Companies and research institutes are always threatened by rapid technological developments and corporate M&A. They are trying to secure a sustainable competitive advantage using outside knowledge and expertise under open innovation to overcome these shortcomings. As a quantitative and systematical method of selecting virtual team members for open innovation, we present a virtual team formation...

In a good team, members do not only perform their individual task, they also coordinate their actions with other members of the team. Developing such team skills usually involves exercises with all members playing their role. This approach is costly and has organizational and educational drawbacks. We developed a more efficient and flexible approach by setting training in virtual environments, ...

Members of virtual teams lack many of the visual or auditory cues that are usually used as the basis for impressions about fellow team members. We focus on the effects of the impressions formed in this context, and use social exchange theory to understand how these impressions affect team performance. Our pilot study, using content analysis (n = 191 students), suggested that most individuals be...

This study investigates how 3D virtual worlds (3DVWs) support team collaboration. Based on Media Synchronicity Theory, we pose that the shared environment and avatar-based interaction allowed by 3DVWs aid convergence processes in teams working on a decision making task, leading to increased shared understanding between team members. This increases performance of decision making teams. An experi...

The paper describes a systems acquisition simulation using virtual teams in a health care informatics course. The simulation enables virtual teams to participate in a systems acquisition decision for an electronic health records (EMR) system. Each virtual team used a web-based team communications discussion board to assess the attributes of each system, to discuss alternatives, and to reach a d...

The first hour following the trauma is of crucial importance in trauma care. The sooner treatment begins, the better the ultimate outcome for the patient. Generally the initial treatment is handled by paramedical personnel arriving at the site of the accident with an ambulance. There is evidence to show that if the expertise of the on-site paramedic team can be supported by immediate and contin...

This study compares three types of project teams in a global high-tech organization: traditional (co-located), virtual (completely distributed), and ‘semi-virtual’ or hybrid (containing both local and remote members). We use in-group/out-group theories of subgroups to help explain the findings. Specifically, local members of semi-virtual teams report much more positive perceptions of their loca...

Recent studies on virtual teams reveal that team virtuality may be considered from different levels which have a considerable impact on team processes and management. However, as a recent concept introduced to virtual team literature, virtuality and its effects on team effectiveness are still under studied. The purpose of this paper is twofold. On the one hand, it aims to define the concept of ...

The main objective of the Bunraku project-team is to develop cross fertilization of researches in the fields of virtual reality and virtual human. Our challenge is to allow real and virtual humans to naturally interact in a shared virtual environment. This objective is very ambitious as it requires developing and federating several research fields. However, it is fundamental for several areas s...