When does virtuality help or hinder teams? Core team characteristics as contingency factors

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Abstract

In this paper, we seek to encourage scholars to consider how reliance on technology-mediated communications can bring both promises and perils to team-based work structures. Specifically, we argue that a team's core characteristics (including skill differentiation, temporal stability, and authority differentiation) will differentially affect the challenges and opportunities presented by the team's reliance on virtual means of communication. First, we will discuss how varying degrees of each core characteristic can affect outcomes when teams rely on virtual communication. We then propose how configurations of the three characteristics and virtuality can enhance understanding in both research and practice. We advance propositions that we hope will serve as a starting point for scholarly discussion about how the literature on virtual teams can leverage the existing theories and knowledge on team structure and interdependencies.

Section snippets

Communicating through virtual means

The extensive literature surrounding the use of technology-mediated communication in workgroups and teams has developed across many research domains. Early research examining the differences between face-to-face and technology-mediated groups demonstrated some of the potential advantages of utilizing technology as a medium for accomplishing work in teams, for instance decision-making (Hedlund et al., 1998, Lam and Schaubroeck, 2000) and member satisfaction (Thompson and Coovert, 2002, Warkentin

Virtuality and core team characteristics

One of the key advantages of organizing work virtually is that an organization can coordinate the inputs and actions of multiple employees and contractors across the organization, without the prerequisite that they are co-located (Jarvenpaa and Leidner, 1999, Miles and Hollenbeck, 2014, Townsend et al., 1998). The extreme example of “Global Virtual Teams” (GVTs), which include members from around the world, is also growing in prevalence (Scott & Wildman, 2015). This suggests that virtuality can

Skill differentiation and virtuality

One primary practical reason for forming a team is the need to resolve reciprocal interdependencies within a network of highly differentiated roles through direct interaction of position holders. Reciprocal interdependence exists when parties must exchange resources or expertise back and forth, such that the output of one party is the input of the other and vice versa. Teams permit rapid coordination among members by providing a forum for their interaction and aligning their interests around

Temporal stability and virtuality

The second team characteristic that Hollenbeck et al. (2012) identified from their review of the teams literature is temporal stability. Temporal stability is defined as “the degree to which team members have a history of working together in the past and an expectation of working together in the future” (Hollenbeck et al., 2012, p.84). Teams that have a shared history of working together develop implicit norms and certain familiarities with one another, thereby reducing much of the uncertainty

Authority differentiation and virtuality

The third team characteristic that Hollenbeck et al. (2012) identified from their review is authority differentiation. Authority differentiation fits with existing conceptualizations of vertical centralization and decentralization as first promulgated by organization theorists (e.g., Pugh et al., 1969). It concerns the vertical dimension of the organization chart, establishing who has responsibility and authority to make decisions. Hollenbeck et al. (2012) defined authority differentiation as

Configural effects of virtuality and core team characteristics

As we have discussed, the benefits and drawbacks of reliance on virtual modes of communication are highly dependent on the characteristics of the team in question. Often, teams that rely on technology-mediated communications are brought together for a specific purpose to tackle a complex problem. Organizations and managers may have limited degrees of freedom to tailor each of the core characteristics and, at times, they may have little choice but to form teams that are not co-located and

Discussion

We have sought to describe ways in which the literature on technology-mediated communications and virtual teams can better leverage the extensive literature on workgroups and teams. We have noted how team virtuality (Kirkman & Mathieu, 2005) may present challenges, and in some cases opportunities, contingent on the core team characteristics identified by Hollenbeck et al. (2012). Temporal stability is a generally salutary characteristic of teams, and virtual teams are no exception. Many of the

Conclusions

We notice that studying virtual teams is the point of entry for many new scholars who choose to study teams. In this paper we have sought to provide a simplifying lens through which these scholars can bridge to the broader teams literature. Our configurational approach may also enrich and streamline how ‘virtual teamwork’ researchers formulate research questions and hypotheses. Jarvenpaa and Leidner (1999) cautioned against calls for “an entirely new sociology of group communication and

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    The authors contributed equally to this manuscript. Their names are listed in alphabetical order.

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