Team Leaders' Technology Choice in Virtual Teams - IEEE Xplore

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON PROFESSIONAL COMMUNICATION, VOL. 49, NO. 1, MARCH 2006

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Team Leaders’ Technology Choice in Virtual Teams —ANU SIVUNEN AND MAARIT VALO Abstract—Virtual teams face challenges arising from geographical distance, cultural differences, and differing modes of interaction. Team leaders in particular face these challenges because they are primarily responsible for efficient team management. Technology choices made by leaders have become a focus of interest in communication studies, but questions regarding media choice in virtual teams have not been widely studied. This article describes an in-depth, ethnographic exploration of Finnish virtual team leaders who work in natural teams in organizational contexts. The principal goal was to examine their choice of communication technologies in daily work. The results indicate that the choice was based on four factors. First, there are two factors that are person-related: ACCESSIBILITY and SOCIAL DISTANCE. Accessibility refers to people’s ease of access through a particular medium, and social distance suggests that the technology selection is based on the social distance between the persons involved. Second, there are two task-related factors: idea sharing and informing. These factors describe team leaders’ media selection by the nature of the task at hand. The findings suggest that team leaders’ technology choice can be partly explained by traditional media selection theories, but in virtual contexts, accessibility becomes an important determinant of which technology is chosen.

Index Terms—Business communication, call conference, communication technology, computer-mediated communication, discussion forum, groupware, instant messaging, media choice, organizational communication, team leader, teamwork, videoconference, virtual team.

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he use of information and communication technology in organizations has expanded with globalization and new ways of organizing work. The number of e-workers or virtual workers is growing rapidly, and according to an EcaTT’s survey there were already 9 million e-workers in Europe in 1999 [1]. The Scandinavian countries have led the way in the use of information and communication technology at work. In Finland, 91% of employed people have free access to the internet at work. The extensive use of technology has been proposed as one reason for Finland’s success in the European economy [2, p. 10].

In recent years, much research has been conducted in the area of virtual work and virtual teams. A VIRTUAL TEAM is usually defined as a group of people who work closely together even though they are geographically separated, sometimes residing even in different time zones around the world. Their primary interaction takes place through a combination of technologies such as email, telephone, shared databases, videoconferencing, and conference calls [3]. Many scholars have lately been interested in communication in virtual teams, and a wide range of studies concerning virtual team management, best practices in virtual team communication, and team effectiveness have been published (see, e.g., [4]–[8]). Manuscript received February 20, 2004; revised April 6, 2005. The authors are with the Department of Communication, University of Jyväskylä, Jyväskylä FIN 40014, Finland (email: [email protected]; [email protected]). IEEE DOI 10.1109/TPC.2006.870458 0361-1434/$20.00 © 2006 IEEE

Virtual working differs from traditional working in many ways. Virtual teams have to face challenges arising from geographical and temporal distance, functional and cultural differences, and different modes of interaction (face-to-face versus mediated) (see, e.g., [9] and [10]). In many organizations, it is particularly the team leaders who face these challenges, as they are responsible for managing the team efficiently. The leaders are often those who choose the media through which the team members will communicate. Their technology choices and uses have effects on, for example, the cohesion and effectiveness of the team as a whole. Virtual team management has been studied from various angles, including the perspective of multiple leadership roles [6], matters of commitment and control [11], and the impact of team characteristics on virtual team leading [12]. However, management issues related to technology use and media choice in virtual teams have not been widely studied. Despite the fact that there is much research going on in the area of virtual teams, in many studies organizational teams have been neglected and the focus has been on studying groups in laboratory settings or ad hoc groups, such as groups of students. In the area of communication studies, laboratory experiments are often designed so that the participants do not know each other before communicating through the new communication technology [13]. These procedures cannot answer questions of what influences communication technology choice, because often only a few tools are actually tested in laboratory settings and no real

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choice between different kinds of media can occur in those circumstances. It is also the mission and the goals of the organization that influence the choice of technology [14], and therefore studies made in real organizational environments are more suitable for investigating the task-technology fit than studies conducted in laboratories. Field studies can also better yield information for organizational design, which is especially important in new organizational forms, such as virtual networks and teams.

forums, and video- and teleconferences were seldom available. When the communication technologies were evaluated by team members according to their usefulness, it was found that as far as work performance was concerned, emails, scheduled and informal face-to-face meetings, one-on-one calls, and faxes were held to be most useful. The company intranet and ordinary mail were also seen as useful to some extent.

