Creating Virtual Communities That Work

The use and import of virtual collaboration (VC) has increased at an exponential rate. Despite its potential advantages, however, VC continues to be hindered by feelings of distrust, detachment, and even isolation among virtual team members. For each of these reasons, the present study analyzed more than 1,500 survey responses to develop best practices for current users and developers of e-collaboration software. More specifically, this study used an expanded variation of Vorvoreanu's (2008) Website Experience Analysis (WEA) to explore participants' views of the seven most popular VC programs in use today: Basecamp, Dropbox, Google Drive, iDoneThis, Join.me, Skitch, and Skype. Qualitative results of this study revealed the significance of (1) name recognition, (2) interpersonal facilitation, (3) clarity/simplicity, (4) cost consideration, and (5) mobile accessibility. The study's results were then used to develop five corresponding implications for both users and developers: (1) increased integration, (2) expanded physicality, (3) supplemental training, (4) financial entrée, and (5) utilized flexibility.

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Mobile Collaboration Support for Virtual Teams

Journal of Database Management ◽

10.4018/jdm.2017070103 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 28 (3) ◽

pp. 48-69 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Keng Siau ◽

Min Ling

Keyword(s):

Virtual Teams ◽

Virtual Team ◽

Virtual Collaboration ◽

Conceptual Foundation ◽

Work Systems ◽

Team Members ◽

Development Teams ◽

Geographically Distributed ◽

Qualitative Technique ◽

Sophisticated Technology

Organizations increasingly depend on virtual teams in which geographically distributed individuals use sophisticated technology to interact and collaborate. With the advancement of mobile and wireless technology, mobile support for collaboration among virtual team members is becoming increasingly important and popular. In this research, we study the values of mobile support for virtual team members. Using the qualitative technique, Value-Focused Thinking approach, proposed by Keeney, we interviewed 30 subjects who were involved in information systems development teams and asked them the values of mobile support for virtual collaboration. This study uses Alter's Work Systems Theory as the conceptual foundation.

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Best Practices for Virtual Team Effectiveness

Virtual Teams ◽

10.4018/978-1-59140-166-7.ch007 ◽

2011 ◽

pp. 160-185 ◽

Cited By ~ 8

Author(s):

D. Sandy Staples ◽

Ian K. Wong ◽

Ann Frances Cameron

Keyword(s):

Best Practices ◽

Empirical Evidence ◽

Case Studies ◽

Virtual Teams ◽

Team Effectiveness ◽

Virtual Team ◽

Research Directions ◽

Team Members

The purpose of this chapter is to improve the understanding of what makes virtual teams effective. This is done by identifying the best practices for individual team members, the best practices for leaders and sponsors of virtual teams, and the best practices for the organizations that the virtual teams are a part of. Best practices in these categories were identified from: (1) empirical evidence from case studies of six existing virtual teams; (2) the existing literature related to virtual teams; and, (3) traditional team (i.e., collocated) and telework literature. The chapter concludes with implications for organizations and potential research directions.

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Effective Virtual Teams

Encyclopedia of Information Science and Technology, Second Edition ◽

10.4018/978-1-60566-026-4.ch202 ◽

2011 ◽

pp. 1272-1278

Author(s):

D. Sandy Staples ◽

Ian K. Wong ◽

Ann-Frances Cameron

Keyword(s):

