Are All Lockdown Teams Created Equally? Work Characteristics and Team Perceived Virtuality

Team virtuality has been mostly conceptualized as structural features, such as the percentage of time team members communicate via technology. However, the perception of distance and of information deficits (team perceived virtuality, TPV) may be an indispensable construct to understand virtual teams’ functioning. The lockdowns imposed on most countries due to COVID-19 created virtual teams with high degrees of structural virtuality. With structural virtuality held constant among teams, we explore configurations of work characteristics (autonomy, interdependence, and organizational support) that influence TPV. With a sample of 296 multinational workers, a Latent Profile Analysis identified four distinct profiles of those work characteristics. Those profiles related differently to TPV. Contrary to previous findings, interdependence seems to play an important role in these teams high in structural virtuality when their autonomy is also high, highlighting the pivotal role of frequent interaction among team members, under conditions of high structural virtuality.