An Empirical Comparison of Collective Causal Mapping Approaches

Abstract

Recently, capturing and evaluating group causal maps has come to attention of IS researchers (Tegarden and Sheetz, 2003; Lee, Courtney & O’Keefe, 1992; Vennix, 1996; Kwahk and Kim, 1999). This chapter summarizes two studies that formally compare three approaches to building collective maps: aggregate mapping, congregate mapping, and workshop mapping. We first provide a conceptual comparison of the three methods. Then we empirically compare models derived with the three methods using both objective and subjective measures. The results suggest that the aggregate method performs best at the group level, whereas the congregate method performs best at the organizational level. The results also indicate that the workshop method was best at promoting knowledge sharing. These studies suggest that the workshop method can be used in combination with aggregate mapping or congregate mapping methods to improve the collective mapping process.