An Inductively Derived Model of Leader-Initiated Relationship Building with Virtual Team Members

This paper seeks to add to the nascent research literature on virtual teams and virtual team leadership by investigating the issues facing virtual team leaders as they implement and lead virtual teams. In particular, the way in which leaders develop relationships with their virtual team members is explored. A research framework involving action learning was instituted, with data collection and analysis based on grounded theory approaches. In all, seven virtual team leaders from a variety of New Zealand organizations took part in the study. The data showed very clearly that the leaders considered it essential to build some level of personal relationship with their virtual team members before commencing a virtual working relationship. A unifying framework of three interrelated theoretical steps, which illustrates how a virtual leader builds relationships with virtual team members, is introduced. These three steps are assessing conditions, targeting level of relationship, and creating strategies. This study is the first to identify the steps a virtual team leader undertakes when building relationships with virtual team members. The implications for virtual team practice and research are discussed. KEiY WORDS AND PHRASES: action learning, grounded theory, information technology in team building, leadership, relationship building, trust, virtual teams. ORGANIZATIONS ARE CHANGING TO MEET THE DEMANDS of the fast-paced, dynamic global economy, and many organizations are moving toward a collaborative, networked organizational model through the introduction of information and communication technologies (ICT). ICT has the potential to profoundly alter organizational Journal of Management Information Systems/dialer 2003-4. Vol. 20, No. 3, pp. 227-256. © 2004 M.E. Sharpe, Inc. 0742-1222 / 2004 $9.50 + 0.00. 228 DAVID J. PAULEEN Structure by acting as the glue that cements relationships across functions, divisions, and organizations, as well as across distance, time, and culture. ICT supports the use of virtual teams in organizations by providing the links and information needed for distributed individuals to work together [43]. Virtual teams are a relatively new phenomenon, and are defined as "groups of geographically and organizationally dispersed coworkers that are assembled using a combination of telecommunications and information technologies to accomplish an organizational task" [67, p. 18]. Virtual teams communicate and work synchronously or asynchronously through such technologies as telephones, electronic mail, bulletin boards, audio/video/data conferencing, automated work flow, electronic voting, and collaborative writing [11,59]. Face-to-face communication may also be an important factor [47]. Virtual teams play an increasingly important role in organizational life and offer organizations the flexibility to remain competitive [49]. Maznevski and Chudoba [47] point out that global virtual teams are often assigned the most important tasks in an organization, such as multinational product launches, negotiating mergers and acquisitions, and managing strategic alliances. Virtual teams are projected to form the nuclei of twenty-first-century organizations [28]. However, the use of virtual teams has outpaced our understanding of their dynamics and unique characteristics [16, 52]. Leadership is one of the most fundamental of these virtual team dynamics. Virtual Team Leadership THERE HAS BEEN LONG AND EXTENSIVE RESEARCH on leadership in collocated teams and groups. A 1985 study counted over 300 definitions of leadership [6]. Typically, leadership can be viewed in a number of ways; for example, as a structured authoritative role [31], or as the ability of individuals to intrinsically or extrinsically motivate followers [4]. Barge [2] proposes leadership as mediation in order to overcome the variety of task and relational problems that may be encountered by a group. One of the key skills in Barge's concept of leadership is that of relational management, which refers to the ability of leaders to develop interpersonal relations that foster a workable balance of cohesion, unity, and task motivation in the group. According to Fjermestad and Hiltz [22], leadership in the group support systems process is an important variable influencing the effectiveness of small group decision-making. Other studies [29, 30, 51] also suggest the critical role leadership plays in groups working via ICT. In virtual teams, leaders are often the nexus of the team, facilitating communications, establishing team processes, and taking responsibility for task completion [20]. Technology becomes the crucial and ever-present link between virtual team members [43], one that team leaders must manage skillfully. Although recent research [15,38] has begun to look at leadership issues in virtual teams, Kayworth and Leidner state, "that little empirical work exists that examines leadership in virtual team settings" [38, p. 8], But clearly, to some extent, the role of virtual team leaders necessitates a different level of skills than those of traditional collocated team leaders. Leaders can no longer LEADER-INITIATED RELATIONSHIP BUILDING WITH VIRTUAL TEAM MEMBERS 229 control the work processes of virtual teams with traditional means, and need to develop a different set of coordination and control mechanisms [55]. Virtual team leaders must be able to "read" all the personal and contextual nuances in a world of electronic communications [53]. They must be able to understand the possible causes of silence, misunderstandings, and slights [14], without any of the usual signs to guide them. Leaders must be sensitive to the "flow" of team processes, paying attention to the smallest matters to head off potential troubles that could derail the team's task. Virtual team leaders, therefore, must not only manage the project tasks and occasional personality conflicts normally associated with a collocated team, but must also be able to guide a team of geographically distributed, and often organizationally and culturally different individuals, in creating a common purpose. They may also be the person interfacing with stakeholders and extended team members, such as direct and indirect managers, customers, and suppliers. Whereas the global, organizational, and technological pieces are in place for a revolutionary change in the way people work together, it is imperative that virtual team members and leaders have the cognitive models they need to operate effectively in this new environment. The importance of relationship building in a virtual environment and methods to build relationships are significant factors when practitioners engage in virtual work. Relationships in Virtual Teams ALL TEAMS PRESENT LEADERSHIP CHALLENGES. These are magnified in a virtual environment, where leaders must work across time, space, and organizational and cultural boundaries, through the intensive, and often exclusive, use of ICT, and have implications for a number of important team processes, including communication, collaboration, and socialization, as well as overall team effectiveness [32, 33,41]. Relationship building is a critical and fundamental component of these team processes. The study of relationship building in traditional teams is extensive. Collins and Guetzkow [12] argue that a task group or team faces two problems—task and interpersonal obstacles. Relationships cannot be separated from communication, and the nature of the relationship is defined by the communication between its members [5,7,9]. The link between team effectiveness and team member relationships has also been an important area of study in virtual teams. Stronger relational links have been associated with higher task performance [73] and the effectiveness of information exchange [74]. Effective communication is a key to successful virtual teams, and one of the keys to effective communication is how well team members are able to build and maintain their personal relationships [41]. Building relationships with virtual team members is clearly of fundamental importance to a virtual team leader, as people generally rely on personal relationships to resolve problems and deal with unusual situations [39]. Personal relationships also serve as a valuable governance mechanism; for example, trust developed between parties involved in an economic exchange reduces the likelihood of opportunistic behavior [27, 67]. 