Virtual Team Performance Research Articles

Measuring communication management performance in virtual project teams

Motivation– The increasing share of virtual project teams realizing projects makes it highly important to ensure effective communication management. There is much research in the area of communication effectiveness but the topic of measuring communication management performance has not been given enough attention. Method– To discover what indicators could be used to measure communication management performance a literature review was conducted. Then the identified indicators together with measurement questions were presented for assessment in a form of an online questionnaire to a group of scientists and professionals to confirm their legitimacy. Contribution– The main contribution of the presented paper is the list of indicators for measuring communication management performance in virtual project teams together with measurement questions. The practical implications include the possibility to use these indicators for measuring the level of communication management performance in project teams. From the theoretical point of view, the communication management performance measure can be used as an output construct in a communication management model.

Virtual Team Performance, Collaborative Remote Work, and Employee Engagement and Multimodal Behavioral Analytics in the Metaverse Economy

Virtual Team Performance, Collaborative Remote Work, and Employee Engagement and Multimodal Behavioral Analytics in the Metaverse Economy

Cohesion and performance in global virtual teams: the moderating role of technical skills

Cohesion and performance in global virtual teams: the moderating role of technical skills

Team Dispersion, Emergent States, and Performance in Virtual IT Service Provisioning Teams

Today, virtual teams composed by dispersed team members relying on computer-supported collaborative work are common in the information technology (IT) service provisioning industry. Despite the increasing interest in virtual team research, there is a limited understanding of a multidimensional view of team dispersion and its effect on the performance of virtual teams via the team´s socioemotional states. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the influence of team distribution and variety of work practices on the performance of virtual IT service provisioning teams via the emergent states of trust and cohesiveness. To this aim, an input-process-output framework was adopted to develop a conceptual model and a survey with IT service provisioning professionals was conducted. The results suggest that a variety of work practices constitutes a barrier to the performance of virtual IT service provisioning teams; and that trust and cohesiveness are important mediators in this cause-effect relationship.

Identifying the development stages of virtual teams – An application of social network analysis

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to explore some quantitative indicators from the social network analysis, observe the variations of these indicators over time and determine whether these indicators fit into the traditional team development stages model or theory. The primary focus is on the perspective of social interaction rather than the suitability of the indicator, i.e. the authors will not determine the optimal indicators nor compare the performance of different indicators. This study aims to propose a quantitative method to identify the development stages of virtual teams.Design/methodology/approachTwo phases were designed in this study. The first phase was a simple study to prove the preliminary ideas and explore which quantitative indicators would be suitable for analysis. In total, 16 undergraduates were randomly assigned to two virtual teams. They were required to complete an information system (IS) project through virtual teamwork and use information and communications technologies (ICTs) to communicate with each other. After proving the preliminary ideas, the authors collected communication data of the 30 virtual teams working on IS projects in the second phase. The total duration of this process was two months.FindingsThe findings practically identified three stages, which were found to be consistent with that of the previous qualitative studies. In the initial (inclusion) stage, intensity had an upward trend. In the second (control) stage, centralization had an upward trend. In the final (affection) stage, intensity and density had upward trends and centralization had a downward trend. Both density and centralization also became smooth in this final stage. The conclusion can serve as a basis for further studies in virtual team development.Originality/valueA successful virtual team will help industries to reduce their costs and increase performance and benefits. The findings will help industries quickly and objectively identify which stage they are at. This quantified approach will provide managers and leaders with a simple, useful way to highlight the needs for managing different aspects of team behavior at each stage of development. After establishing this approach, managers and leaders will be able to make plans to improve existing processes, set priorities, provide suitable principles and guidelines, etc., and eventually improve virtual team performance.

