Fundamental Concepts and Approaches for Investigating Virtual ...

Association for Information Systems

AIS Electronic Library (AISeL) ICIS 2000 Proceedings

International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS)

December 2000

Fundamental Concepts and Approaches for Investigating Virtual Teamwork

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PANEL FUNDAMENTAL CONCEPTS AND APPROACHES FOR INVESTIGATING VIRTUAL TEAMWORK Chair:

Sajda Qureshi, Erasmus University Rotterdam, The Netherlands

Panelists: Doug Vogel, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong Sirkka Jarvenpaa, University of Texas, Austin, U.S.A. Katherine Chudoba, Florida State University, U.S.A.

INTRODUCTION The concept of virtual teamwork continues to elude us while we study it. Some would suggest that virtual teams are not really teams, but individuals brought together through technology (Zigurs and Qureshi forthcoming). How, then, do individuals brought together through technology function as a team in this virtual workspace? What are the impacts of Group Support Systems (GSS) and other technologies designed to support teams? What are the identifying characteristics and adaptations that occur as individuals use technological support to function as a virtual team? And what are the social consequences? While the practical applications of virtual teams are many, the results are often mixed and success stories limited. The main challenge facing researchers is how to go about studying this increasingly prevalent but enigmatic phenomenon and arriving at practically relevant knowledge with respect to effectiveness in virtual teams.

RESEARCH APPROACHES It appears that any one of these issues may be investigated from more than one research perspective and enables many types of insight and knowledge. While some experimental research may be useful in highlighting certain elements that need to be considered, interpretivist research is useful in investigating virtual teams because it (1) provides greater contextual relevance to existing positivist research and (2) virtual teamwork appears to have an effect on organizations beyond what is immediately quantifiable by the positivist researcher. In addition, interpretivist research enables the research to uncover context specific concepts and delineate the contours of the virtual teamwork phenomenon. Practical issues remain as to how the usual methods of qualitative and quantitative research should be adapted to study a virtual team, especially a global one, that is distributed across space and time. How does the researcher “observe” the team? Do virtual team members construct parallel virtual and material worlds? Do they manage the relationships between them? What should be the balance of studying individuals versus the team? When should one take a homogeneous view and assume that individuals are inseparable from their groups? Early on, many effects remain at the individual level of analysis and the effects only evolve into a group level construct over time. For example, early on individuals might be part of heterogeneous groups where they form their expectations rather independent of others, but over time these same groups become homogeneous where individual expectations are transformed up to a group level. What is the role of dyadic relationships in global virtual teams? How do dyadic relationships between members form in the context of the team and how do these relationships affect the team overall? These are important and challenging issues that require carefully designed studies in order to be investigated fully. The design of a study that enables researchers to address virtual and material layers of reality requires an interpretive approach that enables the worker to construct the concepts (Robey et al. 2000). Within a qualitative research strategy data may be collected using multiple methods and enable insight into how variables change over time (Maznevski and Chudoba forthcoming).

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Panel: Investigating Virtual Teamwork

FUNDAMENTAL CONCEPTS Fundamental concepts are needed to inform research in virtual teams. By nature of their distributed existence, virtual teams tend to exhibit different cultural characteristics. Technology in general and GroupWare in particular provide ways to bridge cultures without physically disrupting people and allowing potentially enabling synergism to emerge. The Socio-Cultural Learning Model based on the extended work of Vygotsky (1978, 1986) is an especially good fit with attributes of multi-cultural distributed learning. According to the tenets of the socio-cultural model of learning, knowledge cannot be dissociated from the historical and cultural background of the learner. As such, it is important that learners begin to construct meaning on their own terms and in their own interests within their own culture. Socio-culturalists are especially concerned that majority cultures not force minority cultures into a common understanding. Rather, they feel that cultures should be respected and allowed to co-exist in the context of shared activities. Through the lens of the socio-cultural learning model, we can begin to systematically examine aspects of virtual teamwork process and outcome. These different cultures often result in different perceptions, norms, and behaviors in virtual teams. This diversity is more prevalent in geographically distributed virtual teams as the greater cultural differences combined with varying abilities of expression in the virtual spaces contribute to the divergence in perceptions. Such diversity, analyzed from a socio-cognitive conflict perspective, is seen to bring about learning (Doise and Mugny 1984, p. 161). Groupware technology provides the virtual meeting space in which this diversity may be communicated and resolved. Episodes of learning in virtual teams may be identified when the varying perceptions communicated in the virtual space are resolved and convergence is reached.

PANEL FORMAT This panel will take the form of a dynamic and open discussion. The moderator will briefly introduce the panel and panelists. Panelists will briefly describe their experiences in researching virtual teams, what they are finding, the challenges they are facing, and how they believe further research should be conducted. Each panelist’s statement will be followed by a brief period of questions, comments, or rebuttals from the moderator and the other panelists. After all panelists have had a chance to speak and respond to the other panelists, the discussion will be opened to include the audience as well. To encourage participation, the moderator will solicit questions from the audience, moderating interaction among members of the audience and the panel. The panelists will attempt, through this interactive discussion and debate, to develop and frame research in virtual teamwork.

