Make a decision 4.13 4.13 53 0.00
(0.94) (0.88)
Generate ideas on products, projects or initiatives 3.93 4.16 61 -1.47
(0.98) (0.66)
Routine exchange of information 4.19 4.11 47 0.41
(0.80) (1.15)
Find a solution to a problem that has arisen 4.10 4.15 39 -0.26
(1.10) (0.67)
Non-routine exchange of information 4.39 4.10 41 1.52
(0.83) (1.00)
Show personal concern about or interest in a particular issue or situation 4.28 4.23 43 0.28
(0.77) (0.97)
Assemble a team and/or motivate teamwork on a project 4.14 4.18 44 -0.30
(0.85) (0.84)
Communicate positive or negative feelings or emotions on a topic or issue 4.11 4.29 35 -1.29
(0.87) (0.86)
Exchange confidential, private or sensitive information 4.22 4.26 27 -0.15
(0.97) (0.86)
*p\0.05; ** p\0.0067; no significant differences were found
7
This analysis is based on the aggregate averages, across the four
meeting modes, because of the limited number of observations for
some of the objectives.
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objectives. Moreover, telepresence was not found to be
significantly less effective than audio- or video-confer-
encing for any objective. These findings highlight the im-
portance of considering the meeting objective, as different
objectives have different requirements for communication
functionalities [44,70,84].
An interesting question for further research is why
telepresence is significantly more effective for the four
particular objectives above, but not for all the others that
were considered in this study. One possible explanation is
that the life-size presence, sense of shared space and eye
contact may help participants transmit cues that have been
identified to be important in virtual teams to ‘‘convey trust,
warmth, attentiveness, and other interpersonal affections’’
[42, p. 793] and to transmit ‘‘emotion and strength of
feeling’’ [53, p. 229] in business communication. Likewise,
prior research has indicated that visual cues increase the
effectiveness of giving feedback or clarifying an issue [22,
60,83]. Thus, the better quality of visual cues transmission
in telepresence may better enable meeting participants to
achieve these objectives. However, the additional func-
tionality of telepresence does not necessarily increase the
effectiveness for all meeting objectives. In particular, the
data in Table 11 suggests that the transmission of auditory
cues only is required to effectively achieve four meeting
objectives (make a decision, generate ideas, routine ex-
change of information, and find a solution to a problem)
and that the transmission of auditory with visual cues is
required to effectively achieve seven additional meeting
objectives (exchange/share opinions or views, maintain
relationships and stay in touch, generate buy-in, non-rou-
tine exchange of information, show personal concern,
assemble a team, and exchange confidential, private or
sensitive information).
Research Question 2: For which business meeting ob-
jectives is telepresence a significantly less effective meet-
ing mode than face-to-face?
Another major observation is that no statistically sig-
nificant differences were observed between the effective-
ness of telepresence and face-to-face for any of the meeting
objectives. Thus, despite the additional functionality of a
face-to-face meeting relative to the immersive lifelike
setting telepresence provides, telepresence is found to be
comparable in effectiveness for achieving objectives in
meetings. This finding adds to prior research [44,70], by
suggesting that face-to-face interaction is not necessarily
superior to technology-enabled remote interaction. Hence,
the current analysis suggests that in situations where face-
to-face meetings would require significant travel, time and
cost, telepresence provides an effective, possibly less
costly and more environmentally friendly alternative [91].
Furthermore, the lack of significant differences between
telepresence and face-to-face raises the question whether
technology-enabled meetings could go ‘‘beyond being
there’’. For example, technology-enabled interaction fa-
cilitates recordings of media and content during meetings
[40]. Moreover, prior literature indicates that the additional
functionality of face-to-face meetings may even impair
effectiveness. For example, people interacting face-to-face
have been reported to easily wander off topic [2,7].
5.1 Implications
This research provides useful insights into the effectiveness
of different communication media for technology-mediated
distributed business meetings. The results of this study
support the key principle of social presence and media
richness theory, which is that for a medium to be used
effectively, the requirements of the task have to be con-
sidered [19,77]. Also, for most meeting objectives, the
effectiveness was found to increase monotonically with the
communication functionality of the medium, which is in
line with previous qualifications/refinements of social
presence and media richness theory [46,69]. By introducing
telepresence into the set of possible distributed meeting
modes, this study broadens our understanding of the value
and effectiveness of such technologies for meetings.