The present article focuses on team leaders’ selection and use of various communication technologies. The leaders work in natural teams in Finnish organizational settings. On the basis of three kinds of empirical data—obtained by in-depth interviews, observations, and content analyses of actual team messages—the goal is to understand the team leaders’ everyday use and interpretations of technology.

UNDERSTANDING TEAM LEADERS’ TECHNOLOGY CHOICE

COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY VIRTUAL TEAMS

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The task requirements of organizational teams include various kinds of interaction among team members. Communication technology should, therefore, facilitate and support communication between virtual team members [15]. In virtual teams, communication is a particular challenge, because most of the interaction is technology-based. In many organizations, phone and electronic mail are still the most commonly used communication tools. However, the development of technology has made it possible to use more sophisticated tools such as videoconferencing, shared databases, and instant messaging systems in virtual teams. In a study concerning virtual work and the use of communication technologies [16], it was found that the fixed phone and voicemail were the most frequently used tools among teleworkers. Technologies such as videoconferencing and computer conferencing were rarely, if ever, used. When comparing technology use for different purposes, the most commonly used technology for task-related communication was the fax, followed by such tools as fixed telephone and voicemail. In order to deliver socially related communication, the most useful technologies according to teleworkers were the telephone, email, voicemail, postal service, and mobile phones. For innovations and suggestions, the virtual workers used email and the telephone. Fairly similar findings were reported in a study conducted on Finnish virtual teams by Vartiainen et al. [10]. According to them, the most frequently used communication channels in Finnish virtual teams included email, one-on-one calls, scheduled and informal face-to-face meetings, faxes, and the postal service. An organization’s intranet and text messages were also widely used, whereas chat, discussion

The reasons for communication technology choice in traditional organizations have been of interest to communication scholars for some decades (e.g., [17]–[20]). Researchers have tried to shed light on the complex processes regarding how individuals working in organizational settings choose among different communication technologies for different tasks, and why some technologies are preferred over others. The traditional way to theorize the use and choice of communication technology has been to explain it either on a rational or a social basis (see, e.g., [17] and [21]). RATIONAL TECHNOLOGY CHOICE means that the communication will be most efficient when the communication technology is selected on the basis of rational criteria, that is, which technology will suit the task best [17]. Rational choice is also called the TRAIT THEORIES PERSPECTIVE because the use of technology is explained by the characteristics of the technology itself [13].

The rational technology choice perspective includes two approaches. One of these approaches contains two well-known theories in communication sciences called MEDIA RICHNESS THEORY [22], and THEORY OF SOCIAL PRESENCE [23]. Both perspectives explain the media selection on the basis of traits and suitability of the media for different communication tasks. The media richness theory categorizes different technologies according to the availability of immediate feedback, nonverbal backchanneling cues, personalization, and language variety. It suggests that when messages are very simple, a lean medium, such as email, is sufficient for effective communication, but when the message is more equivocal, ambiguous or emotional, a richer medium should be used. In social presence theory, technologies are sorted according to their capacity to transmit information about expressions, gestures, and vocal cues, and these characteristics should be considered when choosing the technology. The other approach in the rational choice category is called the ACCESS/QUALITY APPROACH [13]. According to this theory, media selection is a function of a cost benefit analysis in which users try to gain an acceptable quality of information exchange through the use of media that require the least amount of