BACKGROUND OF PARTICIPANTS Sirkka L. Jarvenpaa is the Bayless/Rauscher Pierce Refsnes Chair in Business Administration at the University of Texas at Austin. She was the holder of the distinguished Marvin Bower Fellowship at Harvard Business School the calendar year of 1994. She has been a recipient of several paper awards including two Society of Information Management (SIM) paper awards and the MIS Quarterly best paper award. At the University of Texas at Austin, she serves as a co-director of the Cnter for Business, Technology and Law and a track leader in the cross-functional Customer Insight Center. Her current research projects focus on electronic commerce. She is the current co-editor-in-chief of Journal of Strategic Information Systems. Dr. Jarvenpaa has served as a senior editor for MIS Quarterly and an associate editor for the following journals: Management Science, MIS Quarterly, and Data Base. She is currently serving as an associate editor for Information Systems Research, International Journal of Electronic Commerce, Journal of Information Technology Management, ACM Transactions on Human Computer Interaction, Internet Research, and Journal of Computer Mediated Communication. She served as a Vice President for Association of Information Systems (AIS) in 1995 and 1996. She has served in many chair roles (program, Ph.D. consortium, planning) for the International Conference on Information Systems, the largest and most prestigious conference in her field. Since 1993, she has been the champion of an annual global virtual team exercise that brings 15 to 20 universities around the world together where masters students work on a challenging project in virtual teams for eight to 10 weeks. Although this is primarily an educational endeavor, it has also enabled a research stream focused on improving the effectiveness of virtual teams. Douglas R. Vogel is Professor of Information Systems at the City University of Hong Kong and formerly at the University of Arizona, USA. He has been involved with computers and computer systems in various capacities for over 30 years. He received his M.S. in Computer Science from U.C.L.A. in 1972 and his Ph.D. in Management Information Systems from the University of Minnesota in 1986 where he was also research coordinator for the MIS Research Center. He has designed systems for Hughes Aircraft Company and consulted for large and small companies. In a 10 year relationship with a Colorado electronics manufacturer, he served in virtually every managerial capacity including General Manager and member of the Board of Directors. Professor Vogel’s research interests bridge the business and academic communities in addressing questions of the impact of management information systems on aspects

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of interpersonal communication, group problem solving, cooperative learning, and multi-cultural team productivity. His interests reflect a concern for encouraging efficient and effective managerial utilization of computer systems in an atmosphere conducive to enhancing the quality of working life. Professor Vogel has published widely and directed extensive research on group support systems and technology support for education. He is especially active in introducing group support technology into enterprises and educational systems. His particular focus emphasizes integration of audio, video, and data in interactive distributed group support. He has become especially interested over the past years in the impact of culture on team interactions and has researched multi-cultural team productivity on four continents. Katherine Chudoba is an Assistant Professor in the Information Management Systems Department in the College of Business at Florida State University. She earned her bachelor’s degree and MBA at the College of William and Mary, and her Ph.D. at the University of Arizona. She worked for eight years as an analyst and manager with IBM. Prior to joining the faculty at FSU, Dr. Chudoba was on the faculty of the University of Virginia’s McIntire School of Commerce. Dr. Chudoba’s research interests focus on teams that use groupware technologies and the organizational impacts of that use. She is especially interested in the application of qualitative research methods to analyze workgroups. Currently, she is investigating the use of communications technologies by globally distributed software development teams. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Organization Science, Information & Management, and Data Base, and has been presented at the International Conference on Information Systems and the Academy of Management. Sajda Qureshi is Assistant Professor in Information Management at the Department of Decision and Information Sciences at the Faculty of Management at Erasmus University Rotterdam in the Netherlands. She holds a Ph.D. in Information Systems from the London School of Economics and Political Science at the University of London. She has been coordinator of the Commonwealth Network of Information Technology for Development at the Commonwealth Secretariat in London, she has lectured at the MIS Department of the University of Arizona, and has been involved in various consultancy projects in Italy and the UK. She has produced many publications in the use of electronic communication technologies to support coordination and decision making processes within an international network and a network organization. From 1992 until 1994, she investigated globally distributed decision making among international agencies using social network analysis. During this time she was involved with the development of an Internet-based GSS to support distributed consultation and collaboration among international agencies. Her current research projects include managing knowledge in virtual teams in two multinational ICT consultancy companies, communication infrastructures for virtual teamwork among the Singapore and Rotterdam Harbour officials, and learning among multiple geographically dispersed student groups.

References Doise,W., and Mugny, G. The Social Development of the Intellect, Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1984. Maznevski, M. L., and Chudoba, K. “Bridging Space Over Time: Global Virtual Team Dynamics and Effectiveness,” Organization Science, forthcoming. Robey, D., Stewart, K. A., and Jin, L. “Intertwining Material and Virtual Work: Extending the Capabilities of Individuals, Teams and Organizations,” unpublished working paper, Georgia State University, 2000. Vygotsky, L. Mind in Society: The Development of Higher Psychological Processes, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1978. Vygotsky, L. Thought and Language (revised ed.), Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1986. Zigurs, I., and Qureshi, S. “Managing the Extended Enterprise, Creating Value from Virtual Spaces,” in Information Technology and the Future Enterprise: New Models for Managers, G. DeSanctis and G. Dickson (eds.), Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, forthcoming.

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