This project examines the relationship between team identification and collaboration configuration and how they affect attributions to failure. In a sample of 110 participants, we examined reactions to failure. We manipulated perceptions of similarity among participants and a confederate of the study, we also manipulated collaboration configuration. We found that the collaboration configuration manipulation effected attributions; attributions about teammate failure in the collocated condition were more situational than attributions in the distributed condition, which were more dispositional. This finding supports the notion that collaboration configuration is important for understanding reactions to teammate failure.

Equipes et communautés virtuelles deviennent un mode relationnel collectif largement généralisé. Elles possèdent des caractéristiques spécifiques : distances géographiques, rencontres physiques rares voire inexistantes, aptitude à inclure des grands nombres, facilité d’entrée-sortie, communication écrite dominante, ou effacement du statut social. Elles disposent d’un important bouquet d’outils web 2.0 collaboratifs avec des capacités propres, telles que la mémorisation des échanges, la possibilité du synchrone et de l’asynchrone, le dialogue multiple simultané, l’anonymat éventuel. La collaboration à distance réclame l’acquisition d’un nouveau savoir-faire devenu impératif, que nous appelons le management virtuel. Basée sur l’Analyse Systémique et l’Adaptive Structuration Theory, cette recherche propose un modèle, une mesure et une méthode d’aide au management virtuel. Le modèle est une représentation d’une entité virtuelle en trois dimensions fonctionnelles : la valeur ajoutée collective, la satisfaction des membres, et la flexibilité des frontières. Il s’appuie sur le concept d’adjacence, qui ajoute aux deux rôles d’un individu – l’agent, membre agissant pour la collectivité et l’acteur, stratège agissant pour lui - celui de personne connectée à d’autres individus ou communautés de même domaine d’intérêt. Toute entité virtuelle possède des individus adjacents et communautés adjacentes, en dehors d’elle, et intéressant le management virtuel. La mesure de la e-collaboration comprend celles de l’usage et de l’intérêt pour 18 outils collaboratifs. Elle a été réalisée auprès d’un échantillon de 199 entreprises pendant trois ans. The traitement de cette base de données a permis la création du modèle. Elle révèle des sous-groupes hostiles ou en faveur de la e-collaboration et indique sous quelles conditions elle est envisageable. Elle donne des tendances. Ainsi, les pratiques de community management commencent à être exploitées en interne dans le management d’équipes virtuelles. L’échantillon de grandes entreprises a montré aussi que la e-collaboration est en avance dans un pays émergent, le Vietnam, par rapport à la France. La recherche propose enfin une méthode, dénommée VEMS, Virtual Entities Management Support. Elle part d’une analyse de l’environnement et de la définition d’une stratégie en trois dimensions, puis détermine les fonctions de l’équipe ou de la communauté, les attitudes et les outils adéquats. Elle offre un choix de 18 fonctions et 79 attitudes déduites des recommandations de la littérature et enrichies des observations de l’échantillon. Cette méthode a été appliquée à cinq entités virtuelles de nature très différentes : internes chez un industriel et une banque, externes chez un réseau social, une communauté de fans de web séries, et une autre de fans de cuisine. Ces communautés possèdent de 160.000 à 40 membres. Pour chacune, une stratégie a pu être déployée, avec une série précise d’attitudes et d’outils, point de départ d’un programme opérationnel. Cinq fonctions et 22 attitudes sont communes à toutes les entités étudiées, dont six concernent les adjacences. Elles peuvent être considérées comme le fondement du management virtuel. La méthode a été également déployée auprès de quatre communautés de marques d’un même secteur à faible engagement. Quatre scénarios ont été déduits, dont la participation dans une communauté adjacente, préférable à celui de la création d’une communauté propre. / Virtual teams and communities become a widely spread collective relational mode. They have specific characteristics: geographical distances, physical meetings rare or nonexistent, ability to include large numbers, ease of input-output, dominant written communication, erasure of social status. They can benefit from a large number of web 2.0 collaborative tools with their own capacities, such as the storage of communications, the possibility of synchronous and asynchronous dialogue, multiple simultaneous exchanges, eventual anonymity. The e-collaboration requires the acquisition of a new imperative skill that we call virtual management. Based on the Systemic Analysis and Adaptive Structuration Theory, this research proposes a model, a measurement and a method, the Virtual Entities Management Support. The model is a representation of a virtual entity in three functional dimensions: the collective value, member satisfaction, and flexible frontiers. It is based on the concept of adjacency, which adds to the two roles of the individual - the agent acting for the community, and the actor acting for himself - the person connected to other individuals or communities with the same area of interest. Any virtual entity is connected to adjacent individuals and communities, an area of interest of the virtual management. The proposed measurement of e-collaboration includes the use and the interest for 18 collaborative tools. It was conducted with a sample of 199 companies for three years. This database processing has enabled the creation of the model. It reveals subgroups hostile or for e-collaboration and under what conditions it is interesting. It provides trends. Thus, the practice of community management begins to be used internally in the management of virtual teams. The sample of large firms also showed that e-collaboration is ahead in an emerging country, Vietnam, compared with France. The research also proposes a Virtual Entities Management Support method, called VEMS. It starts with an analysis of the environment, the definition of a strategy in three dimensions, and then determines the functions of the team or community, the attitudes and its appropriate tools. It offers a choice of 18 functions and 79 attitudes derived from the literature recommendations and enriched with the sample observations. This method has been applied to five virtual entities of different kinds: internal to an industrial manufacturer and a large bank, external to a social network, a community of fans of web series, and another community of fans of cookery. This entities include from 40 up to 160,000 members. For each, a strategy has been defined, with a specific set of attitudes and tools, the starting point of an operational program. Five functions and 22 attitudes are common to all the entities studied, six of which relate to adjacencies. They can be considered as the foundation of virtual management. The method has also been deployed to four brand communities of a sector with low consumer engagement. Four scenarios were deducted, including the participation to an adjacent community, preferable to the creation of a brand community.

