No. WP- 02-08
Ecological approach to virtual team effectiveness Pnina Shachaf
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
fichp@ils.unc.eduNoriko Hara
Indiana University
nhara@indiana.eduAn earlier version of this paper was published in the proceedings for American Conference on Information Systems 2002, August 8-11, Dallas, TX.
Abstract
This paper attempts to address the need for more research on virtual team effectiveness, and outlines an ecological theoretical framework. Prior empirical studies on virtual team effectiveness used frameworks of traditional team effectiveness and mainly followed Hackman's normative model (input-process-output). We propose an ecological approach for virtual team effectiveness that accounts for team boundaries management, technology use, and external environment, properties which were previously either non-existent or contextual. The ecological framework suggests that three components, external environment, internal environment, and boundary management, reciprocally interact with effectiveness. The significance of the proposed framework is the holistic perspective that takes into account the complexity of the external and internal environment of the team.Introduction
As a result of globalization and advances in information telecommunication, a new organization form emerged – the virtual organization (Davidow & Malone, 1992). This organization is structured around virtual teams (VT), which are “group[s] of people who work interdependently with a shared purpose across space, time, and organization boundaries using technology” (Lipnack & Stamps, 2000, p. 18). The need for more theoretical and empirical research on virtual team effectiveness (VTE) (e.g. DeSanctis & Poole, 1997; Furst, Blackburn & Rosen, 1999) attracted several empirical studies (e.g. Vickery, Clark & Carlson, 1999; Anderson, 2000; Barret, 2000; Piccoli, 2000; Lurey & Rainghani, 2001). These studies on VTE (Barrett, 2000; Piccoli, 2000) were conducted mostly under the systems approach using Hackman's normative model (input-process-output) for traditional team effectiveness (Hackman & Oldham, 1980).Previous studies of VTE emerged from the body of knowledge on traditional team effectiveness frameworks (Hackman & Oldaham, 1980; Shea & Guzzo, 1987; Pearce & Ravlin, 1987; Sundstrom, DeMuese & Futrell, 1990; Cohen & Bailey, 1997) and from theoretical perspectives on the interplay between IT and organizations (Zigurs & Buckland, 1989; Orlikowski, 1992; DeSanctis & Poole, 1994; Kling, McKim, Fortuna, & King, in press). We will capture the complexity of work groups and IT under a framework that manifests environmental aspects (social, cultural, organizational, and technological) and propose an ecological approach. This theoretical framework is delineated from synthesizing, adopting, and modifying theories from other fields and levels of analysis. Specifically, we are influenced by several ecological theories, such as ecological psychology at the individual (Barker, 1968; Bronfenbrenner, 1979; Wicker, 1979) and group level (Sundstrom, et al., 1990), and theories on IT and organizations, such as task technology fit (Zigurs & Buckland, 1989), media richness theory (Lengel & Daft, 1988), and a social action framework (Ngwenyama, & Lyytinen, 1997).
The main reason for selecting an ecological framework for VTE is because it stresses the critical role of the environment through a reciprocal interdependency between internal processes and external environment. Second, the ecological perspective is a dynamic approach, which supports an understanding of processes and changes, emphasizing the importance of team development (founding and disbanding) as a component of team effectiveness. Wong and Burton (2000) defined virtual teams according to three key characteristics: 1) the virtual team context – which is temporarily; 2) the virtual team composition – culturally diverse and geographically dispersed; and 3) the virtual team structure – with lateral communication ties. One of the three key characteristics of VTs is therefore a temporary context (Wong & Burton, 2000), this aspect is important as VTs form and disband as organizational goals change (Jarvenpaa & Leidner, 1999). Third, team effectiveness under this approach is a process and not an end state (Sundstrom, et al., 1990). Researchers suggested that VTE should be assessed not only by the team outcomes, but also by the team processes (Blackburn, Furst & Rosen, in press). Furthermore, it was previously suggested that internal and external environments influence VTE (Lurey & Raisinghani, 2001), and that an ecological approach helps us understand VTs (Baba, Gluesing, Harris, & Ratner, 2002).
Following are the assumptions of the ecological perspective for VTE on which our proposed framework is based (Wicker, 1979):
1. A VT organism cannot be considered to exist or act in isolation. Every VT organism is linked with other organisms in a complex network of relationships.The proposed ecological framework consists of three components that are critical to VTE: external environment, internal environment, and boundaries. Compared to Hackman’s normative model (Hackman & Oldham, 1980), our framework is more holistic and emphasizes continuing dynamic process, disregarding chronological sequence. The components are reciprocal and interdependent among themselves and with VTE (Figure 1).
1.2. All VT organisms are affected by forces inside themselves, such as leadership, team norms, technology use, and process losses (e.g. conflict management), as well as by external forces of other organisms, such as competitors, customers, and task technology.
