I have a Google Alert set to "virtual teams," among other topics, which means that I get dozens of emails that are just off-topic. However, in the past few weeks, either Google improved its text mining capability or the field of virtual teams is finally maturing to the point that distinctions are being made where once was but a great mass of confusion...because, of late, I've seen a coupla posts worth noting.
First, this one, which reports on "Virtual vs. face-to-face teams: deadbeats, deserters, and other considerations," a study by Univ of Hawaii's Emmeline de Pillis and Kimberly Furumo. While the full text appears to be locked behind some ACM (Association for Computing Machinery, an otherwise fully reputable org :) firewall that I once was able to traverse, the abstract points to some interesting conclusions. Men "show up" less in virtual teams than women and, guess what, women show up more in face-to-face teams as well. Easy conclusion to draw from their study of 201 subjects but AND THIS IS A VERY IMPORTANT BUT the authors point out that considerably more study needs to be done before anyone should go around slinging these prelim conclusions as THE TRUTH.
I, for one, am very wary of making gender assertions like these as I've seen them alienate people who are otherwise quite happy about participating in any number of activities. That said, here's the abstract. See if you can find a way to download it. If you can, post a comment so others can read the whole thing. NB: the abstract raises other questions that I'll talk about later:
201 participants were randomly assigned to complete an intellective task in either virtual or face-to-face three-person teams. Virtual teams displayed lower average performance, less cohesion and satisfaction, more time spent on the task, and more "deadbeats" or free-riders than face-to-face teams. Among the virtual teams there were also two "deserters," individuals who openly abandoned the group. These findings indicate that virtual work design should only be selected over face-to-face work if cost savings are sufficient to justify the probable reductions in efficiency, morale, and performance.Average grade performance of female participants was 3.9% higher than that of male participants in the virtual teams, but only 0.9% higher than that of male participants in the face-to-face teams. In both conditions, males were more likely to be deadbeats than were females. The highest likelihood of being a deadbeat was among males in the virtual teams: 10.4% of them were reported as deadbeats by both team members. 7.3% of females in virtual teams and 3.6% of males in face-to-face teams were reported as deadbeats by both team members. There were no reports of female deadbeats in the face-to-face teams. Both of the deserters in the study were also males in virtual teams. The greater gap between male and female performance in the virtual teams, together with the incidence of free riding among males in the virtual teams, may indicate that virtual work might be an especially poor fit for the skills or working styles of at least some males.
