Learning in Virtual Teams

2018 ◽  
pp. 622-634 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yuqing Ren
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Teams ◽  
Social Presence ◽  
Team Learning ◽  
Common Ground ◽  
Shared Knowledge ◽  
Team Members ◽  
Storage And Retrieval ◽  
Integrative Framework ◽  
Shared Identity ◽  
And Performance

This chapter reviews and integrates the latest research on team learning and virtual teams to understand the challenges associated with how team members learn and improve performance when working across distance. Team learning is defined as changes in a team’s knowledge and performance as a function of members gaining experiences of working with one another. This chapter presents an integrative framework that links challenges in virtual teams (lack of informal, spontaneous communication, lack of social presence, lack of common ground, reduced team cohesion and identification, lack of trust, lack of shared knowledge and understanding) to four key team learning processes (knowledge acquisition, sharing, storage, and retrieval). Three remedies are proposed to overcome the challenges through a strong shared identity, the choice of effective collaboration technologies, and timely teamwork interventions.

Forming Trust in Virtual Writing Teams

2010 ◽  
pp. 88-111 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sean D. Williams
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Teams ◽  
Social Presence ◽  
Collaborative Writing ◽  
Virtual Team ◽  
General Concept ◽  
Team Members ◽  
Performance Orientation ◽  
Use Of Technology ◽  
Trust Formation ◽  
And Performance

This chapter explores collaborative writing in virtual teams, and, particularly, trust formation in virtual writing teams, to help those who create or work in virtual writing teams to understand the importance of trust. In order to build the case for trust as the key component in teams, the chapter presents important background on teams as a general concept. In particular, it considers the constituents of quality teams, which include small team size, diverse team membership, interdependent relationships, shared team vision, articulated processes, and performance orientation. The chapter then elaborates on the role of trust in teams, presenting it as the key feature for any type of team environment. Based on this background, the chapter then differentiates the general concept of teams from virtual teams in particular, arguing that virtual teams must address specific considerations in order to build trust. Such considerations include the composition of the team, where team members possess a propensity to trust; the proper use of technology in the virtual team, so that the medium matches the communicative need; and social presence, or the ways that virtual teams can build trust by using communication behaviors to demonstrate to others that they share understanding. The chapter combines the general team considerations with the virtual team considerations into a rubric for building strong virtual teams based upon four major categories: team traits, team actions, individual traits, and environment traits. The chapter concludes with suggestions for future study.

The Impact of Trust on Virtual Team Effectiveness

2014 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 11-28 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yasser A. El-Kassrawy
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Teams ◽  
Team Performance ◽  
Team Effectiveness ◽  
Virtual Team ◽  
Structural Equations ◽  
Team Members ◽  
Competitive Environments ◽  
Team Satisfaction ◽  
And Performance ◽  
The Impact

Given the important role of information technology, virtuality has become crucial issue in contemporary organizations. Virtual teams are comprised of members who are located in more than one physical location. They need to be effectively collaborating to harness their full performance capabilities in order to compete in the highly competitive environments. However, virtual team effectiveness is affected by determinants of trust which include three types; personality, cognitive and institutional-based trust. Therefore, this paper examines the impact of trust determinants on virtual team effectiveness represented in virtual team satisfaction and performance. Through a survey of 125 virtual team members who had experienced at least two years in this field, the results indicated that determinants of trust positively influence virtual team satisfaction and virtual team performance. The authors' structural equations modeling findings also support our hypothetical predictions that personality- based trust, cognitive- based trust and institutional- based trust have a dramatic impact on both of virtual team satisfaction and virtual team performance. Moreover, institutional- based trust is the uppermost driver of virtual team effectiveness. This study provides novel insights into virtual team behaviours, managerial and research implications for effective virtual team.

Attack, Damage and Carry: Role Familiarity and Team Performance in League of Legends

2018 ◽  
Vol 62 (1) ◽  
pp. 130-134 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joshua A. Eaton ◽  
David J. Mendonça ◽  
Matthew-Donald D. Sangster
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Teams ◽  
Team Performance ◽  
Positive Impact ◽  
Social Constructs ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Team Members ◽  
Gaming Environment ◽  
And Performance ◽  
The Impact ◽  
League Of Legends

