VIRTUAL TEAMS VERSUS FACE-TO-FACE TEAMS - AN EXPLORATORY-STUDY OF A WEB-BASED CONFERENCE SYSTEM

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.