Enhancing virtual team performance via high-quality interpersonal relationships: effects of authentic leadership

PurposeBased on path–goal theory and social learning theory, this research is aimed at investigating how authentic leadership can influence team performance in virtual teams, specifically the mechanisms through the mediator of high-quality interpersonal relationships and the moderator of task interdependence.Design/methodology/approachThe valid data of this research were collected from 90 virtual teams including 388 team members and their 90 leaders with a time-lag in China, and then the data were mainly analyzed by the hierarchical multiple regression and bootstrapping method to test the hypotheses.FindingsThe research results reveal that authentic leadership can positively influence virtual team performance. High-quality interpersonal relationships mediate the relationship between authentic leadership and virtual team performance. Furthermore, the indirect relationship between authentic leadership and virtual team performance via high-quality interpersonal relationships is moderated by task interdependence.Originality/valueTeam performance as an important kind of team effectiveness is crucial to the virtual team's advantage and success. This research enriches the knowledge on the relationship between authentic leadership and virtual team performance, which contributes to the virtual leadership effectiveness and virtual team management.

Exploring Major Factors Affecting Virtual Team Performance

Increasing global operations of companies and advances in communication technologies in the last two decades have led companies to create virtual team, in which employees work more productively and cost-effectively from different locations. This situation required virtual team leaders to have a different perspective and management approach than the leaders who manage teams in the usual offices. Performance management is one of the vital tasks of virtual team leaders and is a multidimensional research topic for researchers interested in virtual team management. Knowing the determinants of performance will be useful in quality decision-making, problem-solving, and many other managerial processes. This research aims to explore major factors affecting virtual team performance by using a systematic literature review methodology that includes more than one hundred scientific articles. Findings of this study suggest that these factors are leadership, communication, collaboration, cohesion, commitment, conflict, interpersonal relations, knowledge sharing, feedback, trust, diversity, recognition, and empowerment.

From face-to-face to virtual teams: work organization during the Covid-19 pandemic

Context: Work teams in the Human Resources and Financial Department of a large consumer goods company needed to reorganize and adapt themselves to the compulsory remote work imposed by the Covid-19 pandemic. Through daily online meetings, they interacted, learned to deal with the new scenario, perceived difficulties, and found opportunities. Now, they are facing uncertainty about to what extent this work organization will be maintained in the medium- and long-term. Teaching goals: Analyze the characteristics of the work-teams, reflect on the factors that facilitated and hindered the performance of virtual teams, and assess the challenges faced by the virtual teams created on a compulsory basis. The case generates reflection about face-to-face and virtual teamwork, as well as on barriers, facilitators, and challenges for the implementation of remote work, which enables fostering competencies and skills of recognition, definition, and resolution of problems, strategic thinking, and proposals for changes in work organization. As it presents different contexts and opinions, sometimes contradictories, careful referrals are required. Data source: The case is based on real data obtained through an electronic questionnaire sent to employees in June 2020. The name of the company was kept confidential. Although real speeches, characters, and their interaction are fictional. Applicability: It can be used as a teaching tool in modules related to Human Resource Management, Organizational Behavior, and Team Development, present in postgraduate courses. Teaching notes establish educational objectives, recommended use of the case, lesson planning, and guiding questions for discussion in class.
 Keywords: teaching case; teamwork; virtual teams; organizational behavior; Covid-19

Team Dynamics and Performance in Virtual Teams During COVID-19: Does Leadership Structure Matter?

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed how people interact with each other, especially in the workplace and business settings. Based on a sample of 1,224 self-managed global virtual teams (GVTs) consisting of 4,096 members, we found that compared to the pre-pandemic time, during the pandemic, GVT members experienced decreased team conflict, leading to increased team members’ satisfaction and improved team performance. We also found support for the interaction effect between team leadership structure and pandemic condition, such that shared leadership was beneficial before the pandemic but not during. Implications for practice and directions for future research are discussed.

