Team member selection decisions for virtual versus face-to-face teams

We compared the importance placed on task skills and four personal characteristics when selecting members of virtual and face-to-face teams. We expected that task skills would be most important in selection decisions for virtual teams due to the lack of physical proximity and visibility, whereas personal characteristics would be more important for face-to-face team selection. In a policy capturing study, 100 undergraduates’ decision policies indicated that task skills had a greater impact on selection decisions for virtual teams. Gender also influenced selection decisions, with women choosing more female than male applicants for both types of teams. Applicants’ race, physical attractiveness, and attitudinal similarity to participants did not influence selection decisions for either type of team; however, when assessed by self-report evaluations, these characteristics and gender, had a greater influence for face-to-face teams.     

Dynamic nature of trust in virtual teams

We empirically examine the dynamic nature of trust and the differences between high- and low-performing virtual teams in the changing patterns in cognition- and affect-based trust over time (early, middle, and late stages of project). Using data from 36, four-person MBA student teams from six universities competing in a web-based business simulation game over an 8-week period, we found that both high- and low-performing teams started with similar levels of trust in both cognitive and affective dimensions. However, high-performing teams were better at developing and maintaining the trust level throughout the project life. Moreover, virtual teams relied more on a cognitive than an affective element of trust. These findings provide a preliminary step toward understanding the dynamic nature and relative importance of cognition- and affect-based trust over time.     

The effects from technology-mediated interaction and openness in virtual team performance measures

As globalisation continues concurrent with mergers and acquisitions, transnational organisations are increasingly turning to the use of virtual teams in which members collaborate through technology-mediated interaction. Although collocated teams and virtual teams share many common characteristics including performance measures, the nature of the environments differ along several dimensions. In particular, members of virtual teams cooperate on global projects while resident in their home geographies and cultures and using various technologies to facilitate. From that context, this field study investigated virtual team performance using organisational culture as a framework.     

Group interaction styles in a virtual context: The effects on group outcomes

The influence of communication and information technologies (TICs) on group functioning and group outcomes is an important topic. Interdependent group work implies the need to communicate in order to share information and knowledge related to the task. The importance of this group interaction in the group functioning and outcomes stands out. In this sense, a line of investigation has arisen to study the role of interaction styles in the relationship between communication technology and group outcomes, as some functional or dysfunctional outputs depend on group interaction styles. From this perspective, the objective of this study is twofold: (1) to analyze the group interaction styles in virtual teams over time, and (2) to analyze whether the group virtuality level moderates the relationships between group interaction style and group outcomes over time. Data was collected from a laboratory study in which 44 groups of four members participated. Groups were randomly assigned to communication contexts with different virtuality levels. The results obtained have shown a differential role of group interaction style according to the group virtuality level. Virtuality level plays a moderate role in the relationships between passive group interaction style and objective and subjective outcomes and between constructive interaction style and subjective outcomes.     

Genetic learning of virtual team member preferences

Virtual team members do not have complete understanding of other team members’ preferences, which makes team coordination somewhat difficult and time consuming. Traditional approaches for team coordination require a lot of inter-agent electronic communication and often result in wasted effort. Methods that reduce inter-agent communication and conflicts are likely to increase productivity of virtual teams. In this research, we propose an evolutionary genetic algorithm (GA) based intelligent agent that learns a team member preferences from past actions, and develops a team-coordination schedule by minimizing schedule conflicts between different members serving on a virtual team. Using a discrete event simulation methodology, we test the proposed intelligent agent on different virtual teams of sizes two, four, six and eight members. The results of our experiments indicate that the GA-based intelligent agent learns individual team member preferences and generates a team-coordination schedule at a lower inter-agent communication cost.     

The challenges of virtual partnerships: Critical success factors in the formation of inter-organisational teams

Virtual teams formed across organisational boundaries and organised around an opportunity are a relatively new area of research. A review of previous research shows that, although virtual teams have been well defined as a concept, only a few studies have contributed to the understanding of the processes of assembling and maintaining effective inter-organisational teams enabled by new modes of communication. By combining cross-disciplinary theoretical approaches, the reported study presents a conceptual overview for collective teaming in virtual settings. The findings of the study confirm that inter-organisational teams follow special development patterns, which can be described as cyclical self-energising processes.     