SIVUNEN AND VALO: TEAM LEADERS’ TECHNOLOGY CHOICE IN VIRTUAL TEAMS

effort to access. The theories of rational technology choice suggest that team leaders’ media selection is based on rational thinking about the situation at hand and the characteristics of the technology. Another way to analyze the use of technology in organizations is called the SOCIAL INTERACTION THEORIES APPROACH [13]. The values and attitudes of other people, regarding different kinds of tools that they use, affect which medium an individual sees as best in a given situation. This perspective includes two theories, the SOCIAL INFLUENCE MODEL [17], [24] and SYMBOLIC INTERACTIONISM [19], [20]. The social influence model points to the influence of co-workers in media perceptions and, therefore, also in media choice. The perceptions of various technologies are not fixed and objective, but they vary across different people, contexts, and situations. The perspective of symbolic interactionism (originally proposed by Mead [25] and Blumer [26]) stresses the importance of organizational culture, practices, and shared meanings in the choice of communication technology. Although the media selection seems to be an individual process, it fundamentally is socially constructed in the organization through shared symbols and meanings. Beside the two major approaches, the rational technology choice and the social interaction theories approach, a third model explaining technology use has been developed: the THEORY OF ADAPTIVE STRUCTURATION [18]. It explains the use of technology as a product of the particular culture using the technology and not as a choice of an individual. According to this theory, the technology cannot be studied without also studying the culture or organization using it, because both the organization and the technology have an impact on each other. Basically then, the technology choice is not an individual but rather a joint decision. The preceding media selection theories have not been studied in virtual teams in real working life, but they have grown out of traditional organizational contexts. In this article, the focus is on virtual team leaders who work in natural teams in real organizations. The main goal is to examine virtual team leaders’ choice of various communication technologies in their daily work. By using qualitative research methods, we will study how team leaders use communication technologies when their communication and coordination with the team members is primarily computer-mediated. Rather than testing any of the theoretical frameworks presented above or adopting them as a guideline for analysis, we will explore how the media selection theories describe virtual team leaders’ technology choice in natural organizational contexts. The research question to be answered is: How do team leaders choose the best communication technologies for use by their virtual teams?

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METHODS A number of ways of collecting data could be applied when investigating virtual team leaders’ use of communication technology. However, because we wanted to get an in-depth look at the phenomena in organizational contexts, over which we had little or no control, we decided to use qualitative research methods. Our methodology can be described as ethnographic. In ethnographic methods, the researcher observes the natural world and attempts to avoid prior commitment to any theoretical model. The method emphasizes exploring particular social or cultural phenomena rather than setting out to test hypotheses about them. Investigation is done with a small number of cases in detail [27], [28]. Participants The participants in this study were four virtual team leaders from four Finnish organizations. For the purposes of this article, the teams will be labeled “A,” “B,” “C,” and “D;” the team leaders will be labeled as “A1,” “B1,” “C1,” and “D1;” and the team members will be labeled with the team letter and an incidental number. All of the leaders were Finnish, three of them female and one male. Their ages varied from 26 to 46. At the time of the study, the teams had existed from six months to two years. Leaders B, C, and D had been leading their teams since they were formed. Team A’s leader came along five months after the team was established. Communication technologies such as electronic mail, the phone, an instant messaging system, discussion forums, shared databases, and videoconferencing or call conferencing were the means by which most of the teams regularly interacted. The number of members in each team varied from 6 to 13. Three of the teams were international and used English as their joint language (Teams B, C, and D) and one (Team A) consisted of members from two cities in Finland. The dispersion of the team members varied from Team B (only two members in the same country) to Team A (seven out of nine members worked in the same building). None of the teams included people who were working exclusively as teleworkers, although many of the participants had the possibility to work from home at times. Two of the teams worked in the area of information technologies, one in communications and marketing, and one team worked in the area of human resources. Data Collection To best address our research questions, we used three methods of data collection: interviewing, observing and recording actual communication messages. The data collection is presented in Table I. First, the four team leaders were interviewed face-to-face in Finnish by the first author. The

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TABLE I DATA COLLECTION PROCESS

online discussion through personal computers. Seven members sent their messages, which varied in number from 2 to 19. In total, the data comprised 49 messages. Some of the discussions involved people outside the team as well, but most of the conversations involved team members and the team leader. Some of the messages were written in Finnish and some in English, depending on the people involved. The focus in analysis was on the messages shared by the leader of Team C with her team members. With Team D the data was recorded from an electronic discussion forum, which was just being implemented for the use of the team by Team leader D. The first author had access to the discussion forum over the internet during the first 11 months of its operation. All of the messages were copied and saved to text files. A total of 170 messages were gathered from the discussion forum. The language used in all of the discussion forum messages was English. Again, the focus was on the messages the team leader shared with the team members.