A adaptação de novos colaboradores em equipes de desenvolvimento de software é um tópico em crescimento na literatura, tanto para equipes tradicionais, quanto para as equipes virtuais. Sendo assim, o objetivo desse estudo é desenvolver um guia de diretrizes necessárias para se adaptar um novo colaborador em uma equipe virtual. Para atingir o objetivo, um método qualitativo foi usado para coletar dados através de questionários e um total de 22 respondentes de diferentes países contribuíram com a pesquisa. Os respondentes classificaram e sugeriram os métodos mais importantes para a adaptação como: Ferramentas de Comunicação, Treinamento, Definição de Metas, Definição de Processo e Princípios e Definição de um Mentor. Os resultados foram classificados analisados através da ferramenta SPSS da IBM e demostraram uma relação positiva entre mentoria e habilidades técnicas e uma relação negativa entre a cultura da empresa e a hierarquia forte. A principal dificuldade descrita para a adaptação nas equipes virtuais foram as diferenças culturais. Construir uma cultura forte na empresa é importante, mas a cultura de cada pessoa também é relevante para a adaptação em equipes virtuais. Ao final, foram desenvolvidas quatro diretrizes a serem utilizadas como um guia para melhor adaptação de novos colaboradores em uma equipe virtual: a cultura da empresa; as responsabilidades, os processos e os objetivos e a comunicação e as ferramentas de comunicação. / The topic adaptation has grown within the broader team literature and is relevant to virtual teams. Therefore, the objective of this study is to find out how to adapt a new member in a virtual team. To achieve this objective, a qualitative survey research was used to collect data through questionnaires and a total of 22 respondents from different countries contributed to the survey. Respondents ranked and suggested the most important methods for adaptation: Communication Tools, Training, Defining Goals, Defining Process and Principles and Defining a Mentor. The results were analyzed through the SPSS software by IBM, and the findings showed a positive relationship between mentoring and technical skills and a negative relation between strong companies\' culture and strong hierarchy. The main difficulty to virtual teams\' adaptation found was the culture. Building a strong culture in the company is important but each persons\' culture is also relevant for adaptation in virtual teams. Finally, four directives were elaborated as a guide to adapt a new member into a virtual team: company\'s culture; responsibilities, process and goals and communication and communication tools.

