Exploring the effects of trust,task interdependence and virtualness on knowledge sharing in teams

The sharing of knowledge within teams is critical to team functioning. However, working with team members who are in different locations (i.e. in virtual teams) may introduce communication challenges and reduce opportunities for rich interactions, potentially affecting knowledge sharing and its outcomes. Therefore, using questionnaire‐based data, this study examined the potential effects of different aspects of virtuality on a knowledge‐sharing model. Social exchange theory was used to develop a model relating trust to knowledge sharing and knowledge sharing to team effectiveness. The moderating effects of virtuality and task interdependence on these relationships were examined. A strong positive relationship was found between trust and knowledge sharing for all types of teams (local, hybrid and distributed), but the relationship was stronger when task interdependence was low, supporting the position that trust is more critical in weak structural situations. Knowledge sharing was positively associated with team effectiveness outcomes; however, this relationship was moderated by team imbalance and hybrid structures, such that the relationship between sharing and effectiveness was weaker. Organizations should therefore avoid creating unbalanced or hybrid virtual teams.     

Perceived enablers of 3D virtual environments for virtual team learning and innovation

Virtual teams consist of geographically distributed employees working with a common goal using mostly technology for communication and collaboration. Virtual teams face a number of challenges, discussed in the literature in terms of communication through technology, difficulty in building trust, conveying social cues, and creating awareness, as well as cultural differences. These challenges impact collaboration, but also learning and innovation. This research focuses on how a social medium, the 3D virtual environment, is perceived to enable learning and innovation in virtual teams. We study this through a qualitative study based on interviews of distributed work managers’ perception of VEs. The major findings are that VEs are perceived to create collaborative learning atmospheres for virtual teams in terms of enabling engagement, a shared context awareness, and support in social network building. Another finding is that VEs are perceived to enable team learning, knowledge development, and collaboration through persistence of content, information sharing, learning through role-plays and simulations, and visualization. Furthermore, VEs enable the development of co-created content as well as new ways of working in virtual teams.     

Creativity in virtual teams: Systematic review,synthesis and research agenda

Virtual teams are gaining increasing momentum in contemporary organizations. Although it is becoming clear that virtual teams will play a major role in shaping the future of work, we still know relatively little about their creative performance. Because of the disproportionate focus on conventional, face-to-face working practices, much of the literature remains centred around co-located teams. In this review, we integrate existing research on team creativity and virtual work to identify the relevant factors, processes and contextual conditions that have been shown to influence creativity in virtual teams. We highlight the major challenges that are likely to impede team creativity and assess their relevance to contemporary virtual work practices. We conclude by presenting promising avenues for future research in this area.     

Surviving the paradoxes of virtual teamwork

Despite the potential benefits of virtual teams, current literature suggests that virtual teamwork is rife with complex challenges. We frame some of these challenges as paradoxes inherent in the concept of virtual teamwork. Based on interviews with 42 leaders and members of virtual teams, we identify five paradoxes: (1) virtual teams require physical presence; (2) flexibility of virtual teamwork is aided by structure; (3) interdependent work in virtual teams is accomplished by members' independent contributions; (4) task-oriented virtual teamwork succeeds through social interactions; and (5) mistrust is instrumental to establishing trust among virtual team members. In addition, we identify strategies that respondents used to cope with, or 'survive' the paradoxes of virtual teamwork.     

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.     

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     

Team dynamics in virtual,partially distributed teams: Optimal role fulfillment

In this study, we explored team roles in virtual, partially distributed teams, or vPDTs (teams with at least one co-located subgroup and at least two subgroups that are geographically dispersed but that collaborate virtually). Past research on virtual teams emphasizes the importance of team dynamics. We argue that the following three roles are particularly important for high functioning virtual teams: Project Coordinator, Implementer and Completer-Finisher. We hypothesized that the highest performing vPDTs will have 1) a single Project Coordinator for each subgroup, 2) multiple Implementers within the team, and 3) fewer Completer-Finishers within the team. A sample of 28 vPDTs with members working on two different continents provides support for the second and third hypothesized relationships, but not the first.     

