Search

Although there are many potential benefits to diverse teams, the way in which diversity characteristics are aligned in teams may influence whether teams exploit this potential. In this experimental study, we examined the relationship between diversity composition and the process and outcome of team learning by comparing faultline teams (in which diversity characteristics are aligned) with teams in which diversity characteristics cross-categorize each other. We investigated whether this relationship would be influenced by the teams' beliefs regarding error handling (i.e., error culture). We assigned 268 participants to 67 four-person groups with faultline or cross-categorized compositions. We hypothesized and found that the relationship between diversity composition and team learning was moderated by error culture, only in faultline teams, not in cross-categorized teams. An error management culture (i.e., a culture in which members value the open discussion of errors) was found to promote inclusive communication and the team learning process in faultline teams. In contrast, an error prevention culture (i.e., a culture in which members believe that errors are harmful and must be prevented) decreased inclusive communication and the processes of team learning in faultline teams. Contrary to our expectations, we found a reversed effect for the outcome of team learning. In line with our prediction, cross-categorized teams were unaffected by error culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this study is to investigate in detail the specific tendencies of conflict management strategies displayed by trained and untrained synchronous computer-mediated communication (CMC) teams over time. A laboratory experiment was carried out with 54 virtual teams of four members each randomly assigned to the two conditions: experimental condition and control condition. In the experimental condition 28 teams received a training program for improving virtual team functioning among session 1 and 2, consisting in a team self-guided training. These results were compared with 26 control teams, who did not receive any training program. Content analysis of the chat was used as research method. Our results showed that trained synchronous CMC teams use more frequently functional conflict management strategies, like open communication and rotating responsibilities, and less dysfunctional conflict management strategies (avoiding) over time. In contrast, untrained synchronous CMC teams tend to use more frequently dysfunctional conflict management strategies (avoiding) and less frequently functional conflict management strategies (rotating responsibility) over time. Our study shows that team self-guided training can be useful for virtual teams. Feedback given to teams about their processes and results improves group conflict management in a virtual context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The debate on the benefits of trust or distrust in groups has generated a substantial amount of research that points to the positive aspects of trust in groups, and generally characterizes distrust as a negative group phenomenon. Therefore, many researchers and practitioners assume that trust is inherently good and distrust is inherently bad. However, recent counterintuitive evidence obtained from face-to-face (FtF) groups indicates that the opposite might be true; trust can prove detrimental, and distrust instrumental, to decision-making in groups. By extending this argument to virtual teams (VTs), we examined the value of distrust for VTs completing routine and non-routine decision tasks, and showed that the benefits of distrust can extend to short-term VTs. Specifically, VTs seeded with distrust significantly outperformed all control groups in a non-routine decision-making task. In addition, we present quantitative evidence to show that the decision task itself can significantly affect the overall levels of trust/distrust within VTs. In addition to its practical and research implications, the theoretical contribution of our study is that it extends to a group level, and then to a VT setting, a theory of distrust previously tested in the psychology literature in the context of completing non-routine and routine decision tasks at an individual level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In practice most organisational decisions are made by groups that bring into the problem multiple perspectives, both complementary and contradictory. When having a group of decision makers, usually individuals' preferences are either led to consensus or are aggregated with the use of some function like the median, the arithmetic or geometric mean. We focus in the second case, where individual's preferences need to be aggregated. Our approach is based on the fact that when two decision makers are asked to give their preference between a pair of criteria using a specific scale, it is possible that they will give slightly different answers, even when they actually have the same opinion. This difference will not affect the case of a single decision maker, as it will be consistent throughout the whole process. However, it can affect a group decision when the values will be used as an input for the aggregation function. A novel approach is presented that enhances group decision making through a group calibration process. The proposed process adjusts individuals' preferences based on their answers on a set of standardized questions prior to the aggregation phase. The method focuses The whole concept is applied to the group analytical network process method and it is illustrated through a telecommunications project case. The decision under examination concerns the selection of the right place for deploying a new telecom service of a multinational-based telecommunications company where a group of geographically dispersed decision makers form an ad-hoc virtual team in order to select the location for a new technical support centre. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents the findings of an exploratory study of the degree to which Focus Theory, a general theory about group productivity, can be used to improve the productivity of project management activities. Guided by the theory and the principles of collaboration engineering, we developed a collaborative template for project progress status reporting. We evaluated the template in both face-to-face and distributed group interactions. The study indicated that a collaborative template helped structure status reporting activity and provided a permanent record of project status for future reference. As a result, it was efficient and effective for team leaders to prepare topics for project status meetings by using the template. The meetings became focused on topics outlined on the template and meeting participants commented that the meeting record helped them keep track of what had been either accomplished or decided. The major limitation observed for use of the template was that, when used in distributed and synchronous interactions, it needed to be augmented by voice communication because communication in text-only format, as provided by the template, was too time-consuming. We discuss implications of the research outcomes with respect to the usefulness and limitations of Focus Theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sophisticated collaboration software allows teams that are dispersed in space and time to work together. Nevertheless, to reach their common goals, distributed teams-and the professional facilitators who support them by intervention techniques-are faced with the communication challenges arising from dispersed settings, including task coordination and effective information exchange. When distributed teams use collaboration software, however, traces of their collaboration are left behind. These traces provide an underused source of data which can be analyzed and be used to inform the design of interventions aimed at improving collaboration in distributed teams. This paper investigates the untapped potential for understanding collaboration, and in particular, the macro-cognitive processes of team knowledge building. These processes rely on information shared and knowledge structures developed by team members which are also referred to as team cognition. We performed a qualitative content analysis applying the COllaboration PRocess Analysis technique, CoPrA, and a framework for measuring team knowledge building. Communication data was collected from 18 participants assigned to six distributed teams. While working collaboratively on a problem-solving task teams were supported with synchronous collaboration software. The results show that by using a cognitive perspective on teams, all the hypothesized processes of team knowledge building could be identified in collaboration traces. Moreover, our analysis shows that CoPrA enables us to identify key characteristics of (1) team behavior, e.g., whether teams are rather solution-oriented or problem minded, show consensus-oriented behavior, withhold evaluative arguments, discuss ideas in breadth and/or depth, or spend much effort on coordination as well as (2) behavior of team members, e.g., who show non-participation, are willing to share or predominantly guide coordination. Future research could adopt this approach to improve our understanding of the dynamics of collaboration patterns and its effects on team performance to inform collaboration facilitation in distributed settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Teams use ideation techniques such as brainstorming to generate alternatives in response to a crisis or opportunity with the goal of converging on a few high-quality ideas. Ideation research, however, tends to focus on developing techniques that generate a large quantity of ideas, sometimes giving little attention to the cognitive mechanisms that give rise to good-quality ideas, or to the validity of the metrics by which ideation quality is measured . This study examines a theoretical link between idea quality and quantity in the ideation literature using Bounded Ideation Theory (BIT). BIT proposes that the relationship between participant ability and ideation quality is moderated by cognitive factors such as scarcity of attention resources, mental and physical exhaustion, understanding of the problem, and goal congruence, as well as attributes of the problem being addressed. Ideation quality is measured in the literature using a number of approaches which diverge to differing research conclusions, even when applied to the same data set. We use a Monte Carlo simulation to demonstrate conditions under which some of these measures exhibit a bias. We present theoretical and methodological arguments to support our call for future ideation research to shift its focus from quantity to quality by focusing on the cognitive factors that influence ideation quality and using unbiased measures of ideation quality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Virtual teams have different interactions than face-to-face teams because they rely on information and communication technologies, which can impede or assist certain human cognitive processes. Past research has shown that although virtual teams exchange more information than face-to-face teams, poor decisions often result, because team members do not consider the unique information they receive from others. Drawing from cognitive psychology, our research explored a unique way to improve team decision-making through the use of cognitive priming. We proposed that priming group members to pay attention to others or to engage in counterfactual thinking would improve team members' cognition and, therefore, team performance. Prior research with individuals and brainstorming teams has shown these forms of priming to improve