Demystifying facilitation: A new approach to investigating the role of facilitation in group decision support processes

Abstract

We believe there are still gaps in our knowledge of the facilitator role in group decision support processes and these must be “de-mystified” if use of these methods is to become more widespread. We use the design and analysis of online group model building to form a better understanding of the facilitator role. Our experimental configuration makes use of Group Explorer (Decision Explorer), configured to be delivered across the Internet in a distributed manner. The facilitator is thus no more or less visible in the workshop as any other participant. Data from a workshop is analysed and the findings discussed in relation to the following works; (i) Callon on translation, (ii) Hiltz et al. on the problem of animating methodology, and (iii) White and Taket’s “death of the expert”. We conclude by discussing one possible end-point of this work – the rise of a participant-led group decision support process model.