Virtuality and Team Performance: Understanding the Impact of Variety of Practices.

In many corporations today, it is common to have teams with members located in different geographic locations, different time zones, and even different countries. These virtual teams are strategically important to organizations as they adapt to constantly changing market and political conditions such as global outsourcing. Despite the research and investment in technologies supporting virtual work, it remains unclear how virtuality, or the conditions under which virtual teams work, affects performance. Prior research suggests performance of virtual teams runs the gamete from failure to success. A global understanding of the specific impacts of virtual work on performance, positive or negative, remains elusive because researchers have not yet ascertained which aspects of virtuality are especially relevant in a given setting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]