Activity awareness, social presence, and motivation in distributed virtual teams

Abstract

Distributed virtual team members are unable to directly observe each other, making it difficult to evaluate each other’s efforts. The results of an experiment are reported in which activity awareness and feelings of social presence had a significant impact on willingness to work, which in turn were associated with higher feelings of loyalty. This suggests that in many working contexts, awareness practices can increase motivation and performance, in contrast with prior virtual team research that found decreased trust and effort. Designers and users of collaboration technology are therefore advised to consider social motivation effects that might occur in virtual teams.