Working Together Apart? Building a Knowledge‐Sharing Culture for Global Virtual Teams

A new impetus for greater knowledge‐sharing among team members needs to be emphasized due to the emergence of a significant new form of working known as ‘global virtual teams’. As information and communication technologies permeate every aspect of organizational life and impact the way teams communicate, work and structure relationships, global virtual teams require innovative communication and learning capabilities for different team members to effectively work together across cultural, organizational and geographical boundaries. Whereas information technology‐facilitated communication processes rely on technologically advanced systems to succeed, the ability to create a knowledge‐sharing culture within a global virtual team rests on the existence (and maintenance) of intra‐team respect, mutual trust, reciprocity and positive individual and group relationships. Thus, some of the inherent questions we address in our paper are: (1) what are the cross‐cultural challenges faced by global virtual teams?; (2) how do organizations develop a knowledge sharing culture to promote effective organizational learning among culturally‐diverse team members? and; (3) what are some of the practices that can help maximize the performance of global virtual teams? We conclude by examining ways that global virtual teams can be more effectively managed in order to reach their potential in this new interconnected world and put forward suggestions for further research.     

Group development in virtual teams: An experimental reexamination

Virtual teams are thought to be experienced differently and to have poor outcomes because there is little or no face-to-face interaction and a tendency for virtual team members to use different communication techniques for forming relationships. However, the expanding use of virtual teams in organizations suggests that virtual teams in real world contexts are able to overcome these barriers and be experienced in much the same way as face-to-face teams. This paper reports the result of an experiment in which virtual teams participated in an exercise where they completed an information-sharing task ten times as a team. The results suggest that, contrary to one-shot, ad hoc virtual teams, longer-lived virtual teams follow a sequential group development process. Virtual team development appears to differ from face-to-face teams because the use of computer-mediated communication heightens pressure to conform when a virtual team is first formed, meaning trust is most strongly linked with feeling that the team was accomplishing the task appropriately. As the virtual teams developed, trust in peers was more strongly linked with goal commitment. Once the teams were working together effectively, accomplishing the task appropriately was the strongest link with trust in peers. I suggest that virtual team managers should cultivate virtual workspaces that are similar to those proven to work in face-to-face contexts: (1) teams should have clear, specific goals, (2) members should be encouraged or even required to communicate with each other, and (3) team members should feel that they might work with the other team members again.     

Cultural diversity and information and communication technology impacts on global virtual teams: An exploratory study

Modern organizations face many significant challenges because of turbulent environments and a competitive global economy. Among these challenges are the use of information and communication technology (ICT), a multicultural workforce, and organizational designs that involve global virtual teams. Ad hoc teams create both opportunities and challenges for organizations and many organizations are trying to understand how the virtual environment affects team effectiveness. Our exploratory study focused on the effects of cultural diversity and ICT on team effectiveness. Interviews with 41 team members from nine countries employed by a Fortune 500 corporation were analyzed. Results suggested that cultural diversity had a positive influence on decision-making and a negative influence on communication. ICT mitigated the negative impact on intercultural communication and supported the positive impact on decision-making. Effective technologies for intercultural communication included e-mail, teleconferencing combined with e-Meetings, and team rooms. Cultural diversity influenced selection of the communication media.     

Improving VDT workplaces in offices by use of a physiologically optimized screen with black symbols on a light background: basic considerations

Due to the increased importance and usage of self-managed virtual teams, many recent studies have examined factors that affect their success. One such factor that merits examination is the configuration or composition of virtual teams. This article tackles this point by (1) empirically testing trait-configuration effects on virtual team performance, which are based on supplementary, complementary and interaction person-team fit perspectives and (2) extending the suggested trait-configuration model to include virtual team configuration in terms of the perceived problem-solving demands of the task as a predictor of team performance. To this end, median regression techniques were applied to data from 62 self-managed virtual teams that used an asynchronous bulletin board for working on a case study analysis. The findings suggest a plausible negative main effect of within-team conscientiousness heterogeneity on team performance, operationalised as standardised team grade. This effect depends on the level of the within-team extroversion heterogeneity which helps to mitigate the negative effect of within-team conscientiousness heterogeneity on team performance. Furthermore, within-team heterogeneity of the perceived problem-solving demands of the task reduces team performance. Overall, this study proves that virtual team configuration matters, and demonstrates that the joint utilisation of multiple person-team fit perspectives for improving virtual team performance has merit. Implications for research and practice are further discussed.     