interviews were in-depth theme interviews made at the team leaders’ workplaces, and they took from 72 to 97 min. The themes of the interviews dealt with the communication routines and habits of the team, virtual team leading practices, communication technologies used in the team, the costs and benefits of different technologies, and the perceived impacts of technology use on team communication. All of the interviews were transcribed and saved to text-files, resulting in 154 pages of transcribed interviews. Second, we wanted to observe the team leaders communicating through the technologies in their daily work. Data were, therefore, collected by observing the communication the team leaders shared with the team members through video conferencing (Team A) and conference calls (Team B). These technologies were selected on the basis of what the team leaders had said in the interviews about the technologies they were using often for team communication. The first author participated in two videoconferences of Team A and three conference calls of Team B; notes were made of these conferences. Both types of conference meetings were also recorded on audiotape. The overall duration of the videoconferences was 2 h 54 min, and the duration of the conference calls was 2 h 5 min. The videoconferences were held in Finnish and the conference calls in English. Third, parts of the text-based communication of leaders of Teams C and D were recorded. Each member of Team C was asked to select and submit for analysis some of the peer-to-peer discussions they were going to have with the rest of the team via the instant messaging system during the next four months. The system enabled synchronous

In selecting the communication technologies for observation and analysis, we were more interested in technologies that were designed to support group communication than technologies supporting interpersonal communication. Therefore, we selected the technologies used in the organizations primarily for the team communication. The conversations needed also to be easily accessed from outside the organizations or otherwise easily recorded by the informants. These were the reasons why email messages, for example, were excluded from the observation. We also considered it important that the technology chosen was either already a significant communication tool in the team or was becoming one, as was the case with Team D. Analysis The data gathered from interviews and observations were analyzed qualitatively. We used qualitative data analysis by Miles and Huberman [29] and the textual approach described by Gephart [30]. This means treating the interviews, observations, and recordings as texts. The data were first disassembled to extract key passages identified as being of theoretical interest. Thereafter the data were analyzed in three linked subprocesses: data reduction (doing summaries, coding, teasing out themes), data display (making matrices, graphs), and conclusion drawing (noting regularities and patterns). Then the passages were recontextualized and interpreted to render them meaningful to the reader (see also [31]). The four teams represented distinct business sectors and were engaged in different types of tasks. In qualitative analysis, the question of representativeness of the data is irrelevant, because the subjects are not treated as a sample in the


statistical sense. However, through qualitative analysis, it is also possible to transcend the local and particular and to infer from specific findings more generalized levels of information. When analyzed with close attention to detail, qualitative data can also be used to develop theoretical ideas that have relevance beyond those data themselves [32]. After carefully examining the data gathered from the interviews, observations, and recordings, the data were uploaded to the ATLAS.ti qualitative data analysis software [33]. The texts were coded and passages relating either to the team leaders’ use or selection of communication technology were extracted for further analysis. This data contained information about the technologies the team leaders used for different tasks and characteristics of the various technologies at hand. Reviewing the passages, it was found that the team leaders used different technologies for different purposes. The data were, therefore, recoded and passages related to the functions of technology use were extracted. Next, a matrix describing the functions of communication technology use was made. In the verification process, some of the categories were unified into one and the final set of four factors was created. The matrix and the factors are described in detail in the next section. All of the citations from the interviews in the following section were translated into English by the first author. All of the examples of actual messages and observations selected in the following section were originally written in English.

FINDINGS Virtual team leaders’ communication technology choice can be described by reference to four factors: accessibility, social distance, idea sharing, and informing. Accessibility and social distance are person-related factors, which reflect ease of access through a particular medium and the social distance between the persons involved. Idea sharing and informing are task-related factors, which indicate that the technology choice is related to the nature of the task. These factors are presented in Table II. Accessibility To reach their team members and access information, team leaders used different communication technologies, depending on the tools available to them and the dispersion of the team. For example, fixed phones were used in very different ways. In Teams A and B the fixed phone was used a lot, whereas in Teams C and D it was rarely, if ever, used. Team leader B preferred the telephone to email, on the grounds that asking a question in a phone call takes the same time or even less than composing an email message and waiting for the answer. After a phone call you also know whether or not the person