Organizational change and virtual teams: strategic and operational integration

Abstract. This paper focuses on the challenges involved in integrating virtual teams strategically and operationally into organizational systems. It argues that an understanding of virtual team integration must consider both the context within which virtual teams are being introduced and processes involved in their implementation. Such an approach demands that we consider the strategic rationales involved in teamworking generally, and virtual teams in particular. By looking at change processes, attention is drawn to the social, cultural and political dynamics that affect the implementation and operation of virtual teams. This analysis is used to suggest further avenues for research on virtual teams, as well as pointing to practical considerations     

Process and technology challenges in swift-starting virtual teams

Virtual teams often face tight schedules and a need to start quickly and perform instantly. The goal of our study was to enhance understanding of the challenges faced by such teams. We used time–interaction–performance theory as the framework for following the processes and functions within virtual teams working on a systems development task. Our study provided a detailed examination of the group process, applied to virtual teams working under time pressure. The challenges faced by virtual teams in such settings showed that teams must work to enhance their effectiveness in multiple dimensions.     

The role of presence in the level of anxiety experienced in clinical virtual environments

Recent reviews point towards that Virtual Reality Exposure Therapy (VRET) can be an effective medium to provide exposure therapy for anxiety disorders. The concept of presence, usually defined as the sense of being inside the virtual environment, has been considered the principal mechanism that leads to the experience of anxiety in clinical virtual environments. The present study sought to examine the relationship between sense of presence and in-session anxiety in a sample of 210 students showing high and low test anxiety when exposed to both clinical and non-stressful virtual environments. This is the largest study conducted to date with the aim of examining the relationship between presence and anxiety in clinical virtual environments, and the first to explore separately the relationship between presence and state-anxiety in phobic and non-phobic participants. The results suggest that presence was not related to anxiety in a non-stressful environment. It was also found that although presence is related to anxiety in both groups of students when exposed to clinical virtual environments, this relationship was clearly stronger for high test anxiety students. This line of research will broaden our understanding of the mechanisms that lead to the efficacy of VRET.     

Trust and knowledge sharing in diverse global virtual teams

Global virtual teams (GVTs) allow organizations to improve productivity, procure global knowledge, and transfer best practice information instantaneously among team members. GVTs rely heavily on IT and have little face-to-face interaction, thereby increasing problems resulting from geographic barriers, time language, and cultural differences, and inter-personal relationships. The purpose of our study was to design a normative framework that would assist organizations in understanding the relationship between diversity, mutual trust, and knowledge sharing among GVTs, with additional focus on understanding the moderating impact of collaborative technology and task characteristics. Empirical data was collected from 58 GVTs and analyzed using a Hierarchical Multiple Regression technique. Results showed that in GVTs, deep level diversity has a more significant relationship with team processes of mutual trust and knowledge sharing than visible functional level diversity. This relationship is moderated by the collaborative capabilities of available technology and levels of interdependence of the task. Furthermore, knowledge sharing and mutual trust mediate the relationship between diversity levels and team effectiveness.     

Utilizing knowledge context in virtual collaborative work

The understanding of knowledge can be impaired if it is isolated from the proper context. Despite the importance of contextual information, there has been limited support for utilizing context in current knowledge management and collaborative systems. This paper presents a knowledge context model, called KC-V, which facilitates the use of contextual information in virtual collaborative work. Four benefits of using KC-V are suggested: evolutionary accumulation of knowledge aligned with collaborative activities, supporting the virtual team lifecycle, improved understanding by rich navigation paths, and searching for knowledge with similar context. A web-based collaboration system called VWSS is developed using KC-V.     

Institutional boundaries and trust of virtual teams in collaborative design: An experimental study in a virtual world environment

Members of virtual teams often collaborate within and across institutional boundaries. This research investigates the effects of boundary spanning conditions on the development of team trust and team satisfaction. Two hundred and eighty-two participants carried out a collaborative design task over several weeks in a virtual world, Second Life. Multigroup structural equation modeling was used to examine our research model, which compares individual level measurement between two boundary spanning team conditions. The results indicate that trusting beliefs have a positive impact on team trust, which in turn, influences team satisfaction. Further, we found that, compared to cross-boundary teams, within-boundary teams exhibited not only higher trusting beliefs and higher satisfaction with the collaboration process but also a stronger relationship between team trust and team satisfaction. These results suggest that trust and group theories need to be interpreted in light of institutional affiliation and contextual variables. An important practical implication is that trust can be fostered in a virtual world environment and collaboration on complex tasks can be carried out effectively in virtual worlds. However, within-boundary virtual teams are preferred over cross-boundary virtual teams if satisfaction with the collaboration process is of the highest priority.     

