Various constructs of virtual team

Virtual project team members are often culturally diverse, spread over different geographic regions, have limited team member history and communicate electronically (Daim et al., 2012; Robert, Denis & Hung, 2009). Degree of virtuality of a team is determined by two key factors, geographical dispersion and the use of technology for communication (Gibson & Cohen, 2003) while Chudoba, Wynn, Lu, and Watson (2005) classify team virtuality as comprising a distributed workforce, mobility and the use of variety of practices — cultural and work processes. Schweitzer and Duxbury (2010) further add that ability to work at different works hours or shifts known as asynchronicity is another

54 attribute that describe a team’s virtuality. The degree of virtuality can be calculated based on the percentage of communication that occurs with the use of technology such as computer-mediated communication (CMC) (Rapp, Ahearne, Mathieu, & Rapp, 2010) or calculated on the basis of media richness (Ganesh & Gupta, 2010).

Andres (2012) offered a different perspective on CMCs when he said that it creates delay in information exchanges thus causing more opportunities for misunderstanding via the generation of incoherent messages. Research conducted by Han, Hiltz, Fjermestad, and Wang (2011), Schweitzer and Duxbury (2010) and Van der Kleij, Maarten Schraagen, Werkhoven, and De Dreu (2009) say that technology does not affect virtual team performance. However, when dealing with larger team sizes, virtual teams are better suited than localised project teams (Lowry, Zhang, Zhou, & Fu, 2010). Other studies have attributed several benefits resulting from the use of CMC, such as reduction of social loafing (Bryant, Albring, & Murthy, 2009), increased overall satisfaction resulting from ease of use of CMC (Chi, Chang, & Tsou, 2012), and reduced challenges of task complexity by taking advantage of multiple CMC features and functions (Kock & Lynn, 2012). Although new CMC are now available, such as the SM tools, research has been lagging in determining its benefits for virtual teams (Gilson, Jones, Vartiainen, & Hakonen, 2015).

The degree of virtuality of a project team can be determined based on the following attributes (Ledwidth & Ludden, 2016):

 dedicated team members — team members have clear job role description and clear chain of command

 virtual team experience — team members have previous worked in a virtual work environment

 team leader status — someone who possesses recognised experience as a virtual team leader  team status — the team has a strong reputation for getting this done on its own accord  vision and goals — the team has strong and clearly defined vision, goals and objectives and

the team is strongly aligned to this

 expertise and knowledge — importance is given to team members’ knowledge and experience and they are encouraged to share with other team members

 common processes — the team has a set of organisational policies, methodologies and processes to be followed

 cultural awareness — team members are good at recognising and understanding cultural conditions reflected in social, political and legal conditions of team member countries  cultural adaptivity — team members are highly adaptive and sensitive to other’s cultural

55 Differing cultural norms of various nationalities and language differences make it difficult for team members to make an effective contribution to their respective workgroups (Paul, Drake & Liang, 2016; Thatcher & Patel, 2011). Research conducted by Dekker, Rutte and Van den Berg (2008) highlighted that cultural differences exist when teams accept members in discussions and decisions making. Project teams in the USA were more willing to accept team members’ inputs while countries like Belgium, India and the Netherlands were less accommodating. Similarly, Duranti and de Almeida (2012) highlighted yet another cultural differences for virtual teams when they found that teams in the USA preferred the weaker CMC tools (emails and chat) while the teams from Brazil preferred richer CMCs (video and audio capabilities). However, Chi et al. (2012) believed that virtual team

performance could be improved with task interdependence. Virtual teams that stayed together for a longer period experienced lower conflicts and there were no detrimental effect on team performance when compared to shorter lifespan virtual teams (De Guinea, Webster, & Staples, 2012). Harvey, Novicevic and Garrison (2005) believed that virtual teams consist of a temporary team structure and were often transitional. Further, their roles and relationship may often change (Gibson & Gibbs, 2006).

Workgroups are becoming co-located through the adoption of collaborative technology tools to communicate digitally. The attributes of the collaborative technology tools include availability and asynchronicity (the ability to access information anywhere, anytime), electronic facilitation (inbuilt tools to moderate member interaction) and electronic memory (inbuilt memory that stores the communication artefacts) (Raghupathi, 2016). Some of the tools that fall into the collaborative technology definition are podcasts, blogs, wikis, chat platforms, video conferencing and messaging or emailing systems (Purvanova, 2014). These tools are preferred to the telephone when the team encounters language problems (Klitmøller et al., 2015) as they result in better group outcomes (Klitmøller & Lauring, 2013; DeRosa et al., 2004; Kock, 2004). When communicating complex and equivocal messages, rich media should be used, while simpler and explicit messages require a leaner media (Barry & Fulmer, 2004). Rich media refers to the “capacity to carry data” that produces a rich communication experience (Daft & Lengel, 1983, p. 7). In this context, it refers to the ability of the transmission medium to reproduce information that reduces both uncertainty and equivocality, which in turn decreases the effort required in a learning experience.

SM increases the reach for a project team. Geographically dispersed teams are able to communicate more effectively without the need to attend face-to-face meetings. The advantage enabled by SM is the ability to maintain professional networks thereby creating and strengthening ties with colleagues, team members, peers, superiors and stakeholders (Cao et al., 2012; Skeels & Grudin, 2009). DiMicco et al. (2008)indicated that “within thewalled garden of the enterprise, employees choose to reach out and meet new people rather than only connecting with those theyknow.” (p. 719). Hence, SM not

56 only strengthens ties but also createsnew ones and is used for people ‘sense making’. Yardi, Golder and Brzozowski (2009) mentioned that when employees contribute to organisational blogs, they expect attention from co-workers and superiors. For the SM tools to be successfully implemented, employee motivation is crucial (Brecht et al., 2012). According to Pi, Chou and Liao (2013), multiple factors affect attitudes towardsknowledge sharing in a SM group, such as reputation, the expected relationship, sense of self-worth, and subjective norms.

The SM tool, Yammer, claim that their commercial product is “in use in more than 200,000 companies worldwide” and that it provides an innovative way to work (Leftheriotis & Giannakos, 2014, p. 135). This product contributes towards business alignment and agility, as well as

empowering employees to be more productive. Gilson et al. (2015) reported that almost 66% of multinational organisations utilised virtual teams. Such capability enables employees to collaborate easily and more effectively, which then reduces cycle times. It engages employees while improving relationships with customers and partners (Leftheriotis & Giannakos, 2014). From the perspective of sociology, employee performance is positively enhanced through social networking (Castilla, 2005). Virtual teams have difficulty in building trust and generating synergy due to the need for rapid responses between team members (Paul et al., 2016). Robert et al. (2009) suggested that trust in a virtual team environment can be defined at two levels: swift trust and knowledge-based trust. Swift trust is developed in environments where a team has a finite life span and has not worked together before. The members often work under a tight deadline, and do not have time to foster relationships. The team must ‘import’ trust from current known characteristics of their team members (Jarvenpaa & Leidner, 1998). In contrast, the development of knowledge-based trust is dependent on behavioural aspects and the interactions displayed by team members. Trust is particularly affected when cultural and temporal differences are brought into the equation (Jarvenpaa & Leidner, 1998; Jarvenpaa, Shaw, & Staples, 2004) and can be further hampered by language barriers that are prevalent in virtual environments (O’Leary & Cummings, 2007). According to Lin, Standing and Liu (2008), several factors determine the performance and satisfaction of virtual teams, and these include the social capital factors of cohesion, relationship building and communication.

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