THE EFFECTS OF SPATIAL AND TEMPORAL DISPERSION ON VIRTUAL TEAMS' PERFORMANCE

Master'sMASTER OF SCIENC

Forced to go virtual. Working-from-home arrangements and their effect on team communication during COVID-19 lockdown

Working-from-home arrangements have become increasingly important for firms’ work organization. In this context, the COVID-19 pandemic has led to teams that previously did not work virtually being forced to interact and communicate virtually. In this study, we analyze changes in intra-team communication of four teams in a German medium-sized enterprise. Quantitative network analyses of email communication and qualitative analyses of interviews before and during the COVID-19 lockdown in spring 2020 show that flat hierarchies and self-managing processes helped team members to mitigate negative effects due to spatial and temporal dispersion in forced working-from-home arrangements. Moreover, analysis of the teams’ communication networks shows that forced remote work can trigger faultlines to become salient but that team cohesion, identification with the team, and individuals taking on broker roles prevent negative effects of faultlines on team performance. In discussing these findings, our study contributes to the research on coordination and communication in virtual teams by analyzing contextual, organizational, team-related as well as individual factors that explain how and why teams differ in successfully implementing working-from-home arrangements

Following the Sun: Temporal Dispersion and Performance in Open Source Software Project Teams

Dispersion in working teams has been addressed by extant research mostly in terms of the physical distance that separates team members. Recently, the focus has shifted toward an examination of a newer construct –temporal dispersion (TD). The study of TD so far has been constrained mostly to conceptual work. This study furthers the understanding of TD through an empirical investigation of its relationship with open source software (OSS) team performance. In this paper, hypotheses are developed based on coordination theory, and analyses are performed using data collected from multiple archival sources comprising 100 OSS development teams. Results indicate that TD positively affects development speed and quality and that software complexity moderates the relation between TD and software quality. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed. *Both authors contributed equally to the paper

Virtual Collaboration with Mobile Social Media in Multiple-Organization Projects

This study investigates the use of mobile social media as emerging collaboration tools by virtual teams. Based on the construal level theory, it develops a research model hypothesizes that collaboration tool effectiveness influence contextual performance and task performance through the mediation of procedure agreeability. In addition, geographic dispersion, team size and project duration serve as moderators as they reflect virtual collaboration complexity. Empirical findings support most hypothesized relationships. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed

Investigating task coordination in globally dispersed teams:a structural contingency perspective

Task coordination poses significant challenges for globally dispersed teams (GDTs). Although various task coordination mechanisms have been proposed for such teams, there is a lack of systematic examination of the appropriate coordination mechanisms for different teams based on the nature of their task and the context under which they operate. Prior studies on collocated teams suggest matching their levels of task dependence to specific task coordination mechanisms for effective coordination. This research goes beyond the earlier work by also considering additional contextual factors of GDT (i.e., temporal dispersion and time constraints) in deriving their optimal IT-mediated task coordination mechanisms. Adopting the structural contingency theory, we propose optimal IT-mediated task coordination portfolios to fit the different levels of task dependence, temporal dispersion, and perceived time constraint of GDTs. The proposed fit is tested through a survey and profile analysis of 95 globally dispersed software development teams in a large financial organization. We find, as hypothesized, that the extent of fit between the actual IT-mediated task coordination portfolios used by the surveyed teams and their optimal portfolios proposed here is positively related to their task coordination effectiveness that in turn impacts the team's efficiency and effectiveness. The implications for theory and practice are discussed

Improvisation and Performance in Software Development Teams: The Role of Geographic Dispersion

Software development teams are increasingly faced with unanticipated obstacles to effectiveness that require extemporaneous actions. Team improvisation has been identified as an important team situated response to emergent challenges to team effectiveness. However, the efficacy of team improvisation is not well understood in the context of software development teams—which perform complex, knowledge intensive tasks. We examine the efficacy of team improvisation in enhancing team effectiveness and identify team geographic dispersion as an important boundary condition. We test our hypotheses using data from 299 team leaders and members belonging to 71 teams. We find that team improvisation positively affects team performance, and that the degree of team geographic dispersion moderates the relationship between improvisation and team effectiveness. Theoretical and practical implications are offered