1.3. VTs adapt and act in a way that achieves harmonious working relationships with their environment, distinguishing between features that are appropriate for their needs and those that are not.I - External environment
The external environment is a critical component for VTE. Following Bronfenbrenner (1979), we suggest that VT behavior is embedded in a setting that could be categorized into four levels: microsystem, mesosystem, exosystem, macrosystem (Figure 2).
The microsystem is the immediate setting in which the team experiences its own activities, roles, and interdependency, within a specific setting (e.g., the VT physical and digital space, and their shared working time). The mesosystem refers to the relationships between two or more of the settings in which the team participates. The network of teams (virtual and collocated) and organizations that team members act within are a system of microsystems making up a mesosystem. The exosystem refers to one or more settings that the team is not involved in as an active participant, but in which events occur that affect, or are affected by, what happens in the setting of the VT (for example, the task environment of the VT’s parent organizations). The macrosystem refers to consistencies among the lower level systems, at the level of culture or subculture. The macrosystem also refers to the general environment—the legal, political, social and cultural environments.Since VT behavior and its effectiveness are embedded within the specific setting of the team’s microsystem, we further elaborate on the components of this level that is important for team effectiveness (Hackman & Oldham, 1980; Pearce & Ravlin, 1987; Shea & Guzzo, 1987; Sundstrom et al., 1990). In this paper, among the four levels of environments, we mainly elaborate on microsystem because it has an immediate impact on the VTE. VT behavior and its effectiveness are embedded within specific setting of the team’s microsystem. This context is a critical component of team effectiveness (Hackman & Oldham, 1980; Pearce & Ravlin, 1987; Shea & Guzzo, 1987; Sundstrom et al., 1990) and is composed of the following seven dimensions:
Geographical locus (Barker, 1968) is the physical setting of the VT. Space is a critical component of identity and boundary maintenance (Sundstrom et al., 1990). The VT’s physical space is used only for temporary collocation (e.g., during face-to-face meetings) or not used at all for teams who never meet. However, the VT uses a digital space to support the physical space. In the digital space, the team creates, maintains, and uses documents, services or products.
Temporal locus and duration (Barker, 1968) are the team life-cycle and the pace and length of members interactions within the team. VT development and life cycle are temporal (Vickery, Clark & Carlson, 1999) and members share work time based on the shared digital space. Furthermore, communication incidents among VT members impact VTE (Maznevski & Chodoba, 1999).
Cultural context (Shea & Guzzo, 1987; Sundstrom at el, 1990) are the cultures surrounding the team at three levels: professional, organizational, and national culture (Schein, 1992; Hofstede, 1991). For example, the culture would affect team norm development, communication, and performance evaluation (Furst, Blackburn & Rosen, 1999; Herkenhoff, 2000).
Technological context is work technology (Hackman & Oldham, 1980, Shea and Guzzo, 1987; Sundstrom et al., 1990) and telecommunication infrastructure. The infrastructure should be taken into consideration in terms of team effectiveness, because the conducting of their shared task highly depends on the accessible infrastructure. Additionally, VTs might have to deal with diverse configurations and regulations exist in different places. Finally, task technology fit determines the technological context for the team and is required in order to achieve higher levels of performance (Zigurs & Buckland, 1989)
Participation forces (Barker, 1968) are the environmental factors that motivate team members to be part of the VT. The rationale for participation in a VT could be to volunteer (e.g., open source community) or to work under a specific organizational reward system (Hackman & Oldham, 1980; Pearce & Ravlin, 1987; Shea & Guzzo, 1987; Sundstrom et al., 1990).
Autonomy and control system is the degree of independence a VT has to conduct its task (Shea & Guzzo, 1987; Pearce & Ravlin, 1987; Sundstrom et al., 1990). For example, high team autonomy means that the team could make decisions in regard to members’ roles, without approval from senior managers. Furthermore, the control system manifested through the level of reporting mechanism is critical to VTE (Piccoli, 2000).
Team development support is the training and consultation the organization provides to support teamwork (Hackman & Oldham, 1980; Pearce & Ravlin, 1987; Sundstrom et al., 1990) and performance evaluation (Sundstrom et al., 1990). Montoya-Weiss, Massey, and Song (2001) found that several of the conflict management approaches were moderated by a coordination mechanism that the facilitators provide to the VTs. Based on this assumption, Pauleen and Yoong (2001) investigated the issue of VT facilitators and stressed the importance of team building training.