230 DAVID J. PAULEEN Walther and Burgoon [72] found that strong relational links are associated with enhanced creativity, motivation, increased morale, better decisions, and fewer process losses. Research shows it is easier to complete relationship-building activities in a face-to-face context than in a strictly virtual one [74]. This may, in part, be explained by media richness theory, which explains that the lack of contextual cues and timeliness of feedback inherent in computer-mediated communication can negatively affect the building of relationship links [17]. Two studies on virtual teams posited that increased team relationship building and social integration could reduce attribution bias and increase knowledge sharing among team members [14, 16]. The authors of these studies called for further investigation of potential moderators of relationships. In this context, leaders could be considered "relationship moderators." The second step in one well-known team performance model ([19] adapted by [73]) is trustbuilding, which asks the question "Who are you?" This is essentially what a leader is asking and answering when building relationships with team members. In his TIP theory (time, interaction, performance), McGrath [48] suggests that the development of relational links in groups involves performing activities related to member support and group well-being functions. In this theory, groups make contributions at three different levels: (1) production function, (2) member-support function, and (3) group well-being function. Warkentin and Beranek [73] comment that in a team with no past history, working on complex problems with much technological and environmental uncertainty, that is, a virtual team, members will have to engage in all three functions to avoid negative effects on performance. Whereas face-to-face meetings are the preferred way to build relationships and, in general, deal with sensitive and complex situations, it is possible, with the skillful and thoughtful application of virtual communication channels, to successfully lead a completely virtual team. Research has found that computer-mediated teams do share relational information and are likely to develop relational links over time [71, 74]. Since many virtual teams are projector deadline-driven, however, there may not be the opportunity to allow relationships to develop over time. The idea of "swift trust" was put forth by Jarvenpaa et al. [33] to describe how virtual team members may be able to accomplish tasks without first having developed relationships. This rational perspective centers on the view of "calculus of self interest," which weighs the costs and benefits of certain courses of action between team members. If a team member feels confident there will be a "payoff' for cooperating with and trusting virtual team members, then he or she will do so. Such trust, however, appears to be fragile and temporary. The role of a team leader is to move the team toward its objectives by increasing team member motivation and more fully engaging members in the work process [4]. This is done through a sustained process of relationship building, idea generation, prioritization, and selection. The particular challenge to virtual team leaders is to manage this process through electronically mediated interactions across spatial, temporal, organizational, and cultural boundaries. The literature clearly demonstrates that relationship building is a key factor in team success, and of significant concern to team leaders. There is also recognition in the LEADER-INmATED RELATIONSHIP BUILDING WITH VIRTUAL TEAM MEMBERS 231 literature that virtual team leadership is likely to be an inherently more complex process than traditional, collocated team leadership. What is currently lacking is research into the connection between virtual team leadership and relationship-building processes in virtual teams. Research Methodology THE RESEARCH QUESTION GUIDING THIS STUDY IS: "What are the issues facing virtual team leaders and how do they manage them?" The unit of analysis is the team leader. The issues facing the team leader in the virtual team environment are many and varied. The most obvious include team members, team tasks, organizational contexts, and the use of ICT. In this study, these issues are examined from the perspective of the team leader. To gather data of sufficient depth to measure leader perceptions, an inductive qualitative methodology was used. Action learning, a form of action research, allowed this exploratory research to focus on the emerging leadership issues and challenges inherent in virtual team settings [37], whereas grounded theory methods were used for data analysis. To ensure the study's participants (Table 1) had experiences to talk about, a specially designed, action learning-based, virtual team program was developed to provide participants with the knowledge and skills to both lead a virtual team and to have the opportunity to talk about them. This allowed for structured, yet flexible, training, semi-structured interviewing, and freewheeling discussions for participants and the researcher. No particular hypothesis was being tested in this research design, but the inductive approach was expected to produce a set of theoretical constructs and a description of their relationships relevant to the experiences of the participants. The Virtual Team Action Learning Program and Data Collection Action learning is closely linked to action research, and is cited as one ofthe "several streams" of action research [40]. Action learning is described as the process by which groups of people work on organizational issues and come up with solutions that may require changes to be made in the organization [61]. In action learning, the learning group, known as the action learning "set," meets regularly and provides a supportive and challenging environment in which members are encouraged to leam from experience and share that experience with others [44, 46]. Following an action learning model developed by Yoong [75], the action learning (AL) program developed for this study had participants working in "learning groups" to explore their own virtual team leadership experiences, and to reflect and improve on their practice. This interlinking of action and reflection, in cooperation with others, resulted in learning for the resetirch pjuticipants and data for the researcher. In addition to generating data, the AL program was a way to entice busy professionals to take part in a research project on virtual teams. When this research began in 1997, published material on virtual teams was limited to practitioner literature or