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aus Reflexion und praktische Implikationen: Das Forschungsprojekt soll die Herausforderungen beleuchten, die sich im digitalen Engagement für den Aufbau und Erhalt von Verbundenheits- und Zugehörigkeitsgefühlen von Freiwilligen mit ihrer Organisation ergeben, unterstützende Maßnahmen erarbeiten und ihre Wirksamkeit evaluieren. Als erster Schritt der Problemdiagnose wurde eine Fokusgruppe durchgeführt, deren Ergebnisse zur Entwicklung von organisationsspezifischen Maßnahmen im nächsten Schritt genutzt werden.... Praktischen Nutzen liefert unser Beitrag in zweierlei Hinsicht. Einerseits zeigen die sechs Cluster relevante Herausforderungen im digitalen Engagement auf und können von anderen gemeinnützigen Organisationen als Leitfaden für die eigene Reflexion und Verbesserung der Zusammenarbeit verwendet werden. Aus der methodischen Perspektive hat sich weiterhin die Integration der Concept Mapping Methode in die Fokusgruppe als sehr nützlich erwiesen. Die Kombination beider Ansätze bietet den Vorteil, dass Ideen zu einem Thema sehr individuell und unbeeinflusst von der Gruppe erarbeitet und strukturiert werden, dann im zweiten Schritt aber in der Gruppe diskutiert werden können.

The rapid changes of work, the ease of mobility, and ubiquitous use of virtual tools have fundamentally changed the way that teamwork in modern organizations is accomplished. Although these develop- ments have elicited a broad range of studies focusing on the phenomenon of team virtuality, the construct itself is still tied to conceptual ambiguities, opposing theoretical underpinnings, and incon- sistent findings. The present paper synthesizes the structural and social-constructivist elements of team virtuality in order to introduce the novel concept of team perceived virtuality (TPV), embedded within a theoretical model of its team-level emergence. We define TPV as a cognitive-affective team emergent state which is grounded in collectively experienced feelings of distance and perceptions of information deficits. We further describe how TPV emerges as a function of team members’ collectively developed co- constructions and identify antecedents that contribute towards this emergence. By disentangling per- ceptions from structural properties, the present paper conceptually advances our understanding of team virtuality beyond its structural characteristics. Ultimately, this conceptual work serves as a starting point for future research on team virtuality as a collectively constructed, team-level emergent construct.

Meetings often dominate software projects. Despite frequent dissatisfaction within meetings, many software engineers are not aware of the crucial importance about their behavior. This can set the tone for the entire project and influence the success. In a study based on 32 student development teams with 155 participants, we observed the participants' interactions during the first internal team meeting. Analyzing the observations showed that constructive remarks had a positive impact on positive group affect tone. However, this effect can only be observed when supportive utterances followed constructive remarks. In the article, we show a complete mediation of this statistically significant effect, e.g., about seemingly subtle interaction patterns that influence group affect tone. We also propose practical interventions on how software projects could benefit from supportive meeting behavior. This summary refers to the article "Positive affect through interactions in meetings: The role of proactive and supportive statements" [Scl8] published in the Journal of Systems & Software in 2018 (vol. 143). © 2019 Gesellschaft fur Informatik (GI). All rights reserved.

Media use can be considered as an integral part of virtual communication and thus of present-day human interaction. Nevertheless, research on media use and effects still largely relies on laboratory experiments, treating it as a stable input condition, rather than as a function of human appropriation. In this study, we propose a conceptualization of virtual communication as a dynamic construct dependent on media appropriation, particularly of compensatory adaptation processes. Using longitudinal data gathered from 165 individuals, nested in 34 project teams, we explore compensatory adaptation as a function of communication intensity and physical media richness and develop a continuous score of virtual communication accounting for these compensatory processes. Multilevel analyses demonstrate a significant influence of this communication measure on team performance, increasing over time. These results are discussed with regards to their implications for theories of media use and effects and their relevance for real-life communication processes.