Objective: This research studies the impact of role familiarity on team performance by examining performance of the “Carry” role in the Multi-player Online Battle Arena gaming environment, League of Legends™. Background: Roles are typically defined as stable patterns of expectations, relationships, and behaviors. As social constructs, roles therefore include notions of status, relationships with additional social actors, and of defined sets of behaviors tied to the assigned role. We hypothesize that the importance of role familiarity in teams is mediated by the nature and extent of team members’ experience working together in defined roles. Methods: The data set used for this study is from League of Legends’ Application Program Interface and consists of ranked match play from 2011–2016. Results: ANOVA and visualization techniques are used to explore match-level data in order to address the proposed research questions. The proportion of time the same team member is assigned to the “Carry” role (role familiarity) has a direct and positive impact on team performance. Conclusions: This study shows how objective, detailed data on teamwork may be used to provide insights into questions of the composition and performance of teams. Additionally, the results illustrate the importance of role familiarity in the performance of teams. Application: This research highlights the value and feasibility of studying virtual teams for new insights into team performance.

scholarly journals How Packaging of Information in Conversation Is Impacted by Communication Medium and Restrictions

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah A. Bibyk ◽  
Leslie M. Blaha ◽  
Christopher W. Myers
Keyword(s):  
Common Ground ◽  
Mutual Understanding ◽  
Communication Medium ◽  
Team Coordination ◽  
Team Members ◽  
Successful Communication ◽  
Improved Performance ◽  
And Performance ◽  
The Way

In team-based tasks, successful communication and mutual understanding are essential to facilitate team coordination and performance. It is well-established that an important component of human conversation (whether in speech, text, or any medium) is the maintenance of common ground. Maintaining common ground has a number of associated processes in which conversational participants engage. Many of these processes are lacking in current synthetic teammates, and it is unknown to what extent this lack of capabilities affects their ability to contribute during team-based tasks. We focused our research on how teams package information within a conversation, by which we mean specifically (1) whether information is explicitly mentioned or implied, and (2) how multiple pieces of information are ordered both within single communications and across multiple communications. We re-analyzed data collected from a simulated remotely-piloted aerial system (RPAS) task in which team members had to specify speed, altitude, and radius restrictions. The data came from three experiments: the “speech” experiment, the “text” experiment, and the “evaluation” experiment (which had a condition that included a synthetic teammate). We asked first whether teams settled on a specific routine for communicating the speed, altitude, and radius restrictions, and whether this process was different if the teams communicated in speech compared to text. We then asked how receiving special communication instructions in the evaluation experiment impacted the way the human teammates package information. We found that teams communicating in either speech or text tended to use a particular order for mentioning the speed, altitude, and radius. Different teams also chose different orders from one another. The teams in the evaluation experiment, however, showed unnaturally little variability in their information ordering and were also more likely to explicitly mention all restrictions even when they did not apply. Teams in the speech and text experiments were more likely to leave unnecessary restrictions unmentioned, and were also more likely to convey the restrictions across multiple communications. The option to converge on different packaging routines may have contributed to improved performance in the text experiment compared some of the conditions in the evaluation experiment.

Self Organising and Virtual Teams

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohamed Salama ◽  
Maria Mataj
Keyword(s):  
Emotional Intelligence ◽  
Project Management ◽  
Virtual Teams ◽  
Team Performance ◽  
Management Practice ◽  
Team Members ◽  
Sixth Edition ◽  
High Performing ◽  
Talented People ◽  
And Performance

Amid the shift towards digital economies in the context of globalisation, project team members are required to work together remotely, utilising the current highly accessible technology (Han and Beyerlein, 2016). Virtual teams are growing rapidly in today’s world as companies are being involved in a constant fight for existence, due to the very vibrant and continuous competition which makes organizations emerge in different countries. Being a global organisation involves synchronization among people situated in diverse geographical areas, thus there arises the necessity for managing global virtual teams, assigned to resolve issues at a global level (Paul et al., 2016). The existence of a variety of technologies allows companies to have access to a large pool of talented people located all over the world, as it reduces costs and facilitates cooperation among different locations and time zones (Paul et al., 2016). According to Hertel et al. (2005), the allocation of work among employees has become more efficient due to the evolvement of technology. Consequently, for international companies to collaborate with each other and to have high performing virtual teams, there has been a need to consider the impact of cultural diversity on virtual teams’ practices and performance (Han and Beyerlein, 2016). This discussion should also include self-organising teams in the context of agile methodologies and beyond. In addition, studies have been focusing on how emotional intelligence impacts teams and groups (Wolff et al., 2001). However, limited research has been conducted on how culture and emotional intelligence impact virtual team performance in the context of project management. This chapter aims to discuss the critical area of managing project teams with emphasis on the relationship between culture, communication, emotional intelligence and trust in self-organising and virtual teams, and how the interaction between these factors impact team performance. This attempts to answer the call by the sixth edition of the PMI PMBOK that emphasised the importance of developing the soft skills of project managers in the pursuit of enhancing project management practice amid the growing interest in sustainability in general. In addition, this endorses and further justifies the suggested paradigm shift that the authors advocate, in pursuit of sustainable project management.

