ABSTRACT
In a relatively brief period, virtual teams have become common entities in organizational decision making and problem solving. Virtual teams are examples of networked suborganizational forms assembled for a common objective. They are most often composed of geographically distanced participants that are linked for the duration of a mandated objective. Coordination in virtual teams is typically through a shared communication system and generally at least partly asynchronous. There are bases to expect that virtual teams have many potential advantages over traditional teams across a range of managerial applications. Principal among these is the capability to operate without the time and distance constraints of face-to-face teams and thereby to better utilize distributed human resources on the basis of their capabilities (e.g.,
Bradford & Kozlowski, 2002; Lipnack & Stamps, 1997). The potential advantages come with corresponding disadvantages. It can, for example, be anticipated that the separation in time and space in the absence of a previous history would undermine the effectiveness of communication. Additionally, it is sometimes estimated that two thirds of communication in face-to-face interaction is nonverbal (cf. Engleberg, 2006), and this is at least greatly reduced in electronic communication even if video forms of interaction are introduced.
