Me. Warkentin et al., VIRTUAL TEAMS VERSUS FACE-TO-FACE TEAMS - AN EXPLORATORY-STUDY OF A WEB-BASED CONFERENCE SYSTEM, Decision sciences, 28(4), 1997, pp. 975-996
Many organizations are forming ''virtual teams'' of geographically dis
tributed knowledge workers to collaborate on a variety of workplace ta
sks. But how effective are these virtual teams compared to traditional
face-to-face groups? Do they create similar teamwork and is informati
on exchanged as effectively? An exploratory study of a World Wide Web-
based asynchronous computer conference system known as MeetingWeb(TM)
is presented and discussed. It was found that teams using this compute
r-mediated communication system (CMCS) could not outperform traditiona
l (face-to-face) teams under otherwise comparable circumstances, Furth
er, relational links among team members were found to be a significant
contributor to the effectiveness of information exchange. Though virt
ual and face-to-face teams exhibit similar levels of communication eff
ectiveness, face-to-face team members report higher levels of satisfac
tion. Therefore, the paper presents steps that can be taken to improve
the interaction experience of virtual teams. Finally, guidelines for
creating and managing virtual teams are suggested, based on the findin
gs of this research and other authoritative sources.