To sum up, in this section, we described four levels of VT’s external environment: microsystem, mesosytem, exosystem, and macrosystem, in which the VTs are embedded. A specific elaboration and emphasis of the components of microsystem was further described because these are more critical success factors for VTs. Among these factors are geographical locus; temporal locus and duration; cultural context; technological infrastructure; organizational support mechanism; autonomy and control mechanism; and forces of participation.II - Boundary management
The second component of the ecological framework is boundary management. The ecological approach emphasizes the issue of creating and maintaining boundaries (Sundstrom et al., 1990). Group boundaries (physical and psychological) determine who is in the group (Alderfer, 1977). A VT is defined as a team by the boundaries that are formed and maintained over time. These boundaries become critical components of VT viability. Experimental studies of traditional and VTs do not stress this aspect (Sundstrom et al., 1990) because team boundaries are pre-defined, thus integration is not relevant. Studies on real VTs in an organizational setting suggest that boundary creation and maintenance are critical (Pawar & Sharifi, 1997; Robey, Khoo & Powers, 2000; May & Carter, 2001; Sole & Edmondson, 2001). Boundary management differentiates the team from its environment, so that it will have its unique identity. At the same time, boundary management integrates the team with its environment to avoid isolation. Three components of boundary management will be further described: differentiation, integration (Sundstrom et al., 1990), and creation of team identity.Differentiation refers to the specialization, interdependence, and autonomy of the team. VTE depends on the ability of the team to differentiate its members from others, in order to conduct meetings and share information (Sundstrom et al., 1990). Both for traditional and virtual teams the task and team resources (e.g., members, budget, and space – even temporarily physical co-location) are critical for differentiation. However, in VT, the physical limitations make this process more complex and have the boundaries more permeable. In the virtual setting the differentiation is based also on the shared digital space of the team.
Integration refers to the ties of the VT with its immediate organizational environment and to other teams. Integration in traditional teams and some VTs refers to the team relationships with suppliers, customers, and peers (Sundstrom et al., 1990). It is considerably easier to integrate a VT with external environment because in many cases representatives of supplier and customers are parts of the team. Yet, the team should expand and integrate beyond its own boundaries with those that are part of the external environment (e.g. other managers in a customer company).
Creation of team identity is crucial to the performance of VTs. Physical territories reinforce group boundaries and identities (Sundstram et al., 1990). In order to overcome the lack of physical territories, VT members must rely on shared digital space for the creation of team identity. In order to overcome the lack of physical territories, which was attributed to the deindividuation process of computer-mediated groups (Lea & Spears, 1991), VT members rely on shared electronic space for the creation of team identity. This electronic shared space is devoted only to the members of the team and enables them to share experience.
In summary, VT creates and maintains permeable “virtual boundaries,” which are not defined by functional or geographical aspects, but instead based on a temporal task or project. The shared digital space creates and maintains boundaries. This shared digital space and the temporal physical collocation of team members help the team to mange its boundaries and identities. These three components should be balanced. For example, too much differentiation inhibits integration, and vice versa.III - Internal environment –
The third component in the proposed ecological framework is the internal environment. Within the internal environment, the following factors for team effectiveness have been discussed in the literature as process or contextual variables: team composition and design (Hackman & Oldham, 1980; Pearce & Ravlin, 1987), communication (Javenpaa & Liedner, 1999; Pearce & Ravlin, 1987), team development (Sundstrom, et al., 1990), conflict management (Montoya-Weiss et al., 2001), leadership (Lurey & Raisinghani, 2001), norms (Sundstrom, et al., 1990), commitment (Hackman & Oldham, 1980; Pearce & Ravlin, 1987), and trust (Javenpaa & Liedner, 1999). We suggest two additional components that influence VTE: technology use (Ngwenyama, & Lyytinen, 1997; Lengel & Daft, 1988) and boundary spanning (Wenger, 1998). Unlike other authors (Sundstrom et al., 1990), we propose to differentiate task technology and information and communication technology (ICT) and consider technology use not only as a contextual factor, but also as an internal factor, specifically by using a social action framework (Ngwenyama, & Lyytinen, 1997).The technology that the VT uses to achieve its tasks should support team social actions. The focus of the social action framework for analyzing groupware (Ngwenyama and Lyytinen 1997) is the use of IT for communication and creation/use of knowledge among VT members. They suggest the following four social action categories in groupware: instrumental, communicative, discursive, and strategic. Instrumental action focuses on end products by controlling, manipulating, and transforming physical artifacts, such as generating new documents for a shared database. Communicative action supports creating and maintaining shared understanding among members and is facilitated by computer-mediated communication (CMC). Discursive action specifies and evaluates goals and objectives as well as achieving a consensus on shared values and norms, for example, through the use of a voting system or anonymous contributions. Strategic action influences the group behavior to achieve common goals, such as access restrictions to the shared digital space. During the process of work, each of these social actions uses technology, appropriating different functions of groupware.