La collaboration est de plus en plus distribuée et influencée par les technologies impliquées dans l'espace de travail. Les mondes virtuels 3D (VWs) sont des outils de collaboration riches, interactifs et prometteurs offrant une dimension visuelle plus réaliste dans la représentation de l'environnement de travail et ayant une capacité grandissante de simulation. Grâce aux avatars (représentation des utilisateurs), ils peuvent réinventer la notion de co-présence (le "being together") et de fournir des riches interactions sociales. Plusieurs chercheurs et praticiens sont particulièrement intéressés par le potentiel de ces nouveaux média pour soutenir les pratiques collaboratives. Cependant, la littérature ne fournit pas de réponses satisfaisantes et précises pour les entreprises sur l'impact de l'utilisation de ces technologies sur la performance de l'équipe. Les chercheurs ont étudié quelques facteurs spécifiques qui influent sur la collaboration. Un modèle de recherche contenant des déterminants de trois catégories différentes (technologique, individuelle et collective) influençant la performance de l'équipe n'a jamais été proposé. Cette recherche tente de combler cette lacune et regarde cet effet de plus près. D'un point de vue méthodologique, notre méthodologie est basée sur Framework de la recherche en système d'information de Hevner et ses collègues (2004) combinant la science du comportement et la science de conception. Du côté de la science du comportement, des études qualitatives et quantitatives ont été réalisées. Une étude qualitative vise à explorer la collaboration en équipe dans les mondes virtuels, nous a permis d'identifier une liste de facteurs pertinents qui seront utiles pour réussir les études empiriques. Nous avons conçu deux modèles de recherche contenant des déterminants influençant collaboration de l'équipe. Le premier vise à comparer l'impact de l'utilisation de Skype et de Second Life sur la co-présence, l'absorption cognitive virtuelle et, finalement, la performance d'équipe. La seconde étude est spécifique aux environnements virtuels 3D, elle permet d'étudier l'impact de l'utilisation des VW et la paresse sociale. Ces scénarios sont intégrés dans un jeu sérieux collaboratif. Ce dernier vise à varier différentes situations collaboratives pour apporter une expérience d'apprentissage par la pratique aux utilisateurs. Ce jeu permet d'explorer les spécificités de la collaboration en équipe dans les mondes virtuels 3D. / Collaboration is increasingly distributed and influenced by the technologies involved in the workspace. 3D Virtual worlds (VWs) are rich, highly interactive and promising collaboration tools providing a more realistic visual dimension in representing work environment and a growing capacity of simulation. Thanks to avatars (representation of their users), they may reinvent the notion of co-presence (the being together) and provide rich social interactions. Several researchers and practitioners are particularly interested in the potential of these new media to support collaborative practices. However, the literature does not provide yet satisfactory and accurate response to companies about impacts of these technologies’ use on team performance. Existent researchers studied specific factors influencing collaboration. A research model gathering determinants of three different categories (technological, individual and collective) impacting team performance has never been proposed. This research attempts to address this gap and looks at this effect more closely. From a methodological point of view, our methodology is based on the Hevner’s and colleagues (2004) IS research framework combining behavioral science and design science. From the behavioral science side, qualitative and quantitative studies have been conducted. We report on the impacts of a set of important determinants that influence team performance. This research describes inner IT dynamics distinguishing these new media. It research highlighted determinants that are fostering collaboration such knowledge sharing, knowledge application, cognitive absorption, virtual co-presence, VW technology usage, customization, and object manipulation. Others determinants are found to inhibit collaboration in 3D VWs such as social loafing and density. From a design science side, we designed a serious game focusing on the determinants mentioned above and could be useful to vary collaborative scenarios in the aim to deepen the study of collaboration in 3D VWs and enhance team performance. This game aims at bringing a learning-by-doing experience to explore the specificities of team collaboration in VWs. This research argues that successful collaboration is possible in VWs with the respect of a set of best practices.

The main objective of this thesis is to propose the model of trust based on communication. The objective is to first characterize virtual teams, summarized the theoretical approaches to trust in virtual teams, define the specifics of the communication process in virtual teams and design own model of trust based on communication. The proposed model is achieved on the basis of own research specifically: analysis, synthesis and detailed summary. The summary includes limitations of particular papers and weaknesses of research, what is taken into the consideration for the proposed model. The proposed model is based on the active form of trust that is build on proactive approach of team leader in the first phase of virtual team's life cycle and later on communication strategies through dialogue technique leading to shared mental models. The proposed model describes the process of building trust in first two stages of the virtual team's life cycle together with the implications for the leader: How to build trust in virtual teams through the communication.

The main theme of the research was to investigate associations between levels of job satisfaction in virtual and face-to-face to teams for multiple generations. Using quantitative techniques to test hypotheses, the study found that there are no significant differences between how multiple generations feel about job satisfaction. In addition, there was no evidence to suggest that there is a significant difference in levels of job satisfaction for multiple generations in different work teams. The level of utilisation of technology does not influence the levels of job satisfaction differently for multiple generations. / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2012. / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / unrestricted

Teams of design engineers are increasingly working as members of virtual teams, or teams whose members are distributed geographically and communicate mostly through electronic means. In addition, emerging multi-user (MU) applications engage complementary teams in synchronous design activities. These new MU tools are changing the way engineers work together. Together, these factors have created a new and interesting environment in which engineering design teams must function. The work presented here lays out two major themes that teams and their managers can effectively apply to organizing and managing MU teams: 1) teams can maximize their potential productivity by determining the optimal number of teammates for a given modeling effort and by implementing a profile and team formation system based on the principle of optimizing complementary team member characteristics; and 2) to minimize process losses, teams can implement effective strategies for working in a MU and/or virtual setting and they can use novel new MU tools that address portions of the product development process that have previously not been addressed with such tools. It is my hope that these contributions can enable greater effectiveness and productivity among virtual engineering design teams as they strive to remedy many of the most pressing and dire issues facing humanity. By improving the way we work together, we can increase our ability to bless all of God's children.

