Understanding Conflict in Geographically Distributed Teams: The Moderating Effects of Shared Identity, Shared Context, and Spontaneous Communication

2005 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 290-307 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pamela J. Hinds ◽  
Mark Mortensen
Keyword(s):  
Distributed Teams ◽  
Moderating Effects ◽  
Shared Identity ◽  
Geographically Distributed ◽  
Shared Context

Managing Social Distance in Geographically Distributed Teams

2021 ◽  
pp. 286-307
Author(s):  
Vinita Seshadri ◽  
Elangovan N.
Keyword(s):  
Social Distance ◽  
Team Effectiveness ◽  
Contextual Information ◽  
Negative Relationship ◽  
Distributed Teams ◽  
Team Members ◽  
Shared Identity ◽  
The Social ◽  
Distributed Team ◽  
Geographically Distributed

The chapter highlights the social distance, i.e. lack of emotional connection, formed among individuals working remotely in a geographically distributed team. The virtuality and cultural diversity of such teams creates limited opportunities for dispersed members to build social ties with remote team members leading to formation of ‘us' versus ‘them' attitudes which corrode team effectiveness. Based on a survey of 482 Indian IT professionals working in distributed teams, we find that social distance negatively impacts team effectiveness. Further, the results of the study show that practices such as task interdependence, inclusive communication, contextual information and shared identity can moderate the negative relationship between social distance and team effectiveness at varying levels of perceived status equality among individuals working in geographically distributed teams. The chapter provides recommendations for the effective management of geographically distributed teams whereby managers act as a bridge between the team members to overcome social distance.

Online Corporate Collaborative Teams

2010 ◽  
pp. 1112-1119
Author(s):  
Hélder Fanha Martins ◽  
Maria João Ferro
Keyword(s):  
Information Technology ◽  
Best Practices ◽  
High Performance ◽  
Building Blocks ◽  
Distributed Teams ◽  
Team Communication ◽  
Collaborative Teams ◽  
Travel Costs ◽  
Geographically Distributed ◽  
Communication And Coordination

Given the growing demand for the use of teams as fundamental building blocks in organizations (Furst, Blackburn, & Rosen, 1999), particularly geographically distributed teams, it is essential to establish a means to ensure their high performance and productivity. The first step to improve our understanding of what makes these teams effective is to identify a series of best practices that should be followed by all those involved in what we call online collaborative teams (OCT): their organizations, leaders and members. OCT are groups of individuals who work on interdependent tasks, share responsibility for outcomes, and join their efforts from different locations. These teams are now being used by many organizations to enhance the productivity of their employees and to reach a diversity of skills and resources. Information technology can support their activities by reducing travel costs, enabling expertise to be captured where it is located, and speeding up team communication and coordination processes. Unfortunately, these distributed teams are not always productive.

MADEsmart: An Integrated Design Environment

1998 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tom Barrett ◽  
Gary Coen ◽  
Joel Hirsh ◽  
Leo Obrst ◽  
Judith Spering ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Design Optimization ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Integrated Design ◽  
Easy Access ◽  
Distributed Teams ◽  
Task Management ◽  
Design Environment ◽  
Defense Contractors ◽  
Engineering Environment ◽  
Geographically Distributed

Abstract Technology is within reach today to significantly improve the design/build environment for large scale engineering efforts such as those undertaken by the aerospace industry and defense contractors. On large and possibly geographically distributed teams, strong task management and easy information distribution is required to minimize the time necessary to develop designs. Broadening the scope of design constraints to include producibility issues, particularly with respect to design optimization, can significantly improve the quality of the designs and reduce the number of times they must be adjusted. Further, the ability to automatically evaluate designs with respect to requirements documentation can contribute additional improvements in quality and reductions in rework. The MADEsmart1 distributed concurrent engineering environment addresses these needs by providing task coordination and easy access to needed information. It will also provide integration of a number of multidisciplinary tools for design optimization and the ability to automatically evaluate designs with respect to existing, textually specified, requirements.

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