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can be reached at that moment, but this is not the case with email. In Team A, in which most of the team members worked in the same building, the team leader used the telephone mostly with distant team members, and with local members when they were not present at the workplace. Instead of the telephone, Team C widely used an instant messaging system, and the team leader was able to reach almost all the team members with this tool. Team leader C argued that the instant messaging system was convenient because it was fast and informal; questions and answers could be sent back and forth without worrying about correct language or the formulation of the message. Instant messaging was used mainly for one-on-one communication when asking short questions or giving brief instructions: C1: And the advantage of this chat-thing is that when you need an answer quickly to one or two short questions, or an opinion, so that you don’t chatter awfully long, because there is no time to think a lot, because the other end is then only waiting and thinking, is she still making up something or just thinking how to say this, but it’s quick, question-answer-like conversation. The most accessible medium, however, was the mobile phone. Team leaders A and C used text messages when communicating with their team members. Team leader C specified that text messages were used when the team member was, for example, at a meeting and could not be reached. At meetings, mobile phones were usually in silent mode, and the text message could, therefore, still reach the person. Through observation, it was found out that the team leaders also advised the team members about what medium to choose. This occurred especially when the accessibility of the message was important. In one of Team B’s conference calls, it was discovered that one of the team members should have collected information from all of the other members for a common project, but for whatever reason, the member had not received the information from the other team members. Team leader B gives the member a piece of advice: B1: [Name of the team member], if you feel that you’re not getting the information according to what we have agreed, just pick up the phone and ask the individual persons to get you. . . to send you the information, and don’t wait. This kind of recommendation of a particular medium can be seen as an intentional choice made by the leader. It also reveals that the team leader considered the telephone to be a good medium for accessing information quickly. The following excerpt is from one of Team leader C’s conversations in an instant messaging system. It

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TABLE II FACTORS INFLUENCING TEAM LEADERS’ TECHNOLOGY CHOICE

shows that after weighing different ways of reaching the other person before the incoming conference call, the leader chooses text messaging due to the mobility of cellular phones. C1:

good morning [name]! which phone number shall i call you when our meeting starts at 10 (9 your time)? C12: Morning. Just call my mobile. I am already in a conference call, so maybe it is easier if I call you? C1: I’m using the internal conference call functionality in which i have to start the calls. . .

C12: OK. I can indicate in this chat if I am finished with my previous call later than planned. C1: ok but I won’t be online after I have gone to the meeting room so send me a sms [text message] if you know about your delay very near 10 C12: ok C1: talk to you later, bye Accessibility could also be seen as a negative characteristic of communication technology. Team B could also have used instant messaging, but the team leader did not like it. According to her, instant messaging is disturbing because the messages jump


on to the screen regardless of what you are doing, and therefore cannot be ignored. Team leader B also preferred speaking on the phone to writing a message, so instant messaging did not offer any added value to team communication that was not already possible via the telephone. Social Distance Social distance was a factor related to communication technology choice in socio-emotional issues. According to team leaders, face-to-face communication was most often considered to be the best communication channel when giving personal feedback or support to team members. For example, when some of the team members had a difficult situation in his or her local unit, the team leader felt that there was a need for face-to-face communication instead of a telephone conversation. Unfortunately, this was often not possible due to geographical distance. B1: . . .if somebody has a very bad situation going on in his or her country. . .it might have something to do with things like someone getting their feelings hurt and you have to try to sort things out, then you wish you could be present and near the other person, and phone feels like too remote and unemotional medium. Despite the feeling that the telephone was sometimes too lean a medium for social support, another team leader pointed out that an even leaner technology, email, could be used for asking after remote members. Team leader C said: C1: Always, if I haven’t heard from somebody [from the team] for a long time, at least I have to send an email and ask how s/he is doing. Team leaders also intentionally took advantage of email as a lean and asynchronous medium, compared to, for example, the telephone or face-to-face conversation. The team leaders sometimes deliberately chose email, although the issues they needed to smooth out were difficult or sensitive. According to some of the leaders, email was an easier medium for both sides than was face-to-face conversation when handling a negative issue, because it provided both the sender and the receiver with time to think how best to express themselves. One of the team leaders preferred email to face-to-face or telephone conversation when giving negative feedback. Another team leader pointed out that she recognizes some of the weaknesses of email as a medium, such as the lack of nonverbal cues, but when the issue is complex and might engender spontaneous negative reactions, email may work better due to its asynchronous nature. Idea Sharing Conference calls and videoconferencing were used mainly for idea sharing and discussing. In Team B, conference calls were made every week for team meetings. Team C also had meetings through

