Trust and Control in Virtual Teams: Unraveling the impact of Team Awareness Systems in Virtual Teams

The inability to convey contextual knowledge has proven to be harmful to the development of trust in virtual teams. Awareness systems have been offered as a way to provide contextual information and promote trust. However, awareness systems allow both team members and supervisors the ability to monitor virtual team members. Monitoring is a form of control and the relationship between trust and control is not well understood. Prior literature indicates that control can both impact the development of trust and alter the effects of trust. In some cases, control helps, hurts, or has no effect on the development and influence of trust. This position paper argues that a clear understanding of control and trust is needed to fully comprehend the implications of awareness systems.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/135720/1/CSCW-2013-Robert-Position-Paper-Final-Submission-01-02-13-08-50-15.pd

Virtual Teams: Towards Improving Work Effectiveness through Collaboration Process Structure Training

Organizations are increasingly using virtual teams to execute business processes by leveraging a distributed workforce and advanced communication and collaboration technologies. Given the growing use of virtual teams in work-place settings, there is a need to impart students with collaboration skills in virtual environments to enable them to perform efficiently in a globalized economy. Due to the complex nature of collaboration in distributed and virtual environments, past research indicates that formalized structured processes are key to successful collaboration and group performance. In this paper, we propose a training program to teach students how to collaborate in virtual settings by focusing on the process aspect. The structuring of the collaboration processes is suggested through the application of successful collaboration patterns deemed thinkLets. These structured templates may be instantiated using common collaboration tools to generate desired collaboration patterns and group processes

Cultural diversity and information and communication technology impacts on global virtual teams: An exploratory study.

Modern organizations face many significant challenges because of turbulent environments and a competitive global economy. Among these challenges are the use of information and communication technology (ICT), a multicultural workforce, and organizational designs that involve global virtual teams. Ad hoc teams create both opportunities and challenges for organizations and many organizations are trying to understand how the virtual environment affects team effectiveness. Our exploratory study focused on the effects of cultural diversity and ICT on team effectiveness. Interviews with 41 team members from nine countries employed by a Fortune 500 corporation were analyzed. Results suggested that cultural diversity had a positive influence on decision‐making and a negative influence on communication. ICT mitigated the negative impact on intercultural communication and supported the positive impact on decision making. Effective technologies for intercultural communication included e‐mail, teleconferencing combined with e‐Meetings, and team rooms. Cultural diversity influenced selection of the communication media

Real-Time Control Mediation in Agile Distributed Software Development

Agile distributed environments pose particular challenges related to control of quality and collaboration in software development. Moreover, while face-to-face interaction is fundamental in agile development, distributed environments must rely extensively on mediated interactions. On this backdrop, we report from an in-depth case study of an agile distributed software project. Applying Kirsch’s elements of control framework, we analyze how actors in this context used different elements of control. We offer a description of the general management context and provide a detailed analysis of how control was mediated over distance by technology through real-time exchanges. Contrary to previous research, the analysis suggests that both formal and informal elements of real-time mediated control were used; that evolving goals and adjustment of expectations were two of the main issues in real-time mediated control exchanges; and, that the actors, despite distances in space and culture, developed a clan-like pattern mediated by technology to help control quality and collaboration in software development

Examining Predictors and Outcomes of Identity Communication in Virtual Teams

Virtual teams play an increasingly important role in the modern economy, and many organizations struggle to overcome the weaknesses inherent in technology-mediated work. Identity communication has been shown to greatly improve individual- and group-level outcomes in offline settings, but these benefits have not been investigated in the context of virtual teams, where mediated interaction can affect the opportunity for identity communication. This research-in-progress paper proposes a theoretical model and experimental design that investigates the predictors and outcomes of identity communication in virtual teams. Our anticipated findings should have important implications for researchers seeking to understand identity communication via technology and for practitioners hoping to improve virtual team communication and collaboration.

The Impact of Virtuality on the Flexibility of Virtual Teams in Software Development Projects

Despite widespread and growing prevalence of virtual teams, there is little understanding of the way virtual teams benefit from global distribution. Virtual teams are predicted by many to be the form that is much more flexible than traditional teams. As part of an ongoing research, in this paper we present a theoretical framework towards unraveling the relationship between the level of virtuality of a software development project team and it’s flexibility to respond to various environmental changes. Propositions are developed to identify the impact different dimensions of virtuality, viz., team dispersion, workplace mobility, and variety of practices, can have on flexibility to business changes, and flexibility to technological changes

Isolation and Emotions in the Workplace: The Influence of Perceived Media Richness and Virtuality

Remote work and intensive use of Information Technologies (IT) are increasingly common in organizations. At the same time, professional stress seems to develop. However, IS research has paid little attention to the relationships between these two phenomena. The purpose of this research in progress is to present a framework that introduces the influence of (1) new spatial and temporal constraints and of (2) intensive use of IT on employee emotions at work. Specifically, this paper relies on virtuality (e.g. Chudoba et al. 2005) and media richness (Daft and Lengel 1984) theories to determine the emotional consequences of geographically distributed work