performance; however, no research has attempted to use priming to improve the outcomes of virtual team decision-making, which requires deeper interaction and cognitive involvement than brainstorming. We performed two lab experiments using primes that have been found to improve the individual decision-making process. We found that priming had some impact, but it did not significantly improve decision quality. Various reasons are discussed to explain why priming techniques may not be as powerful in teams as in individuals, and future research ideas are suggested to build on our initial work on priming in virtual team decision-making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The use of information technologies in virtual teams has become common, but little is known about how psychological factors may affect future usage decisions in this context. Our study focuses on psychological collectivism, which is an individual-level form of collectivism (an individual trait capturing people's 'team spirit' or psychological attachments to groups) and investigates how this trait affects team members' rational decision making processes. Partial Least Squares analysis applied to data collected from 120 team members suggest that psychological collectivism influences both team-referenced perceptions (confidence in one's team's capability) and system-referenced perceptions (the perceived usefulness of the e-collaboration tool), and these factors together affect future usage intentions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the importance of leadership and the wealth of empirical studies focused on leadership effectiveness in traditional and computer-supported groups, there is little research examining leadership dynamics in partially distributed virtual teams (PDTs). Virtual teams are partially distributed when they are configured with one or more subgroups of collocated members and isolated members. This paper lays the groundwork for an in-depth study of leadership in PDTs that can be extended to other types of virtual team configurations. Using three dimensions of virtual distance (geographic, cultural and temporal), we analyze how the configuration of virtual teams interacts with leadership dynamics. We also summarize the results of an exploratory study using 12 student teams to examine the effects of distance and configuration on leadership in PDTs. Findings show significant differences in leadership dynamics (i.e., leader emergence vs. leader retention) which impacted team performance. From these results, we develop propositions on leadership and PDTs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Decision making in virtual teams is gaining momentum due to globalization, mobility of employees, and the need for collective and rapid decision making by members who are in different locations. These factors resulted in a proliferation of virtual team software support tools for decision making, the latest of which is social software (also known as collaboration 2.0), which includes tools such as wikis, blogs, microblogs, discussion forums, and social networking platforms. This paper describes the potential use of collaboration 2.0 software for improving the process and the specific tasks in virtual group decision making. The paper proposes a framework for exploring the fitness between social software and the major activities in the group decision making process and how such tools can be successfully adopted. Specifically, we use a fit-viability model to help assessing whether social software fit a decision task and what organizational factors are important for such tools to be effective. Representative research issues related to the use of such tools are also presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The number of virtual teams is increasing in today's workplaces. In virtual teams, the members can have different cultural backgrounds, they often work in different countries and are professionals in their own fields. In addition, as such diverse and dispersed teams communicate mainly through communication technology this raises the challenge for the team leader of how to unify the team and get the members to identify themselves with the team. This qualitative study focuses on four virtual team leaders and their attempts to strengthen the team members' identification with the team through computer-mediated communication. The results show four different tactics employed in enhancing identification with the team: catering for the individual, giving positive feedback, bringing out common goals and workings and talking up the team activities and face-to-face meetings. The roles of organizational change and technology in identification with virtual teams are also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Diversity in the national background and culture of team members is common in virtual teams. An experimental study, with short term teams, was undertaken to examine the effect of cultural diversity on team effectiveness and to examine if this effect changes depending if the team worked face-to-face (F2F) or virtually. Heterogeneous teams were created that had greater diversity than homogeneous teams of individualism/collectivism values, different languages spoken, country of birth, and nationality. The teams worked on a desert survival task either F2F or virtually (via audioconference and electronic chat tools). The overall results indicated that heterogeneous teams were less satisfied and cohesive and had more conflict than the homogeneous teams, although there were no statistical differences in team performance levels. However, examining just the heterogeneous teams found that the performance of the virtual heterogeneous teams was superior to that of the F2F heterogeneous teams. The results support Carte and Chidambaram's (2004) theory that the reductive capabilities of collaborative technologies are beneficial for newly-formed diverse teams. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A field study of a global science/technology company provides evidence of the value of both organizational practices and technology tools for supporting knowledge attainment (the combined tacit and explicit knowledge gained in a focal area – in this study we focus on product knowledge attainment) in virtual environments. We present a three-dimensional typology of knowledge management systems. Method of input, form of content, and how the users accrue the benefit of the knowledge help us to argue that organizational practices and technological tools will have independent positive effects on user knowledge attainment. We find attendance at face-to-face community of practice meetings, use of searchable archives, video-on-demand, and full-text search of video-on-demand all positively predict knowledge attainment. We suggest that organizations develop both organizational practices and technical supports for knowledge transfer. An interview with the video-on-demand vendor gives us the context to discuss issues for the support of tacit knowledge in more virtual environments as well as issues of expertise as it relates to support for formal and informal learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The issue of leadership in virtual teams is an increasingly important one for many modern organizations, because these teams – typically project-based with a finite lifespan and specific deliverables – are frequently self-managed, having no designated leader within the team (Yukl 1998). While such teams may have increased flexibility in setting goals and achieving them, the virtual context may hinder team members' abilities to coordinate activities and influence others (Manz and Sims 1993). Longitudinal data were collected over the course of a semester from virtual teams, comprised of students from three North American universities. Our results suggest that high performing self-managed virtual teams displayed significantly more leadership behaviors over time compared to their low performing counterparts. Specifically, these teams displayed significantly more concentrated leadership behavior focused on performance (i.e. “Producer” behavior) and shared leadership behavior focused on keeping track of group work (i.e. “Monitor” behavior) than the lower performing teams. Interestingly, these behaviors emerged strongly during the first half of the groups' lifespan, and stayed throughout the life of the groups, but steadily dissipated in strength over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Work environments have grown substantially more complex over the years. Teams are increasingly distributed, and presented with a variety of different communication technologies, e.g., e-mail, instant messaging, cellular phones, pagers, and intranet applications, for use in distributed collaborative activities. Further, individuals often belong to multiple teams concurrently. This study explores how virtual team members structure their use of multiple media to attain strategic goals in complex work environments. A grounded theory approach was used to analyze data gathered from forty interviews of information technology workers. Our results indicate that there are two primary structures individuals employ when making use of multiple media: sequential and concurrent. Sequential combinations are of three types: redundant, serial, or complementary, while concurrent combinations are of two types: independent or complementary. Further, individuals strategically use multiple media to accomplish specific communication goals beyond simply transmitting the message, such as message acknowledgement, enhancement of mutual understanding, and participation in multiple communication interactions. The implications of these findings for research and practice are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The emergence and widespread use of collaborative technologies for distributed project management has opened up opportunities for off-shore outsourcing and collaborative development. However, most tools and techniques for project management focus on on-site, long term relationships and sourcing strategies at a time when inter-organizational relationships are becoming more dynamic and geographically dispersed. This paper uses grounded theory to analyze data on virtual teams' projects. The analysis uncovers “effects” in the way in which distributed projects are managed. These effects relate to coordination, communication and adaptation to distributed electronic work environments. Following an analysis of these electronic collaboration “effects”, a model for distributed project management is presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Computer supported teams are capturing the attention of academics and practitioners as organisations increasingly put them into practice as virtual teams. The practical relevance of current research into computer supported teams could be increased if greater attention is paid to organisational challenges as they form the context within which virtual teamwork takes place. A model of organisational challenges mapped against processes of adaptation is developed to highlight principle factors affecting virtual teams. A sample of current research groups studying computer-supported teams is plotted onto this map to reveal the extent to which current research addresses these contextual factors. From this map insights are distilled with respect to what is known and is not known about virtual teams. This paper concludes with specific research needs in the study of virtual teams. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses various reports published within the issue, including one by Terri L. Griffith and John E. Sawyer on the knowledge transfer in virtual settings and another by D. Sandy Staples and Lina Zhao on the effects of cultural diversity on the perceptions of virtual teams.