scholarly journals Using Transactivity to Understand Emergence of Team Learning

2017 ◽  
Vol 48 (2) ◽  
pp. 190-214 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hildert Zoethout ◽  
Renate Wesselink ◽  
Piety Runhaar ◽  
Martin Mulder
Keyword(s):  
Team Learning ◽  
Interaction Analysis ◽  
Learning Processes ◽  
Primary Data ◽  
Teacher Teams ◽  
Team Members ◽  
Storage And Retrieval ◽  
Qualitative Interaction ◽  
Video Recordings

Team learning is a recurrent topic in research on effective teamwork. However, research about the fact that team learning processes emerge from conversations and the different forms this emergence can take is limited. The aim of this study is to determine whether the extent to which team members act on each other’s reasoning (transactivity) can be used to understand how team learning processes emerge. Research on teacher teams was used as the case study: Video recordings of three different teacher teams were used as primary data, and the data were analyzed using qualitative interaction analysis. The analysis shows that the content of team learning processes changes when team members act more closely on each other’s reasoning. In particular, team learning processes related to the storage and retrieval of information took place only in sequences in which team members acted closely on each other’s reasoning.

Gender and Anonymity in Virtual Teams

2011 ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Koh ◽  
Na Liu ◽  
John Lim
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Teams ◽  
Team Performance ◽  
Virtual Team ◽  
Process Variables ◽  
Team Collaboration ◽  
Team Members ◽  
Study Approach ◽  
Research Fields ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Collaboration Process

With the advancement of information and communication technology, virtual teams are becoming more popular as geographical constraints in collaboration have become a non-issue. Features of the technology and characteristics of the group influence interaction processes and outcomes. Two elements are the focus of this paper. The first is anonymity, which has been made feasible by technology. The other concerns gender. Gender is an important research target, and its role in groupwork must not be overlooked. Both elements have aroused much interest across multiple research fields. The existing literature shows their potential in influencing team collaboration processes, satisfaction, and performance. In this paper, the authors present a process-based interpretation of virtual team collaboration, incorporating the anonymity of technology and the gender difference of team members. Using a multiple case study approach, the paper identifies a key set of process variables that shape team performance. The study also examines the interdependencies among the processes. Task-related activity that occurred during team discussion was affected by gender anonymity, and this influenced group performance and members’ satisfaction toward the collaboration process. Group dynamics, including member awareness, leader emergence, and member’s conformity, are salient process variables that affect the virtual team performance as well.

scholarly journals Relationship between Social Networking Platforms and Performance of Virtual Teams in Nigeria Telecomunnication Industry

2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 30
Author(s):  
Fasanmi, Samuel Sunday ◽  
Ogunyemi, A.O.
Keyword(s):  
Social Network ◽  
Social Networking ◽  
Virtual Teams ◽  
Significant Relationship ◽  
Virtual Team ◽  
Model Fit ◽  
Team Members ◽  
Log Likelihood ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Job Position

The study examined a relationship between social networking platforms and performance of virtual teams in Nigeria telecommunication industries. Opinions of one hundred and eleven virtual team members from three giant telecommunication firms in Enugu and Lagos, Nigeria participated in the study.MTN Nigeria, Globacom Nigeria and Airtel Nigeria were sampled using self-designed questionnaire. Two research hypotheses were tested. It was found out that that there was a significant relationship between types of social networking platforms used (Facebook, Skype, MySpace, Instagram. and Linked) in the workplace on performance of virtual teams {X2 (2) =211.108; p<.05}. Regression results indicated that the overall model fit five predictors (types of organization, team membership, job position, social networking platforms, and sex) was questionable (-2 Log Likelihood = 92.683) but was statistically reliable in distinguishing between virtual team performances X2 (5) = 54.352, p < .05). Useful recommendations that would enhance a synergy between virtual team members and healthy social network platforms were suggested. 

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