Friends and Enemies Within: The Roles of Subgroups, Imbalance, and Isolates in Geographically Dispersed Teams

Research regarding geographically dispersed teams (GDTs) is increasingly common and has yielded many insights into how spatio-temporal and socio-demographic factors affect GDT functioning and performance. Largely missing, however, is research on the effects of the basic geographic configuration of GDTs. In this study, we explore the impact of GDT configuration (i.e., the relative number of team members at different sites, independent of the characteristics of those members or the spatial and temporal distances among them) on GDT dynamics. In a quasi-experimental setting, we examine the effects of configuration using a sample of 62 six-person teams in four different one- and twosite configurations. As predicted, we find that configuration significantly affects team dynamics – independent of spatio-temporal distance and socio-demographic factors. More specifically, we find that teams with geographically-based subgroups (defined as two or more members per site) have significantly less shared team identity, less effective transactive memory, more conflict, and more coordination issues. Furthermore, in teams with subgroups, imbalance (i.e., the uneven distribution of members across sites) exacerbates these effects; subgroups with a numerical minority of team members report significantly poorer scores on the same four outcomes. In contrast, teams with geographically isolated members (i.e., members who have no teammates at their site) outperform both balanced and imbalanced configurations

Structural Changes Associated with Temporal Dispersion in Software Development Teams: Evidence from Open Source Software Project Teams

Collaboration structure and temporal dispersion (TD) in teams have been studied independently so far. This study uses Media Synchronicity Theory (MST) to derive hypotheses positing that the structure of collaboration networks in distributed teams changes when those teams are more temporally dispersed. The empirical test of hypotheses using ordinary least squares with archival data from 230 open source software (OSS) projects shows that the collaboration structure networks of those OSS teams that are more temporally dispersed are sparser and more centralised, and these associations are stronger in those teams exhibiting higher relative performance. Theoretical and practical consequences are discussed

NATIONALITY DIVERSITY AND PERFORMANCE IN GLOBAL SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT TEAMS: THE ROLE OF TEMPORAL DISPERSION AND LEADERSHIP

Data from 247 global software development teams were used to examine the impact of temporal dispersion and leadership roles on the relationship between nationality diversity and team performance. Nationality diversity was positively related to team performance when project leaders regularly coordinate and monitor team members’ activities, and acted as mentors and facilitator. However, when nationality diversity was low teams performed better when leaders did not regularly engage on these roles. Teams that experienced low temporal dispersion performed better that team that experienced high temporal dispersion regardless of their degree of nationality diversity. Finally, the effect of nationality diversity on team performance was positive on teams with low temporal dispersion, but negative on teams with high temporal dispersion. These findings suggest that teams under different conditions require different leadership schemas and emphasizes the complex roles that nationality diversity, temporal dispersion and leadership play on global teams

Distances in Geographically Distributed Team: A Review

Distributed team is a group of people collaborating together virtually from different locations, different time zones and are culturally diverse from each other. Such team have the characteristics of both virtual team and culturally diverse team and is termed as Geographically Distributed Team (GDT). Members of geographically distributed team (GDT) experiences different forms of distances while working together as team both in terms of objective distance based on physical location and subjective distance based on perception. Since the members are located in different continents and working at different time zones they heavily rely on computer mediated communication tools to collaborate.Being distant from each other members experiences a unique set of challenges compared to traditional collocated team which hinders collaboration. The most commonly highlighted issues are related to absence of social ties, distorted flow of information, misunderstanding, misperception and miscommunication. The inability to observe each other work and lack of spontaneous communication due to physical distance builds in perceptual distances among members. The cultural differences among the members being from different nationality, values, beliefs, work style and languages adds to the complexity of working together as a team. Several research studies have looked into both positive and negative effect of distances on team effectiveness. This paper examines the various forms of distances experienced by individuals working in a distributed teams, how it has been measured and the challenges posed by it in GDT