Effectiveness of collaborative virtual reality for remote teams

The number of remote teams has increased in recent years and this upward trend may persist. The growth is partly enabled by advancements in Information and Communication Technolo-gy (ICT) and globalization. Although organizations benefit from certain advantages that re-mote teams introduce, inadequate communication amongst remote team members can lead to project failures. Since technology has an impact on performance of remote teams, it is im-portant to investigate emerging collaborative tools such as the ones that Virtual Reality (VR) facilitates. This study explores the role of VR in enabling effective collaboration amongst re-mote team members through the lenses of Media Synchronicity Theory. The results indicate that collaborative VR can be effective for tasks that require rapid transmission of spatial and more abstract information, and individuals’ shared understanding of the information. Second-ary results reveal issues with accessibility to VR due to expensive hardware and health-related issues associated with the use of VR for a prolonged period of time. Lastly, Mixed Reality (MR) and Augmented Reality (AR) are proposed as potentially better alternatives for certain collaborative tasks performed by remote teams.