Also, while prior research on business meetings has
focused on various elements such as meeting expenses,
attitudes, satisfaction, duration, size, composition, and in-
formation systems support [5,24,30,62,74,86], there is a
paucity of research on the role of objectives in the choice
of meeting modes. This study calls attention to the different
communication functionality requirements of meeting ob-
jectives. The field study findings provide guidance in the
effective utilization of meeting modes and serve as a
starting point for the development of usage norms for
different technology-enabled communication media in
distributed meetings. However, further research is needed
to identify the importance of specific communication
functionalities, such as seeing body language or being
present in a shared space, for each of the meeting
objectives.
This study has key implications for the objective
building relationships and trust, which is considered to be
one of the major challenges in distributed work groups
[54]. In particular, while no significant difference in ef-
fectiveness between telepresence and face-to-face was
found, telepresence was found to be more effective than
both audio- and video-conferencing for this objective. This
finding contributes to the ongoing debate on the notion that
‘‘trust needs touch’’ [38], and whether trust engendered by
the face-to-face encounter can be accomplished by
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technology-enabled instead of face-to-face communication
[4,65]. In particular, the findings of this study suggest
relationships can be effectively build through technology
and therefore telepresence challenges face-to-face as the
gold standard [4].
For managers, this study provides guidance for orga-
nizing meetings. First, the list of meeting objectives can
help managers in planning meetings and preparing meeting
agendas. In addition, the findings of the study provide
guidance in selecting a meeting mode. Since telepresence
is a more expensive and exclusive technology, the study
results provide managers with useful insights on when its
use is justified from an effectiveness standpoint. In par-
ticular, telepresence was found to be more effective than
simpler/cheaper alternatives for four objectives. Moreover,
telepresence is found to be an effective alternative for face-
to-face meetings for any objective. This finding can have
substantial implications for widely distributed organiza-
tions, and even widely distributed business eco-systems. In
particular, investing in telepresence systems or gaining
access to such facilities, may yield significant operational
cost savings. The findings can also be valuable for sellers/
providers of telepresence capabilities and systems, in best
positioning their services to clients.
The findings on the correlations between the number of
meeting participants, meeting duration and meeting mode
effectiveness are also useful for managers. Overall, only a
few significant correlations were found, suggesting that the
decision of meeting size and duration has a limited impact
on meeting mode effectiveness. Nevertheless, for a routine
exchange of information, the number of participants is
significantly and positively related to meeting mode ef-
fectiveness. On the other hand, when giving feedback or
communicating feelings or emotions in a telepresence
meeting, a meeting organizer should be careful not to invite
too many people, as significant and negative relationships
were found for these objectives. Likewise, a meeting or-
ganizer may want to be careful when determining the du-
ration of the meeting, as significant and negative
relationships were found between duration and meeting
mode effectiveness for a non-routine exchange of infor-
mation and for giving or receiving feedback.
5.2 Limitations and future research
This study focuses on the communication functionality of
meeting modes. However, there are several other factors
that may influence meeting mode effectiveness. While
some of these, such as experience [12], group size [60],
duration [74], and accessibility [17,57], were considered in
this analysis, there are still other factors such as free riding
[62], multi-communicating [68], participants’ preparation
[3], the chair’s leadership style [42], meeting structure [62,
76], and having ancillary interaction before or after a
meeting. Informal interaction is considered to be important
for building relationships and transmitting organizational
culture and loyalty [32]. The extent to which these factors
influence technology-enabled meetings, presents an inter-
esting avenue for further research.
A second limitation is in terms of the generalizability of
the results. Telepresence is not widespread within organi-
zations yet, and thus the empirical study is limited to a
relatively atypical organization. For example, anecdotal
evidence suggests that access to telepresence is often lim-
ited to managers at the highest level of organizations, and
that the use of telepresence differs across industries. Hence,
the external validity of the findings still has to be estab-
lished, and an important next step will be to study telep-
resence usage across a variety of organizational and
industrial settings. Likewise, validating the adequacy of the
list of meeting objectives that were compiled in this study,
in other settings is also an important next step.
Third, in this study telepresence is considered in an in-
tra-organizational setting. The advantage of this is consis-
tency across respondents in access to the meeting modes.
However, as adoption of telepresence further increases and
interoperability between systems enhances, it will be im-
portant to investigate further how this new medium is de-
ployed for effective inter-organizational collaboration [69].
Another interesting question involves hybrid meeting
modes—how is the effectiveness of a telepresence meeting
affected by one or more participants being limited to lower
functionality modes? Interestingly, many telepresence
meetings involve at least dual modes, where two or more
participants are co-located and can thus interact face-to-
face [81]. And finally, another set of questions relate to the
fact that the use of telepresence for a meeting appears to
signal situational characteristics that color users’ reactions
to it and to its effectiveness. All these offer interesting
avenues for further research.
Acknowledgments The authors acknowledge the support of Mr.
Joost Drieman and Mr. Pol Vanbiervliet for this research project.
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