A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF COLLECTIVE AWARENESS BUILDING IN VIRTUAL TEAMS

Collective awareness becomes an important construct in the virtual context. It allows facing problems derived from uncertainty and ambiguity of electronic relationships and virtual environment. Considered as a dynamic concept, collective awareness develops with time and accumulated information exchanged between team members. However, virtual teams have different configurations resulting from different characteristics such as long/short lifespan, homogeneity/heterogeneity of team members, etc. This implies that processes of collective awareness building are different from one configuration to another. The purpose of this paper is to analyze how changing virtuality levels influence the dynamic of collective awareness. After theoretical analysis of both concept of virtuality and collective awareness, the paper present the steps and the results of a qualitative case study. This study compares two types of virtual teams (pure and hybrid) and explain differences found in collective awareness building mechanisms. Results of our study show that in team having short life span and whose members work together for the first time, it is difficult to build collective awareness. However teams having enough time to accomplish work, to exchange social and work related information, and to build personal relationships, can succeed to build a shared understanding of the actions of the others and visibility of their actions

Distributed team cohesion – not an oxymoron. The impact of information and communications technologies on teamness in globally distributed IT projects

Globally distributed IT projects are common practice in today’s globalized world. Typically, project team members’ work on interdependent tasks, with a common goal to be achieved as one team. However, being split between multiple locations impedes communication among team members and hampers the development of trust. Information and communications media enable communication between geographically distributed project team members and help to create and maintain trust within project units. Communication and trust are particularly significant for fostering a feeling of oneness among project team members. Oneness, also referred to as “teamness”, is repeatedly mentioned as one of the challenges facing global project teams. However, prior literature on teamness is very scarce and its importance is underrepresented. This research contributes to the field in two ways. First, the theoretical study based on a systematic literature review examines available evidence of teamness in globally distributed projects. Secondly, an empirical study based on interviews conducted with global project managers fills the current gap in literature on the link between use of ICT and establishing a sense of team unity. This paper draws practitioners’ attention to the importance of striving for teamness in spite of the geographical distance that exists between project team members