Interaction Effect of Leadership and Communication Media on Feedback Positivity in Virtual Teams

Abstract

Technology and contextual factors may moderate the effects of leadership in virtual teams. We conducted an experiment to study the effect of leadership styles on feedback positivity in small, ad hoc teams performing a decisionmaking task using a virtual world or instant messaging. We also examined the relationship of feedback positivity to team outcomes, including satisfaction, social presence, cohesion, group efficacy, consensus, decision quality, and task time. Leadership style interacted with communication medium to influence feedback positivity. Relative to transactional leadership, transformational leadership led to greater feedback positivity in the instant messaging condition but had no effect in the virtual world condition. Greater feedback positivity was positively associated with social presence, discussion satisfaction, cohesion, group efficacy, and task time, but was negatively associated with decision quality.

Can leadership compensate for deficient inclusiveness in global virtual teams?

“…Our findings also respond to several calls made for more research on the relation between leadership and context in virtual teams (Avolio, Sosik, Kahai, & Baker, ; Huang et al, ; Kahai, Huang, & Jestice, ). We demonstrate that there is indeed an interaction between team attitudes as a contextual factor and inspirational motivation leadership in producing more favourable individual level outcomes.…”

Understanding Positivity Within Dynamic Team Interactions

“…Consistent with previous work on positive affect (Watson, Clark, & Tellegen, 1988), zest (Miller & Stiver, 1997), and feedback positivity in teams (Kahai, Huang, & Jestice, 2012), we suggest that positivity occurring during team interactions, such as showing enthusiasm for new ideas, clearly has an affective component.…”

The importance of context when applying social cognitive theory in organizations

“…This suggests the importance of providing virtual teams with high quality technology, and communicating to them the positive feedback of customers. Kahai et al (2012) empirically found a related, but different, result in an experimental study involving 34 ad hoc groups of undergraduate business students in a decision-making exercise. They found that positive feedback positively predicted group efficacy, but negatively predicted decision quality.…”

“…Arguably one of the most far-reaching workplace changes of the last decade has been the increase in the number of virtual teams within organizations (Ahancian and McCormick 2009;Turel and Zhang, 2010;Kahai et al 2012). Traditionally, teams have tended generally to exist in the same geographical location, because distance precluded meaningful and effective interaction of team members.…”