Bridging Space over Time: Global Virtual Team Dynamics and Effectiveness

Global virtual teams are internationally distributed groups of people with an organizational mandate to make or implement decisions with international components and implications. They are typically assigned tasks that are strategically important and highly complex. They rarely meet in person, conducting almost all of their interaction and decision making using communications technology. Although they play an increasingly important role in multinational organizations, little systematic is known about their dynamics or effectiveness. This study built a grounded theory of global virtual team processes and performance over time. We built a template based on Adaptive Structuration Theory (DeSanctis and Poole 1994) to guide our research, and we conducted a case study, observing three global virtual teams over a period of 21 months. Data were gathered using multiple methods, and qualitative methods were used to analyze them and generate a theory of global virtual team dynamics and effectiveness. First, we propose that effective global virtual team interaction comprises a series of communication incidents, each configured by aspects of the team’s structural and process elements. Effective outcomes were associated with a fit among an interaction incident’s form, decision process, and complexity. Second, effective global virtual teams sequence these incidents to generate a deep rhythm of regular face-toface incidents interspersed with less intensive, shorter incidents using various media. These two insights are discussed with respect to other literature and are elaborated upon in several propositions. Implications for research and practice are also outlined. (Distributed Teams; Electronic Communication; Global Virtual Teams; Grounded Theory; Media Choice; Multicultural Teams; Temporal Rhythms) In multinational organizations, global teams increasingly make and implement important decisions. Just as technology facilitated information transmission around the world, it now enables globally distributed people to collaborate on issues and challenges facing a company at the international level (Harasim 1993, Ives and Jarvenpaa 1991). These global virtual teams were almost unheard of a decade ago, but today they serve as a critical mechanism for integrating information, making decisions, and implementing actions around the world (Canney Davison and Ward 1999). Global virtual teams are groups that (a) are identified by their organization(s) and members as a team; (b) are responsible for making and/or implementing decisions important to the organization’s global strategy; (c) use technology-supported communication substantially more than face-to-face communication; and (d) work and live in different countries. Lipnack and Stamps (1997) define a virtual team as ‘‘a group of people who interact through MARTHA L. MAZNEVSKI AND KATHERINE M. CHUDOBA Global Virtual Team Dynamics 474 ORGANIZATION SCIENCE/Vol. 11, No. 5, September–October 2000 interdependent tasks guided by common purpose’’ and work ‘‘across space, time, and organizational boundaries with links strengthened by webs of communication technologies.’’ Some authors reserve the term ‘‘virtual’’ for teams that never meet face-to-face (Canney Davison and Ward 1999, Jarvenpaa et al. 1998, Kristof et al. 1995), but most refer to a virtual relationship as one that is at least mostly conducted over technology (Geber 1995, Melymuka 1997b, Townsend et al. 1996, Young 1998). Kristof et al. (1995) and Jarvenpaa and Leidner (1998) describe global virtual teams as culturally diverse and geographically dispersed. We add that global virtual teams are also global in their task. Global strategies integrate a company’s resources, regions, and customer interfaces while maintaining local responsiveness where necessary (Bartlett and Ghoshal 1989, Ghoshal 1987, Kobrin 1991, Kogut 1985). Managers from around the world must build close networks and interact intensively to achieve a global strategy’s potential, functions served well by global virtual teams (Adler 1997, Bartlett and Ghoshal 1989). Empirical research on global virtual teams is limited to a few studies on specific elements of global virtual team process. Research on distributed teams’ use of communications technology is much more prolific, and studies on team dynamics are almost ubiquitous. When this literature is applied to global virtual teams the implications are often equivocal or even conflicting. When added together, the simple conclusions from single studies do not provide a well-integrated understanding of global virtual team process and performance. Conceptual Background This section reviews the literatures on technology-supported distributed teams and multinational teams, then summarizes Adaptive Structuration Theory. It concludes by describing the research template that guided our study’s data gathering and analysis. Technology-Supported Distributed Teams We reviewed all studies on technology-supported distributed teams published between 1990 and 1998 in 11 major journals publishing research on information systems, groups, and international business. As summarized in Table 1, we found 41 studies. The most common theme in the controlled and quasiexperimental research compared face-to-face with technology configurations to mediate communication. In some studies face-to-face groups performed better than technology-mediated groups (e.g., Hightower and Sayeed 1996, Smith and Vanecek 1990); in others they performed worse (e.g., Ocker et al. 1995–1996, Straus 1996); in others there was no difference on quality-related outcomes (e.g., Farmer and Hyatt 1994, Valacich et al. 1993). Furthermore, these relationships changed and evolved over time (e.g., Hollingshead et al. 1993). Although task type was often proposed to moderate the relationship between a medium and its effect on performance (e.g., O’Connor et al. 1993), there did not seem to be a consistent pattern of task types for which communications technology was better or worse. Some studies concluded that a combination of media including face-to-face outperformed one without face-to-face (e.g., Ocker et al. 1998). The few studies that crossed organizational or significant geographic boundaries found that these boundaries affected the context in which communication took place and the communication itself (e.g., Turoff et al. 1993). Internationally distributed teams were examined in only two studies, both focusing on the role of trust in global teams that never met in person (Jarvenpaa et al. 1998, Jarvenpaa and Leidner 1998). They found that trust, which was critical to the team’s ability to manage decision processes, could be built swiftly; however, this trust was very fragile. Multidimensional field studies examined technology use among members of a distributed organizational group over time. All demonstrated that context and time helped explain some of the relationships that appeared conflicting or equivocal when studied individually (e.g., Fulk 1993, Hiltz et al. 1991, Schmitz and Fulk 1991). For example, DeSanctis and Jackson (1994) showed that the benefits from using more complex communications technology increased as the task became more complex; Hinds and Kiesler (1995) observed that lateral and extradepartmental communication used telephone rather than e-mail or voicemail, increasing collaboration; and Zack (1993) found that the more shared a group’s interpretive context was, the more members were able to communicate using seemingly less rich technologies. Taken together, these studies suggest that a global virtual team’s most effective use of communications technology will be shaped by dimensions of the team’s task and its context, but they do not offer a great deal of specific guidance for research on these teams. Multinational Teams Research on multinational teams is far more limited than research on distributed teams, with most of it focusing on the role of cultural composition. Culture is the set of deeplevel values associated with societal effectiveness, shared by an identifiable group of people (Maznevski et al. 1997). Multicultural team effectiveness research usually compares the performance of culturally diverse groups