Meeting scheduling: an experimental investigation

Laboratory experiments were conducted to compare the performance of four different mechanisms of meeting scheduling: 1) the communication centered system (face-to-face) wherein individuals negotiate among themselves and arrive at a consensus on the timing of the meeting; 2) e-mail as the sole communication medium with no structured support; 3) the calendar-oriented scheduling mechanism with e-mail connectivity; 4) automated scheduler. The experiment is implemented based on the real task of meeting scheduling among project groups that had to meet several times during a semester to work on their project (regardless of this experiment). Three post-experimental surveys are used to measure satisfaction with the agreed meeting time, perceived efficiency in coordination time and process, and scheduling conflict for the scheduling methods. T-tests indicate that, even with higher conflicts among the group members, participants are more satisfied with the meeting time reached during the face-to-face meeting and overwhelmingly concurred on the high efficiency of face-to-face coordination process