In addition, the other internal component critical to VTE is boundary spanning. We suggest that not only external boundary management, in the traditional sense, but also internal boundary spanning should be discussed as part of the VTE ecological framework. Heterogeneous VTs incorporate boundary spanning. Individuals from different organizations, nations, and professions traditionally have boundaries that differentiate each group from others. Watson-Manheim, Crowston, and Chudoba (2002) defined virtual work as work that spans discontinuities of temporal work location, geographic work location, group membership, organizational affiliation, and cultural background. Therefore, in VTs, these discontinuities or the internal process of boundary spanning is much more critical than in traditional teams. In a heterogeneous VT, these boundaries are integrated internally within the team through the process of boundary spanning.
Several types of boundary spanning are embedded in heterogeneous VT (Lipnack & Stamps, 2000). The first type of boundary spanning occurs on geographical dispersion, where team members do not share the same physical space. The second type of boundary spanning occurs based on cross-functional membership of professionals using several languages, practices, and cultures. The third type of boundary spanning is of organizational affiliation manifesting inter-organizational relationships, organizational cultures, and power interdependencies of the team members’ parent organization. The fourth is based on international diversity of languages, cultures, and religions. The final type of boundary spanning is time zones of team members who are working in different parts of the globe. Not all types of boundary spanning, except for geographical dispersion, may occur in individual VTs. The boundary spanning process occurs either through a broker or boundary object (Wenger, 1998). Brokers are team members who introduce new knowledge and practices into the VT while boundary objects are artifacts within a VT digital space (e.g., documents).
In this section, we described several unique components of the internal environment in our framework: technology use and boundary spanning. These factors and other internal factors were recognized by other researchers to support VTE. In the following section, we further discuss effectiveness.
IV – Effectiveness
Although examination of team performance (e.g., effectiveness and efficiency) is evident in some studies of VTs, researchers have not yet reached consensus on how virtual setting impacts team effectiveness (DeSanctis and Poole, 1997; Furst, Blackburn, & Rosen, 1999). Furst, Blackburn, and Rosen (1999) suggest that the lack of research on VTE is partially a result of the newness of VTs and partially a result of the underlying assumption that the existing knowledge of collocated team effectiveness is applicable in the virtual environment. In order to address this knowledge gap, they proposed a research agenda on VTE based on Hackman’s normative model (Furst, Blackburn, & Rosen, 1999).Effectiveness has been the focus of several frameworks for traditional teams as well as VTs. Effectiveness could refer to whether the team has accomplished its assigned tasks (Shea & Guzzo, 1987). Another approach embraces socioemotional consequences of group action, such as member satisfaction and attraction to the group as elements of effectiveness (Hackman, 1987). Many researchers agree that effectiveness includes more than performance (Hackman, 1987; Pearce & Ravlin, 1987; Sundstrom, et al., 1990). For example, Pearce and Ravlin (1987) suggest that team effectiveness refers to employee satisfaction, absenteeism, turnover, safety, and innovation, while Sundstrom et al. (1990) suggested that team viability is another important aspect. In addition to task achievement and socioemotional consequences, team viability as an outcome measure was proposed as a third component (Hackman, 1987; Hackman & Oldham, 1983; Sundstrom, et al., 1990). Team viability is critical component of VT, not only as an outcome of the VT, but also as a process. Team viability is manifested during the shared working period, when team members conduct their shared tasks, overcome conflicts, and other constraints, and support the creation of shared team history. Viability is a critical component of team collaborative work throughout the time that the team engages in shared tasks.
Beyond these three more traditional effectiveness measures (performance, satisfaction, viability), an effective virtual team creates and maintains a shared digital space during team life-cycle. This shared electronic space, could be preserved for future use by the organization and other teams (Furst, Blackborn & Rosen, 1999).
Conclusions
In this paper, we proposed an ecological framework to understand VTE. This framework consists of three components: external environment, internal environment, and boundaries. We proposed reciprocal interdependency among the three components and VTE, by stressing the effects of components on VTE, and vice versa, the effects of VTE on the three components. The significance of the proposed framework is threefold. First, we internalized technology, which is traditionally a contextual variable in team effectiveness models, and stressed its roles and impacts as a part of internal environment on VTE. Second, boundary management as well as boundary spanning effects was explained in relation to VTE, whereas most traditional frameworks tend to ignore this aspect. Third, we expanded on the factors of the external environment of VT as they relate to VTE, specifically we delineated the factors of the microsystem. Evidently, further empirical study to validate this framework is yet to be done. We do hope that this framework would inform other researchers’ studies to consider environmental aspects and not only examine this phenomenon under closed systems perspectives when studying VTE.Acknowledgement
We thank Jennie Gerke and anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments.References
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