Best Practices ◽

Virtual Teams ◽

Virtual Work ◽

Virtual Team ◽

Full Potential ◽

Success Rates ◽

Team Members ◽

Geographically Dispersed ◽

The Individual ◽

Collocated Teams

Virtual teams are now being used by many organizations to enhance the productivity of their employees and to bring together a diversity of skills and resources (Gignac, 2005; Majchrzak, Malhotra, Stamps, & Lipnack, 2004), and it has been suggested that this will become the normal way of working in teams in the near future (Jones, Oyund, & Pace, 2005). Virtual teams are groups of individuals who work together from different locations (i.e., are geographically dispersed), work at interdependent tasks, share responsibilities for outcomes, and rely on technology for much of their communication (Cohen & Gibson, 2003). While the use of virtual teams is more common in today’s organization, working in these teams is more complex and challenging than working in traditional, collocated teams (Dewar, 2006), and success rates in virtual teams are low (Goodbody, 2005). This article suggests best practices that organizations and virtual team members can follow to help their virtual teams reach their full potential. In this article, virtual team best practices are identified from three perspectives: organizational best practices, team leadership best practices, and team member best practices. Ideas for best practices were identified from three sources: six case studies of actual virtual teams (Staples, Wong, & Cameron, 2004); the existing literature on virtual teams; and the existing literature on traditional (i.e., collocated) teams and telecommuting (i.e., research on virtual work at the individual level).

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Trust, Rationality and the Virtual Team

Virtual Teams ◽

10.4018/978-1-59140-166-7.ch013 ◽

2011 ◽

pp. 316-342 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Peter Murphy

Keyword(s):

Virtual Environment ◽

Virtual Teams ◽

Virtual Team ◽

High Quality ◽

Virtual Collaboration ◽

Team Members ◽

Face To Face ◽

Collaborative Environment ◽

Group Cooperation ◽

National Organizations

Virtual teams need trust in order to function. Trust is an efficient way of gaining group cooperation. Online, trust is more effective than instruction or authority or status in getting people who are largely strangers to one another to work together. But trust is not a simple quality. The kind of trust that is the cement of distance relations of a global or virtual kind is different from the type of trust that binds face-to-face interactions and from the procedural kind of trust that operates in regional or national organizations of a traditional managerial kind. This study looks at the ways in which trust between virtual team members is generated. “Trust between strangers” is optimally generated when persons are allowed to self-organize complex orders and create objects and processes of high quality. Also looked at are the kinds of personalities best suited to working in a virtual collaborative environment. The study concludes that persons who prefer strong social or procedural environments will be less effective in a virtual environment. In contrast, self-steering (“stoic”) personality types have characteristics that are optimally suited to virtual collaboration.

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A Family of Invisible Friends

Advances in IT Standards and Standardization Research - Handbook of Research on the Evolution of IT and the Rise of E-Society ◽

10.4018/978-1-5225-7214-5.ch004 ◽

2019 ◽

pp. 67-88

Author(s):

Ramon Visaiz ◽

Andrea M Skinner ◽

Spencer Wolfe ◽

Megan Jones ◽

Ashley Van Ostrand ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Virtual Communities ◽

Virtual Work ◽

Group Processes ◽

The Internet ◽

Technical Expertise ◽

Mobile Accessibility ◽

Survey Responses ◽

User Friendly ◽

Practical Implications ◽

Modern Workplace

E-communities (i.e., virtual communities that are established and interact primarily via the internet) are more significant than ever in today's modern workplace. Despite the potential advantages offered by e-communities, however, their formation and maintenance are often hindered by feelings of mistrust, unclear group processes, and limited technical expertise. This study analyzed nearly 2,500 survey responses from 600 students spanning 25 colleges/universities in order to develop practical implications for cultivating a sense of e-community among virtual work teams. Thematic results of our study revealed the significance of brand awareness, interpersonal facilitation, user-friendly design, fiscal barriers, and mobile accessibility. Based on these results, this study concludes with five corresponding implications for cultivating a sense of e-community in the modern workplace: increased integration, expanded physicality, supplemental training, financial entrée, and utilized flexibility.

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It Is Certainly a Different Manner!

Cultural Factors and Performance in 21st Century Businesses - Advances in Business Strategy and Competitive Advantage ◽

10.4018/978-1-7998-3744-2.ch004 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 68-89 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Norhayati Zakaria ◽

Shafiz Affendi Mohd Yusof ◽

Nursakirah Ab Rahman Muton

Keyword(s):

