A Holistic Approach to Virtual Entrepreneurial Team Formation

Abstract

Virtual teams formed across organizational boundaries and organized around an opportunity are a relatively new area of research. A review of previous research shows that, although virtual teams have been well defined as a concept, only a few studies have contributed to developing an understanding of the mechanisms of assembling and maintaining effective inter-organizational teams enabled by new modes of communication. By pointing out the need for a multidisciplinary perspective and a more holistic approach to research in this area, this study presents an initial attempt to understand the phenomenon by emphasizing the interaction patterns required for virtual work. The results presented confirm that virtual teams are not simply evolutionary forms of the traditional collocated entrepreneurial teams, but they represent novel patterns of interactions of social and organizational factors and specific team formation processes characterized by collaboration across organizational and country boundaries.