Title Communication challenges perceived by leaders of different sized virtual teams, and how they are managed: Experiences from leaders within Swedish organizations Authors Daniella Larsson & Matilda Wahlgren Level Master thesis, 30 credits Key words Virtual teams, Communication challenges, Virtual leadership Background The recent years’ rapid technological development has made it possible to communicate solely through technological channels, and thus enabled organizations to implement virtual teams into their businesses. Virtual teams are allowing organizations to have the most qualified members in their teams, regardless of their geographical location. New ways of working entails for new challenges, not least regarding communication. Awareness of these challenges, and how they can be managed, provide the prerequisites to succeed with the virtual leadership. Research Questions Which communication challenges do leaders, of different sized virtual teams within Swedish organizations, perceive? How do the leaders manage the perceived communication challenges? Purpose The purpose of this study is to describe and understand leaders' perception and management of communication challenges in leading different sized virtual teams within Swedish organizations. Further, the aim is to broaden the academic field of virtual teams by adding valuable contributions to the scarce research. This, by suggesting a developed theoretical framework, based on the experiences from leaders within Swedish organizations. Method The study follows a qualitative research method and abductive approach. Semi-structured interviews with twelve leaders of different sized virtual teams were executed. The chosen organizations are of various industries to retain generalizability. Frame of Reference Four theoretical blocks constitute the frame of reference. The first block is leadership, which includes e-leadership and competencies. The second block is group development theories, with insights from two different approaches. The third grouping, communication, involves theories both regarding conventional and virtual teams. The fourth and final provides insights regarding trust. Findings The findings of this study show that all virtual leaders perceive communication challenges within their leadership. The identified challenges are teambuilding and relationship creation, miscommunication, inclusion, performance follow-ups, communication overload and technology. The findings also reveal that the identified challenges are managed in different ways. Further, some deviances were found, regarding how the leaders perceive and manage these communication challenges, depending on the team’s size.

This study explores how managers perceive the change in their teams’ productivity, as a result of moving from an office-based workspace to a virtual workspace. In the circumstances of the global COVID-19 pandemic, and its resulting restrictions and recommendations, there has been a mass relocation to working virtually from home. To establish if there has been any perceived change in employee productivity, several different factors such as communication, team unity, and trust were compared during two different time-points, before the start of the pandemic and 16 months into the pandemic. This is a hybrid study that makes use of both quantitative and qualitative properties, by first establishing a base of data through a survey, the initial observations were then explored further and to greater insight by interviewing a sample of the managers who took part in the survey.  The findings of the study suggest that the pandemic reflects an overall negative outcome on team productivity as a result of working virtually. The most affected team factors include communication, conflict resolution, and planning. There are however other effects to factors such as team unity and trust that may bear relational consequences. Ultimately, the findings of the current study indicate a generally negative effect on team productivity.

Collaboration has always been critical to the success of new product development teams, and the advent of geographically dispersed teams has significantly altered the way that team members interact. Multi-user computer-aided design (MUCAD) and crowdsourcing are two results of efforts to enable collaboration between geographically dispersed individuals. In this research, a study was done to investigate the differences in performance between MUCAD and single-user CAD teams, in which teams competed to create the best model of a hand drill. This was done across a three-day period to recreate the scenario found in industry. It was found that MUCAD increases awareness of teammates' activities and increases communication between team members. Different sources of frustration for single-user and multi-user teams were identified, as well as differing patterns of modeling style. These findings demonstrate that MUCAD software has significant potential to improve team collaboration and performance. A second study explored a number of potentially significant factors in MUCAD team performance, including leadership, design style, unfamiliar parts, knowledge transfer, individual experience, and team composition. In this study, teams of undergraduate mechanical engineering students worked together to complete tasks using NXConnect, a MUCAD plugin for NX developed at Brigham Young University. A primary finding was that having an appointed leader for a MUCAD team improves performance, in particular when that leader works with the team in creating the CAD model. It was also found that creating a framework to aid in organizing and coordinating the creation of the CAD model may decrease the time required for completion. In the final study, the possibility of using crowdsourcing to complete complex product design tasks was explored. In this study, a process for crowdsourcing complex product design tasks was developed, as well as a website to act as the platform for testing this process. A crowd consisting of engineering and technology students then worked together on the website to design a frisbee tracking device. The crowd was able to collaborate to accomplish some detailed product design tasks, but was not able to develop a complete product. Major findings include the need for more formal leadership and crowd organization, the need for better decision making mechanisms, and the need for a better model for engaging crowd members on a consistent basis. It was also found that crowd members had a greater willingness to pay for the product they developed than individuals who had not worked on the project. Results also show that although crowd members were often frustrated with the collaboration process, they enjoyed being able to work with a large group of people on a complex project.