Intercultural Communication ◽

Virtual Team ◽

Cultural Dimensions ◽

Communication Styles ◽

Indirect Communication ◽

Virtual Collaboration ◽

Team Members ◽

Verbal Responses ◽

Diverse Backgrounds ◽

High Level

The present study seeks to understand intercultural communication patterns, characteristics, and styles of team members that engage in virtual collaboration with people from diverse backgrounds known as global virtual team (GVT). Twenty respondents were interviewed in order to develop a rich understanding of the intercultural communication and styles within a GVT, based on Edward Hall's cultural dimensions. The results reveal that GVT members from high context cultures demonstrate indirect communication styles, use non-verbal approaches, and employ silence and polite gestures in certain situations, while low context GVT members are more prone to direct and straightforward communication styles with many verbal responses in online team discussion. In essence, the findings provide key implication to global managers: be prepared to work with cultural diversity in terms of being open-minded, develop a high level of tolerance, and become culturally sensitive to different approaches and preferences of communication styles as employed by team members when working at a distance.

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Exploring Traditional and Virtual Team Members’ “Best Practices”

Small Group Research ◽

10.1177/1046496406296961 ◽

2007 ◽

Vol 38 (1) ◽

pp. 60-97 ◽

Cited By ~ 47

Author(s):

D. Sandy Staples ◽

Jane Webster

Keyword(s):

Best Practices ◽

Virtual Teams ◽

Self Efficacy ◽

Social Cognitive ◽

Cognitive Theory ◽

Empirical Support ◽

Virtual Team ◽

Team Members ◽

Differential Outcomes ◽

Modeling Practices

Social cognitive theory is used to develop a research model that was tested by examining employees’ experiences of being a member in a traditional or virtual team. A self-efficacy for teamwork measure was developed based on best practices identified through case studies and existing literature. Then a survey of team members demonstrated that self-efficacy for teamwork is influenced by fellow team members’ modeling practices and relates strongly to a team member’s perceptions of effectiveness. Differential outcomes for traditional and two types of technology-supported virtual teams (distributed and hybrid) were found: Self-efficacy for teamwork was more important in virtual teams, providing empirical support for the importance of the best practices in this context.

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Community Colleges: The Next Frontier of Recovery Support at Institutions of Higher Education

Journal of Recovery Science ◽

10.31886/jors.12.2018.27 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 1 (2) ◽

pp. 9

Author(s):

Erin K Jones

Keyword(s):

Community Colleges ◽

Best Practices ◽

College Campuses ◽

Support Programs ◽

Institutions Of Higher Education ◽

Building Capacity ◽

Grant Program ◽

Pilot Programs ◽

Recovery Support ◽

Survey Responses

In 2016, TYR could identify only six community colleges offering recovery support programs and services. Based on this finding, TYR identified a need for pilot programs to better understand programmatic models that may be effective for supporting students in recovery at community colleges. TYR’s Bridging the Gap grant program supports these pilot programs and is intended to act as a catalyst for building capacity for recovery support on community college campuses across the U.S. The goal of the program is two-fold; first, to help more 2-year institutions initiate recovery support programs and services and second, to study what programs and services are viewed as helpful and useful to students in recovery so that best practices can be shared as the field develops. This session provided a recap of TYR’s 2016 research, observations from Year 1 of the grant program, and a discussion on survey responses on institutional attitudes and student engagement in recovery support on 2-year campuses.

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Organizing and Managing Data Analytics Teams for Procurement

The Oxford Handbook of Supply Chain Management ◽

10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190066727.013.2 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Benjamin Shao ◽

Robert D. St. Louis

Keyword(s):

Best Practices ◽

Business Strategy ◽

Data Analytics ◽

Team Members ◽

Procurement Process ◽

Using Data ◽

And Training ◽

Different Levels ◽

The Way

Many companies are forming data analytics teams to put data to work. To enhance procurement practices, chief procurement officers (CPOs) must work effectively with data analytics teams, from hiring and training to managing and utilizing team members. This chapter presents the findings of a study on how CPOs use data analytics teams to support the procurement process. Surveys and interviews indicate companies are exhibiting different levels of maturity in using data analytics, but both the goal of CPOs (i.e., improving performance to support the business strategy) and the way to interact with data analytics teams for achieving that goal are common across companies. However, as data become more reliably available and technologies become more intelligently embedded, the best practices of organizing and managing data analytics teams for procurement will need to be constantly updated.

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