Article Preview
TopIntroduction
Computer-supported cooperative work among dispersed individuals in the form of virtual teams has been an organizational reality in the information technology (IT) service provisioning industry for almost two decades (Alfaro & Chadrasekaran, 2015; Balint, 2015; Cater-Steel, 2009; Espinosa, DeLone, & Lee, 2006; Popoli & Popoli, 2009; Sakthivel, 2005; Siakas & Siakas, 2008). Given the global and interorganizational collaboration aspect of provisioning the services required to maintain day-to-day operations of a company’s IT systems, this industry has increasingly leveraged temporary cross-functional virtual work teams whose performance is highly dependent on the relationships developed among the dispersed team members (Alfaro & Chadrasekaran, 2015; Heitlager, Helms, & Brikkemper, 2010; Watanuki & Moraes, 2016).
Despite this trend, researchers are still striving to comprehensively understand the factors that impact the performance of virtual teams (Brown, Prewett, & Grossenbacher, 2020; Clark, Manerwick, & Manerwick, 2019; De Jong, Gillespie, Williamson, & Gill, 2020; Eisenberg, Post, & DiTomaso, 2019; Prasad, DeRosa, & Beyerlein, 2017). Although virtual work can result in many potential benefits, such as increased productivity and flexibility, doubts regarding the performance of virtual teams are common in the literature because being virtual adds challenges to the already complex task of collaborating (Anh, Cruzes, & Conradi, 2012; Colazo & Fang, 2010; Dulebohn & Hoch, 2017). A considerable number of these challenges can be associated with the several discontinuities that these teams face, such as spatial, temporal, cultural, organizational or functional dispersion (Alfaro & Chadrasekaran, 2015; Anh et al., 2012; Brown et al., 2020; Colazo & Fang, 2010; Eisenberg et al., 2019; Espinosa et al., 2006; Espinosa, Nan, & Carmel, 2015; O’Leary & Cummings, 2007; Prasad et al., 2017) and their consequent implications for the socioemotional state of the team, such as trust and cohesiveness (Clark et al., 2019; De Jong et al., 2020; Paul, Drake, & Liang, 2016; Peñarroja, Orengo, Zornoza, & Hernández, 2013). Given the growing popularity of virtual teams in the IT service provisioning industry, this study is motivated by the need for a more comprehensive understanding of the effects of team dispersion on the performance of virtual teams via the team´s socioemotional states.
In an attempt to provide further distinction and understanding of the effect different dimensions of team dispersion might have over the virtual team performance, this study combines findings from previous research about team dispersion (Anh et al., 2012; Chudoba, Wynn, Lu, & Watson-Manheim, 2005; Espinosa et al., 2006; O’Leary & Cummings, 2007; Prasad et al., 2017) and adopts a two-dimensional view of team dispersion along the concepts of team distribution, which encompasses the highly correlated spatial, temporal and cultural dimensions of dispersion; and variety of practices, which encompasses the highly correlated organizational and functional dimensions of dispersion.
In an attempt to provide further distinction and understanding of the effect that different socioemotional states of the virtual team might have on the team´s performance, this study investigates the mediating role of trust and cohesiveness in the relationship between team dispersion and virtual team performance.