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conference calls, but not all of the members could participate in them due to the time-lag. Team leader C, therefore, had separate meetings with people from a different time-zone through conference calls. Videoconferencing was regularly used by Team A, and quite often also by Team D. In Team A, the use of videoconferencing for the team meetings fell from once a month to every other month: A1: We had last year team meeting every other week, but then we felt that we hadn’t really so much to deal with and because of the videoconference, people don’t just natter away or you can’t really. . . and then everybody thought it was too often, so now we agreed that this year it’s only once a month, and every other time face-to-face and every other in videoconference. Team leader D stated that videoconferencing was used when there were bigger issues to handle between two parties. Thus, it was used only between two localities for discussing some issues between the team leader and one or two distant team members. The multipoint videoconferencing was not available in the organization of Team D. Team B did not use videoconferencing for two reasons: the absence of multipoint videoconferencing system and the high cost of using the system when it is available. The leader of Team C also stressed that the high cost of using videoconferencing was one of the reasons why they preferred conference calls for meetings. At the time of the study, Team leader D had proposed the implementation of a new tool for the use of the team, a system that included a discussion forum through the internet. This was implemented soon after the interview. The team leader argued that the discussion forum could help the team to share ideas and activate the members in planning and giving their opinions. Some of the members of Team D were not very eager to participate in the team communication, and the team leader wanted to encourage them to participate through this kind of open medium: D1: We have a need for a tool, because we can’t really toy with suggestions at the moment except in face-to-face situations, and that’s why I’m often the one who dictates the decisions. There was a clear preference to handle issues that needed to be discussed at greater length or otherwise considered together in group meetings. Conference calls, videoconferences, and face-to-face meetings were considered best in these situations. This could also be inferred from the data of actual communicative exchanges. In Team B, in which the conference call was used often, face-to-face meetings were chosen if possible. In a conference call, Team leader B referred to some issues that needed to be discussed but which

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were not considered deeply at the meeting because the team members were soon to have a face-to-face meeting: B1:

D5:

Next topic on the agenda is service level agreement for next year and I don’t think we need to go too deep into that because we’re going to meet in Oslo on Monday.

In another conference call, Team leader B cancelled the next conference call due to a separate face-to-face meeting scheduled for the same week. In these examples, the team leader gave preference to face-to-face meetings in these particular situations. Also the team members had their own opinions about the media choice. This in turn had an impact on the team leader. In the discussion forum the members of Team D discussed with their leader the possibility of arranging a face-to-face meeting instead of using only the discussion forum and videoconferencing tools. The need for a face-to-face meeting arose out of the team members’ desire to share ideas and learn best practices from the other team members in a special team meeting. The thread was as follows: Web-meeting 29.8.2003 D3:

Re: Web-meeting 2.9.2003

Is there any web-meeting planned for? I feel we could need one, and I know that our broker also would like to have one, both for discussions and getting information in some issues.

As the preceding excerpt shows, the team leader discussed the media choice together with the team members. As a result of the members’ opinions, the face-to-face meeting was eventually organized. The team members did not consider a videoconference or discussion forum an adequate communication technology for the whole year, especially for activities such as idea planning and learning from others. In this case, the leader chose a face-to-face meeting on the grounds of members’ preference. Informing All of the team leaders argued that electronic mail is the most important tool for task-related activities in their work. In email, it is easy to attach documents or give common guidelines or instructions to team members. Email was also frequently used for sharing exact information, like pieces of code. Team leader B said that because of the possibility of attaching documents, email has replaced the fax, which is nowadays very rarely used. Compared to conference calls, which the team used as the technology for their weekly meeting, email was considered to be a better tool for documenting information: B1:

Web-meeting 1.9.2003 D1:

What do you feel? We will have a marketing communications meeting on mid-September. I will go through there some overall information about web development. Some of you will take part of that meeting but not all. I have planned to go through next years plans with all of you separately in a videomeeting, but should we have a separate meeting with this webgroup? So what do you think? If you would like to have this meeting, where would you like to do it?

Re: Web-meeting 2.9.2003 D4:

Hello! Yes, I feel we need one meeting and be together at least once a year. We need to speak form experience and get new idea and new increase. We like to have a video meeting every three months separately. Maybe also one time per half-year together with the Scandinavian countries. We like to have a closer contact with other countries and learn by experience. Hope to see you all soon.

Hello! I agree with [Team member D3], that we should make at least one separate Web-meeting a year in which we could learn from each other, the last one was very interesting for me. . .