The COVID-19 pandemic: A challenge to performance appraisal

Because of impending cutbacks and layoffs, this subpopulation is at high risk in terms of their future employment. (2004, p. 656), who acknowledged that “Trust is a critical factor in the development and performance of virtual teams [more] than in their non-virtual counterparts, as many of the trust-building social representations, rituals, and behaviours are absent.” [...]many managers fear that their “distant” employees will shirk their jobs (Ross etal., 2017, p. 18). The employee activities that the supervisor might miss include, for example, politeness to a client, assistance to someone having difficulty with technology, and morale-raising among colleagues. [...]during the coronavirus epidemic, the possibilities for distant staff to promote themselves and to ensure that their performance is recognized are reduced significantly, especially when their efforts most need to be appreciated. [...]when managers attempt to appraise their workers through electronic monitoring, the very acts of digital supervision, and being under constant surveillance and appraisal, can cause employees additional stress, over and above the issues of trust (see above).

Virtual teamwork in healthcare delivery: I-O psychology in telehealth research and practice

[...]research on virtual healthcare teams will take place primarily in field-based versus laboratory-based settings, which may improve the ecological validity of research findings when applied in practice. [...]the rapid transition to telehealth due to the COVID-19 pandemic presents a significant opportunity for longitudinal research to study healthcare teams with a prior (and, perhaps long-term) history of face-to-face (FTF) interactions that now take place with some extent of virtuality. [...]in the inpatient setting, teams engaging in virtual rounding or teams working within inpatient COVID-19 care units will exhibit variations in functional diversity (e.g., clinical expertise), technology used (e.g., videoconferencing, telephone), and geographic dispersion (e.g., locally within the hospital with some in/out of the patient room) throughout the duration of a patient’s hospitalization. [...]there is an opportunity to move beyond subjective satisfaction and experience indicators of virtual team performance to more objective outcomes.

Do Team Charters Help Team-Based Projects? The Effects of Team Charters on Performance and Satisfaction in Global Virtual Teams

In a sample of 1,891 teams (8,556 students) who completed an eight-week international business consulting project, half of the teams developed a team charter, half did not. Teams with charters saw ...

Leadership and virtual team performance: A meta-analytic investigation

ABSTRACT We integrate functional leadership theory with theorizing in virtual team leadership research to extend and meta-analytically test theory regarding the relationships between different types of leadership behaviours (i.e., relationship-focused and task-focused leadership) and virtual team performance as well as moderators of these relationships. We find that both relationship-focused and task-focused leadership positively relate to virtual team performance. Further, two structural moderators (i.e., task interdependence and team size) and two methodological moderators (i.e., team type and the operationalization of team performance) change the team leadership-virtual team performance relationship, resulting in differential effects of relationship- and task-focused leadership. Regarding the structural moderators, we find that task-focused leadership is a weaker predictor of team performance in virtual teams with high (compared to low) task interdependence, and relationship-focused leadership is a stronger predictor of virtual team performance for larger (compared to smaller) teams. In terms of the methodological moderators, we find a stronger effect of task-focused leadership for intact (compared to adhoc) virtual teams, and a stronger effect of relationship-focused leadership on perceived team effectiveness (compared to efficiency/productivity). We conclude with a discussion of important areas for future research and highlight theoretical and practical implications.

Impact of e-leadership and team dynamics on virtual team performance in a public organization

PurposeThis study examines the effect of various attributes of leadership and teams, modeled as perceived e-leadership and perceived team dynamics on virtual team (VT) performance in a public organization.Design/methodology/approachUsing a survey instrument, data were collected from 184 participants involved in a virtual workplace from one of the largest Canadian public organizations. This study uses PLS-SEM software and quantitative methods.FindingsThis research identified that perceived team dynamics, which includes team member behavior, collaboration and support, has a significant medium effect on VT member performance. However, perceived e-leadership, which includes leaders' trust, leader communication/co-ordination and leader behavior, has a significant small effect on VT performance.Originality/valueThis study contribute to literature on VTs and VT's performance specially in public organizations. As the existing literature on employee performance has mainly focused on private organizations, and more so on VTs. However, little is known about VTs in public organizations and specifically about their performance.

