Identifying antecedents of virtual team collaboration

Abstract

Purpose-Virtual teams are comprised of members who are located in more than one physical location. This team trait has fostered extensive use of a variety of forms of computer-mediated communication that enable geographically dispersed members to coordinate their individual efforts and inputs. Perhaps even more important, however, is the reality that virtual teams need to effectively collaborate to harness their full performance capabilities in order to compete in the highly competitive environments of contemporary organizations. This paper seeks to address the topic of virtual team collaboration from a "back door" perspective by identifying conditions that need to be present in order for it to effectively occur. Design/methodology/approach-This paper looks at how the depth of relationships, trust, and shared understandings among the team members feed into a team's collaborative ability, based on a thorough review of the literature. It also examines the interrelationships among these factors while suggesting that each of these antecedents is important and that the existence of one without the others results in a suboptimal collaboration model. Findings-Using the theoretical and conceptual underpinnings presented, a model of virtual team collaboration is developed. Originality/value-The paper has suggested that developed relationships, shared understanding, and trust serve as important antecedents of virtual collaboration. This raises the possibility that organizations can help create a context for team members to achieve increased levels of virtual collaboration by focusing on these potentially important factors. This, in turn, may promote subsequent innovation and performance.

International e-benchmarking: flexible peer development of authentic learning principles in higher education

“…In the light of our experiences, the swift trust model (Meyerson, Weick and Kramer 1996;Peters and Manz 2007) brings a relevant perspective to the examination of the IVBM community. It is as if trust is the assumed starting point, a matter of will, from which members set out on a common process.…”

“…When there is insufficient time to build trust gradually, team members assume that the others are trustworthy and begin to work as if trust has already been built. Evidence to either strengthen or weaken trust is identified during the process (Powell et al 2004;Peters and Manz 2007). Wenger (1998) stresses the challenging nature of planning a CoP's learning-planning that includes both participation and reification-with success dependent on how well these fit together.…”

“…It was noticeable that bringing a photo to Ning and using web cameras during ACP sessions were experienced as trust building actions, creating a sense of belonging. Studies (Peters and Manz 2007;Sobrero 2008) have shown that synchronous virtual meetings, particularly at the start of collaboration considerably strengthen trust.…”

“…Experts at various stages of expertise enrich the IVBM community. According to our study, one of the most significant factors in constructing a virtual benchmarking project has been-in addition to individual trust-organisation-level trust and cultural factors (Peters and Manz 2007;Lewis and Allan 2005). Factors of trust can form an obstacle in virtual international work at an institutional level.…”

Impact of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) on construction projects

“…Ultimately, project communication is complex in the construction environment without technology but with it, the complexity is increased particularly when communicating virtually (Peters and Manz, 2007).…”