The contingent effects of leadership on team collaboration in virtual teams

Decision-making in virtual teams creates challenges for leaders to structure team processes and provide task support. To help advance our knowledge of leadership in virtual teams, we explore the interaction effects between leadership styles and media richness on task cohesion and cooperative climate, which in turn influence team performance in decision-making tasks. Results from a laboratory study suggest that transactional leadership behaviors improve task cohesion of the team, whereas transformational leadership behaviors improve cooperative climate within the team which, in turn, improves task cohesion. However, these effects of leadership depend on media richness. Specifically, they occur only when media richness is low. Our results also suggest that task cohesion leads to group consensus and members’ satisfaction with the discussion, whereas cooperative climate improves discussion satisfaction and reduces time spent on the task.     

Conceptualizing and measuring the virtuality of teams

Virtual teams (VTs) are teams whose members do not share a common workspace all of the time, and must therefore collaborate using communication and collaboration tools such as email, videoconferencing, etc. Although the body of research on VTs is quickly expanding, to date, the field has yet to produce a comprehensive and coherent foundation upon which future research can be based, and empirical findings based on a substantive sample of real VTs remain limited at this time. This study fills a void in the VT literature with respect to defining and operationalizing the construct of degree of virtuality, and responds to calls for research that studies ongoing VTs, under real conditions. Data were collected from 30 VTs working in a Canadian technology‐based organization. Degree of virtuality was defined to include three dimensions: the proportion of work time that the VT members spend working apart (team time worked virtually), the proportion of the team's members who work virtually (member virtuality) and the degree of separation of the team's members (distance virtuality). The VTs in this study were found to have varying degrees of virtuality, and although the three dimensions were not highly intercorrelated, all were found to be significantly correlated to variables that have been previously linked to VT effectiveness. The correlations were all in the expected direction (negative), indicating that higher degrees of virtuality are associated with perceived decreases in the quality of team interactions and performance. The results of this research would suggest that the more that teams move away from the proximate form, the more the traditional measures of team effectiveness are negatively impacted.     

Empowering followers in virtual teams: Guiding principles from theory and practice

Effective leadership requires relationship skills such as – problem solving conflict management, motivation, communication, and listening [Yukl, G. A. (1998). Leadership in organizations. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall]. Arguably, nothing is more important to a leader than the skills involved in communicating one’s intent to followers, for it is only through effectively transmitting intent that followers may understand and then execute the goals of the team and leader. The modern work-world is dominated by computer-mediated communication, and this communication is the bread and butter of virtual teams; however, simple transmission of information from point A to point B is not enough – the virtual environment presents significant challenges to effective communication. In this paper we review issues related to virtual teams and developments in multimodal displays that allow teams to communicate effectively via single or multiple modalities (e.g., visual, auditory, tactile). This discussion is grounded in guiding principles for design and use of information displays that were identified and culled based on multiple review criteria from an extensive review of the literature. We present an applied example of the utility of these guiding principles for multimodal display design, in the context of communicating a leader’s presence to virtual followers via commander’s intent.     

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.     

An Exploratory Study of Trust Dynamics in Work-Oriented Virtual Teams

This study explores trust development and maintenance in temporary, work-oriented virtual teams, and examines the effect of trust on communication and cohesiveness. Results suggest that for work-oriented virtual teams formed on a temporary basis, members swiftly develop calculus-based trust in order to assess the outcomes and costs of maintaining team relationships. Members also rely on prior knowledge to determine other members' competence so that they can make predictions about one another's behaviors. Thus, both calculus-based and knowledge-based trust play accentuating roles in the initial development of work-oriented virtual teams. Identification-based trust also develops swiftly initially, but is relatively insignificant compared to the other two types of trust. Finally, initial trust may correlate to both later communication and later cohesiveness .     

Virtual Teams and the Appropriation of Communication Technology: Exploring the Concept of Media Stickiness

This paper reports on an exploratory study ofthe evolving use of communication tools by sixglobally distributed teams. The analysissuggest that although teams have similarstart-up conditions they evolve in differentways. We describe these differences as being aresult of the different routine patterns ofmedia use that the team members mutuallyenacted. Based on an analysis of six US-Dutchvirtual teams, we propose the notion of `mediastickiness', a phenomenon the teamsexperienced during the process of structuringmedia-use patterns. We will argue that in thecase of virtual teams, the evolution of mediausage seems to be path dependent. Steps takenby a team in the early stages of its life cycleconstrain later flexibility in terms of mediausage. Media stickiness has severalimplications both for the way to manage virtualteams as well as for the way teams deal withinformation problems that seem to be endemicfor global virtual teams.     

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 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.