If there is an order-like instruction that this is how we work from now on, which should be given to everybody at the same time, of course then the e-mail is most handy, so that you don’t have to say it to everybody separately, and if you say it in a conference call, it won’t be documented in the same way. Like I said, in a meeting somebody always takes the minutes, but how the things are documented in it, it is always personal, how you interpret things. So there is already a bigger chance for misunderstanding.

It can also be seen from the team leaders’ actual communication that email was used a lot for task-related work, such as giving common guidelines and documents that the leader wanted to be sent in black and white. For example, Team leader C promised to forward an email she had just received concerning working hours to the team members, after reminding one of the members in the instant messaging system about it. Thus, the leader chose to use email instead of some other medium, because the message could be easily sent by using the forward-function of the email and because of the nature of the message, she wanted it to be documented.


DISCUSSION

AND IMPLICATIONS

This study used a qualitative, ethnographic approach to find out how team leaders choose the best communication technologies for use by their teams. The focus was on the in-depth experiences and observations of four virtual team leaders. As such, one should be cautious about generalizing the findings to other contexts. However, the results highlight some important functions of using technology in virtual organizational contexts—an area that has been ignored in studies in recent years. All of the virtual team leaders mentioned that the use of technology in the virtual team was, overall, easy and convenient. They attributed this either to the fact that the team members were familiar with the field of technology because of their profession or to the institutional and cultural framework in which they work. One of the team leaders stated that the team members actively communicated through various technologies because they were Scandinavian, and thus accustomed to using technologies at work. The findings suggest that virtual team leaders’ technology choice is based on four different factors: accessibility, social distance, idea sharing, and informing. When reflecting on the findings related to the media richness theory [22], it can be seen that in task-related factors (idea sharing and informing), the technology choice is consistent with the theory, but in the person-related factors (accessibility and social distance), the selection is based on different grounds. In task-related factors, the leaders seem to choose the technology according to equivocality and the nature of the task. Simply, one-way communication is easy to handle with email, but complex issues that demand discussion are better dealt with through a richer medium. Accessibility was found to be a factor behind virtual team leaders’ communication media choice in many cases. In virtual teams, the mobility of workers increases. When the employee is not present at the workplace, accessibility may become an important issue when choosing the communication technology. It seems, for example, that the use of the fixed phones is in transition, at least in the case of Finland. The increased mobility of people and the mushrooming number of mobile phones have hastened this change in organizations. Mobile phones and text messages can reach a person who is at a meeting or out of the office, and both are, therefore, chosen more often than fixed phones. These findings support the significance of contextual determinants in managerial media choice as identified in the symbolic interactionism approach. As Trevino et al. point out, “a number of research studies have supported the idea that characteristics of the situation determine media choice” [20, p. 83].

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These determinants are distance, time pressure, and accessibility. Accessibility in this study refers to all three of these determinants. Leaders chose media on the basis of the distance between team members and the urgency of the task and also according to whether or not the people involved had access to the particular medium and were reachable through it. The development and implementation of new tools, such as instant messaging, may also replace the use of traditional media. In the study, it appeared that instant messaging and the discussion forum may to some extent have overtaken the fixed telephone. However, the instant messaging system seems to be a tool that needs time and a receptive communication culture for implementation. Because of the fast and informal nature of the medium, the resulting accessibility may feel inconvenient and disturbing to an employee who is used to traditional ways of communication. These findings are consistent with the theory of adaptive structuration [18] in the sense that the organizational culture affects the way the technology is used. In organizations where the organizational culture supports the use of convenient and informal communication tools, their use will increase faster than in a different kind of organizational culture. However, the number of instant messaging systems in organizations is growing rapidly, and accessibility may again affect the way this technology is received in workplaces in the future. Social distance was a factor influencing communication technology choice in situations where the team leader wanted either to dispel or emphasize the social distance between him/her and the team member. Geographical distance was easily overcome by email if the leader wanted to ask how the remote team members were doing. On the other hand, email was sometimes used intentionally when the social distance was greater, because of the asynchronous nature of the medium and the time it provided both the sender and receiver. This is an aspect both the media richness theory and social presence theory ignore: a particular technology is sometimes chosen because it does not provide any synchronous feedback channel and is only text-based, no matter how complex the issues are. In the idea sharing category, the team leader selected the communication technology in cases where there was a need for a weekly meeting or more concerted planning of some project. In most cases the technology selected was a video or telephone conference. Sometimes conference calls were preferred to videoconferences, but face-to-face meetings were regarded as important in this category as well. The findings are twofold. In the first place, videoconferencing systems are still suffering from poor quality. The technology cannot convey visual and auditory information well enough to create a

