Virtual team learning: The role of collaboration process and technology affordance in team decision making

Abstract

The study examines two dimensions that impact virtual team decision making. One is the influence of collaboration process structure: the sequences, patterns, and routines participants use to interact and solve problems. The other is technology affordance: the strengths and weaknesses of technologies in terms of the usefulness they offer to teams when performing tasks. Some teams used a structured collaboration process with monitoring, coordination, and backup functions during a decision-making discussion. Other teams had no discussion process instructions. In addition, some teams possessed stronger technology affordance including both chat and an editable document. Other teams used chat technology alone, which offered fewer collaboration possibilities. The collaboration process and technology affordance factors were tested in an experiment in which four-person online teams worked as a personnel hiring committee. Information about four job candidates was distributed to create a hidden profile in which some information was shared across all team members, while other information was visible only to specific members. Two hundred and eight students, comprising fifty-two teams completed the study. Teams using the structured collaboration process made more accurate and higher-quality decisions. In addition, scores were higher when technology affordance included both chat and editable document tools, but this influence was not significant.

Factors Affecting Decision-Making Processes in Virtual Teams in the UAE

“…Media richness theory has shown that, for an organization to be successful, it must be able to process information in an appropriately rich format to reduce uncertainty and clarify ambiguity. Limiting ICT use in virtual teams will limit the quality and quantity of information shared between team members [5]. We can see from the above literature that ICT has a direct effect on VT decision-making processes, especially when selecting the appropriate media for communicating in the process of decision making.…”

“…Most studies on language differences have found a negative effect on VT decision making [4]. Based on a review of 400 organizational decisions, it was found that more than half of these decisions failed to reach their full potential due to the improper use of the ICT tools [5]. This presents a critical problem for organizations since the purpose of implementing virtual teams is to benefit from the full knowledge package of all team members and to enhance decision making.…”

“…A lack of verbal and non-verbal cues in VTs, trust between team members, language differences, handling of ICT tools, and withholding information due to the absence of physical interactions all cause issues with the decision-making process, which in turn affects team performance [3]. There is little research on decision-making processes in virtual teams and its effect on team performance [5][6][7][8] or it is done in a laboratory setting using students instead of actual teams [9][10][11][12]. Moreover, there is no literature examining the effect that factors such as language, trust, information sharing, and ICT have on decision-making process in the UAE.…”

The Effect of Cultural Intelligence, Conflict, and Transformational Leadership on Decision-Making Processes in Virtual Teams

“…Decision-making processes (Cordes 2016;Johnson et al 2018;Oesch and Dunbar 2018;Wei et al 2017) (Task and Relationship) Conflict (Chang et al 2014;Cordes 2016;Plotnick et al 2016) Transformational Leadership (Acai et al 2018;Derven 2016;Gibbs et al 2017;Plotnick et al 2016;Al Zain et al 2018) Cultural Intelligence (Derven 2016;Gao et al 2016;Gibbs et al 2017;Li et al 2017) Decision-Making Process. Decision-making processes are the act of processing information to reach a judgment regarding a problem.…”

“…Decisions that are made after information collection and analysis are found to be more effective, which is the key point differentiating successful performing teams and unsuccessful performing teams. Scholars (Cordes 2016;Johnson et al 2018;Oesch and Dunbar 2018;Wei et al 2017) found that successful teams tend to analyze the problem in depth before taking a decision about the solution, which is not the case in unsuccessful teams (Wei et al 2017). In the next paragraphs, we review the factors that affect decision-making processes.…”