This article offers a set of guidelines to assist project leaders when managing virtual project teams. The guidelines were developed as a result of a panel at the celebration of the 30 anniversary of the founding of the MIS department at the University of Arizona. These guidelines include recommendations for addressing challenges that occur over the virtual team project life cycle, including id...

Communication plays a central role in virtual team performance, but its research results have not always been in agreement with each other. Using a general IPO model, this paper proposed hypotheses from the perspective of Media Synchronism Theory, and conducted a meta-analysis to test the relationships among virtual team input, process and output variables. The paper also offered implications f...

Previous studies have identified the difficulty of communicating in virtual teams. The lack of media richness, or opportunity for using non-verbal cues, leads to misunderstood communications and may limit the development of trust. Studies have also shown that males and females are socialized to communicate differently. Males use communication in teams to establish dominance and position while f...

An interpretive case study was conducted to examine how team members construct their identities and manage cultural differences in globally distributed information technology work. Research investigating globally distributed information technology work acknowledges the influence of culture on team members and their work activities, but issues of team members’ individual identity and agency are ...

Virtual teams are increasingly global, creating challenges for communication and coordination due to greater distances, multiple time zones, and cultural differences. A longitudinal research program investigating communication and collaboration in globally distributed engineering design teams is described. Preliminary results illustrate the value of combining quantitative and qualitative source...

Information-systemsdevelopmentcontinuestobeadifficultprocess,particularlyforvirtualteams thatdonothavetheluxuryofmeetingface-to-face.Theresearchliteratureonthistopicreinforces thispoint: thegreaterpartofdatabasesystemsdevelopmentprojectsends in failure.Theuseof virtualteamstocompleteprojectsfurthercompoundsthesefailures.However,recentdevelo...

Despite popular expectation that use of time management techniques will improve team performance, virtual teams still fail to perform well in practice. Past research has produced mixed results for the efficacy of time management on team performance. In this preliminary study, we investigate the effect of time management on virtual team performance. Using the punctuated equilibrium model of grou...

The purpose of this study was to examine how trust between the team-members and identification with the team are related to the effectiveness of virtual teams. The literature suggests that both trust and identification are crucial for success of virtual teams but there is a lack of empirical studies to substantiate this assumption. We hypothesized that the identification-effectiveness link shou...