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real feeling of social presence. Many other reasons for the failure of videoconferencing systems have also been presented (see, e.g., [34]). These findings imply that videoconferencing systems have not been able to fit the requirements expounded in the media richness theory [22]. The ability to see the other party does not necessarily give any added value to the communication in working contexts. This finding is also supported by a study that compares the different features of videoconferencing and conference calls [35]. However, when comparing technology-based meetings to face-to-face meetings, the findings of the study indicate some support for the media richness theory [22] and the theory of social presence [23] as far as face-to-face meetings are concerned. The ability to see the other person face-to-face is considered important when sharing ideas.

affect the team leaders’ media choice. For example, one team leader stated that she prefers speaking to writing, and she advised one of the team members to use the telephone in dealing with the various tasks. It may be that the personal characteristics and preferences of the leader or his/her skills in using technologies influence the communication technology choice at least when there are more media available. This finding supports the access/quality approach of media selection [13], as it explains the choice of communication technology in terms of perceptions of convenience and ease of use. These factors can be seen as a self-oriented set of criteria for technology selection, “where the emphasis is on ease of use and accommodation to the exigencies of the sender” [13, p. 352].

Informing team members was a factor that affected the team leader’s technology choice when the leader wanted to share task-related information and to have it documented in black and white. Email is a good medium for documentation, and it has retained its status in organizations. Because of the simplicity of the medium and its established place in the daily routine, email will probably maintain the position it has gained as an important communication tool in virtual teams. The media richness theory [22] fails to describe the use of email in virtual teams, because the theory was introduced at a time when email was not regularly used in organizations. Today, the ease of use and the asynchronous nature of email have become more important than the ability to deliver a lot of cues. In this study, email was also used for giving feedback and for socially related communication, which is inconsistent with the characteristics of email as described in the media richness theory.

The findings of this study shed light on the complex processes through which virtual team leaders choose communication technologies. These processes may be rather different in virtual teams when compared to traditional organizational teams, because of the time and distance barriers as well as the necessity to use some sort of technology for communication. In task-related factors, the findings were congruent with media richness theory, but the person-related factors were based on different grounds. Accessibility was one of the most important factors behind the virtual team leaders’ technology choice, and the leaders chose different technologies according to people’s ease of access through that medium. For technology developers and designers, this poses a challenge to design tools that are convenient to use and easily accessed throughout the world. Also the notion that text-based technologies are not as “lean” or “poor” as the media richness theory suggests, may have implications for the development of groupware. In fact, under some circumstances the users may benefit from having only a few cues in their communication.

In some cases, the media choice seems to be based on the individual’s own personal media perceptions. While the team leader preferred the use of an electronic discussion forum and videoconferencing systems, the team members wanted to have a face-to-face meeting to share ideas and learn from each other. In this case, the fact that the team leader deferred to the team members’ preference for a certain media supports the social influence model of media choice [17]. The emphasis in this perspective “is on accommodating the communication partner” [13, p. 352]. The findings from the observations reveal some of the personal media preferences that might strongly

Nonetheless, some of the former media selection theories, such as the social influence model [17] and the theory of adaptive structuration [18], still have a lot to contribute to our understanding of virtual team leaders’ technology choices. The implementation processes and attitudes toward new technology are often influenced by others in the organizational environment. In team contexts, this means that the benefits and the constraints of different technologies should be explained and discussed in the team for the efficient use of these tools.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT The authors wish to thank the anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments. This research was supported by the Finnish Cultural Foundation.


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Anu Sivunen is a doctoral student in Speech Communication in the Department of Communication at the University of Jyväskylä, Jyväskylä, Finland. Her dissertation focuses on global virtual teams, especially on team identification and communication technology use.

Maarit Valo is a Professor in Speech Communication in the Department of Communication, University of Jyväskylä, Jyväskylä, Finland. Her research interests include computer-mediated communication, workplace communication, and communicative competence as part of professional expertise.