Motivational configurations of cultural intelligence, social integration, and performance in global virtual teams

Global virtual teams (GVTs), electronically connected workgroups of geographically dispersed team members in multinational settings, may suffer from less social integration. However, they may also benefit from an increased ability to process information due to a richer portfolio of ideas and problem-solving approaches that the team’s diversity provides. We propose that the cultural intelligence (CQ) of team members contributes positively to social integration in GVTs and improves performance. Using data from 263 GVTs, we utilized both structural equation modeling and necessary condition analyses to explore the associations between motivational CQ and a team’s social integration and performance. The results identified the must-have (bottlenecks) and should-have (drivers) levels of motivational CQ among team members in GVTs. We contribute to the CQ and GVT literature by linking variation in the team’s CQ levels (team average, lowest, highest, and leader CQ) to its social integration and performance.

The Management and Coordination of Virtual Teams in Large Classes: Facilitating Experiential Learning

The management and coordination of classroom teaching continues to be a challenge, particularly as enrollment trends suggest that class sizes are growing. In the past, many faculty have divided their large classes into smaller groups to incorporate experiential exercises. In this article, we discuss the challenges of managing an experiential exercise featuring a large number of teams in a virtual setting. These challenges include (a) coordinating class communication with a large number of teams, (b) managing teams and facilitating team communication and trust, (c) managing virtual team performance and instructor feedback throughout the experiential exercise, and (d) managing and evaluating student engagement. We also provide practical suggestions for management educators on how to address each challenge based on insight gleaned from our years of experience using virtual teams in large classes. Finally, we highlight avenues for future research in the area of virtual teams and large class size teaching.

Challenges, trust and performance in virtual teams: examining the role of openness to experience and preference for virtual teams

Purpose Building on the complex adaptive systems (CAS) framework, this paper aims to investigate the detrimental effect of virtual teams’ (VTs) challenges and the upholding role of trust on the members’ ratings of VTs’ performance. Also, the study examines the mediating role of the preferences for VTs and investigates the moderating function of the openness to experience personality trait on the relationship between challenges, trust and preference for VTs. Design/methodology/approach Cross-sectional survey data were collected from a sample of 498 university students in Romania and path analysis was used for data analysis. Findings The results show evidence of the harmful effect of VTs’ challenges on members’ ratings of VTs’ performance and reveal that trust boosts members’ ratings of VTs’ performance. The findings highlight the mediating role of members’ preference for VTs and show evidence that the openness to experience personality trait strengthens the negative effect of the challenges on members’ preference for VTs. Research limitations/implications Given the cross-sectional design of the study, inferences regarding the causal relationship between the variables cannot be made, and further longitudinal research is called for. Originality/value The study builds on the CAS framework and addresses the call for research to explore the variables that might contribute or impede VTs’ performance.

The predictive power of university pedigree on the graduate's performance in global virtual teams

The predictive power of university pedigree on the graduate's performance in global virtual teams

Impact of knowledge leadership on the challenges and innovative performance of virtual teams: an empirical examination in oil sector companies

This study aims at exploring the relations between the knowledge leadership, overcoming virtual teams (VTs) challenges and VTs' innovative performance in organisations involved in the Iraqi northern oil sector. For this purpose, the descriptive analytical approach was used, where an online survey (including 34 items in the context of the three main variables) was designed to collect data and information from more than 10 oil companies. Using the structural equation modelling on SPSS v.23 and AMOS v.24, the study data has been analysed. The study found that there is a direct, indirect, positive and significant relationship between the main variables. The study suggests that all skills and behaviours of knowledge leadership must be adopted to overcome the challenges faced by VTs. Additionally, these skills and behaviours help leaders to invest all subordinates' efforts for improving the VTs' innovative performance.

Impact of knowledge leadership on the challenges and innovative performance of virtual teams: an empirical examination in oil sector companies

Impact of knowledge leadership on the challenges and innovative performance of virtual teams: an empirical examination in oil sector companies