Adaptive leadership in trauma resuscitation teams: a grounded theory approach to video analysis

The detailed analysis of team interactions can be a source of insight into team processes and how teams interact with technology. Video recordings afford an exciting medium for such analysis. We describe a study of team leadership in the highly dynamic, high-stakes environment of trauma resuscitation. The study was conducted through video recording team activities in actual work settings and analysing the video data using a grounded theory approach. The primary research questions were: what are the functions of team leadership and how do they vary according to task situations? A corpus of 152 video segments from 18 trauma patient resuscitation cases was compiled to address these research questions. A catalog of team leadership functions was developed, along with a categorisation of the task situations in which team leadership occurred. The implications of this catalog and the mapping between leadership and task situations are discussed in relation to the findings from an interview study and a survey study on team leadership. The methodological advantages of a grounded theory approach for in-context video analysis for studying work are also discussed.     

Using wikis in team collaboration: A media capability perspective

Wikis are widely acknowledged to be capable of promoting team collaboration. However, previous studies have not examined how the characteristics of the wiki media influence team members’ perceived collaboration effectiveness in the educational context. Drawing on media synchronicity theory, we examine five wiki capabilities and whether these capabilities are perceived to be effective in facilitating collaboration. Results based on data from 83 undergraduate students in 15 teams show that reprocessability, no other wiki capabilities, plays a dominant role in securing a more favorable evaluation of collaboration effectiveness by students. The findings and their implications on theory and practice are discussed.     

The influence of disposition and social ties on trust in new virtual teammates

With the increased presence of social media tools such as LinkedIn and Facebook, social network information is now commonplace. Social media websites prominently display the social distance or so-called “degrees of separation” among users, effectively allowing people to view their shared social ties with others, including prospective teammates they have not met. Through the presentation and manipulation of social network information, this longitudinal experiment investigated whether dispositional and relational variables contribute to “swift trust” among new virtual teammates. Data from 74 participants were collected to test a path analytic model predicting that social ties and propensity to trust influence perceptions of a new teammate’s trustworthiness (ability, benevolence, and integrity) as well as the willingness to trust that new teammate when given the opportunity to do so. Path analysis indicated good model fit, but showed no significant evidence that social ties or propensity to trust affect perceived trustworthiness at the initial point of team engagement. Additionally, only one component of perceived trustworthiness (perceived ability) and propensity to trust were found to predict trusting behavior towards a new, unknown, teammate.     

Exploring factors of media characteristic influencing flow in learning through virtual worlds

This study aims to find out factors of media characteristic which are considered to influence flow in learning through virtual worlds. One hundred ninety eight elementary students who are eleven to twelve years old participated in this study. After the exploratory factor analysis, to extract media characteristics of virtual worlds, seventy-eight elementary students who are eleven years old were used in the analysis of exploring relationships between factors influencing flow.     

Interaction styles in tools for developing virtual environments

This article discusses and compares interaction styles in development tools for virtual environments (VE). The comparison relies on a qualitative empirical study of two development processes where a command language and a direct manipulation based tool were used to develop the same virtual environment application. The command language tool proved very flexible and facilitated an even distribution of effort and progress over time, but debugging and identification of errors was very difficult. Contrasting this, the direct manipulation tool enabled faster implementation of a first prototype but did not facilitate a shorter implementation process as a whole. On the basis of these findings, the strength and weaknesses of direct manipulation for developing virtual environment applications are explored further through a comparison with a successful direct manipulation tool for developing interactive multimedia applications. The comparisons are used to identify and emphasize key requirements for virtual environment development tool interface design.     

Virtual team meetings: An analysis of communication and context

We report a simulation study of virtual team meetings. Participants role-played companies collaborating on a design problem while supported by a range of IT tools, such as videoconferencing and shared applications. Meetings were analysed to investigate how sharing computing facilities, operating the technology, and company status, influenced communications. Significantly more talk occurred in larger teams where participants shared I.T. facilities BUT this extra talk was restricted to talk within a single location. No extra talk was shared across the virtual team via the communications link. Where facilities were shared, technology controllers dominated cross-site talk. To encourage free communication across distributed virtual teams we recommend providing each participant with their own communications facility even if this is technologically less advanced than if technology support were shared.     

The effects of multimedia communication technology on non-collocated teams: a case study

Collaborative teams are becoming increasingly important for industry, both within and across companies. There is a need for communication technology to support teams because many teams are non-collocated, or ‘virtual’. Two automotive supply chain teams were observed while they were experimenting with multimedia conferencing in order to determine what support non-collocated teams need and the potential effects of introducing technologies on their group processes. The observations included meeting recordings and other sources that show the organizational factors affecting teams. Working in teams requires very close collaboration. Communication technology can help teams if it is used to foster close and relatively informal person-to-person interaction. Organizational constraints on how the technology is introduced favour high-technology, specialpurpose installations, but teams can best be supported using relatively modest equipment with desktop access.