The Evolving Influence of Diversity and Media in Virtual Organizations

Virtual organizations are important to enable collaboration and enhance interaction among a diverse set of people regardless of their temporal and spatial dispersion. Some research has assumed that communication media will mask traditional elements of diversity while other research suggests mediated teams simply pay attention to different cues. The relationships among the media, team member diversity (broadly defined) and outcomes have not been examined. This research in progress seeks to understand how various components of diversity enhance, inhibit, or are overcome in virtual organizations. The goal of this study is to understand how virtual organizations evolve over time, with a particular eye toward understanding the role of diversity in this process, thus enabling us to identify the conditions under which virtual organizations will be successful. Guided by social change, diversity, attribution, and media theories, we propose a theoretical framework with a set of research questions and hypotheses.