Factors contributing to knowledge sharing and communication in a service oriented virtual organization: Group member Role Based Performance

Self-efficacy and effectiveness

Olivia Ernst Neece Peter F. Drucker School of Management Claremont Graduate University 18200 Rosita Street, Tarzana, CA 91356 Phone & Fax: (818) 705-7761 e-mail: olivianeece@earthlink.net

Factors contributing to knowledge sharing, reuse and communication in virtual teams: Team member Role Based Performance Self-efficacy and effectiveness

Abstract This treatise discusses the theory and results of a two-phase case study of one large virtual group at Nortel, Inc. In Phase I, the author developed a process model of virtual teams during the project process that addressed specific issues related to behavioral and technological factors (moderators and resources). In Phase II, these factors were modified into two testable variance models. The first model tested the factors of organizational support, egalitarian structure, team culture & collaboration, peoples capabilities & skills, motivation & rewards and communication processes against the dependent variables of knowledge sharing & reuse, the importance of developing communication tools, and the effectiveness of current communication tools. Findings in Model I included statistically significant relationships between organizational support, egalitarian structure, team culture and communication process and knowledge sharing. There was also a statistically significant relationship between peoples capabilities and communication processes and both the importance and effectiveness of communication tools. The second variance model tested these same factors and added an all communication tool factor and the knowledge sharing & reuse as independent variables. In this model the factors were tested against the dependent variables of the role based performance self-efficacy scale, a self-assessed effectiveness test, and self-assessed creativity. The results of this model had statistically significant relationships between the egalitarian structure and communication process and the Role Based Performance Self-efficacy Scale. Communication process was also positive for effectiveness and creativity of team members. Many of the studys scales were also positively correlated with one another. Future empirical research in this area should involve a larger number of teams and teams from various types of organizations and disciplines. 1. Introduction Global virtual teams are those that are primarily non-collocated, in more than one country and communicate through a variety of collaborative technologies (email, both synchronous and asynchronous white boards, teleconferences, videoconferences, virtual chat-rooms, and web meetings). In addition, there may be some face-toface interaction, although this is often sporadic and the entire group may not meet in a single place simultaneously. Firms have been using virtual team-based structures to reduce costs as well as to share knowledge globally and to unleash innovation and creativity. Our concern here is for the how the firm achieves the goals of knowledge sharing while retaining effectiveness in their completion of task objectives when groups are larger than those of normal team size. Further, it is the goal of this paper to discuss the role based performance self-efficacy of members of virtual group members during the completion of their work duties in relationship to a number of factors that exist within the firm. This paper reviews the literature related to virtual teams, knowledge sharing, communication, and collaborative technologies from the fields of information sciences, technology and innovation, organizational behavior, organizational theory and strategic management. It then reviews the findings of a two-phase case study of one large group of workers at Nortel Inc. While the literature on virtual teams has proliferated, there is little research on these
2

larger hybrid organization types that are termed teams by management, but actually function as large work groups. In this type of organizational form, team members (actually work group members) may work on their own or in pairs in remote offices. Members of virtual work groups may have little or sporadic contact with other members of the group. There is a gap in the research where this type of relationship exists. The goal of this research was to provide a pilot study for research in this field. 2. Literature Review Virtual teams and other lateral networks Cross-functional and cross-domain project and process-oriented teams (Frost, 1996; Galbraith, 1994; Jassawalla &
Sashittal, 1999), designed to encourage coordination and innovation, have become an established part of the structure of

most firms. Some of these groups are permanent parts of the organization, others are organized for specific projects that may be of long or short duration, and still others come together for a fast paced project. Any team or lateral organization network may be co-located or geographically dispersed. As narrowly defined by Townsend and Marie, virtual teams are groups that are geographically and/or organizationally dispersed coworkers that are assembled using a combination of telecommunications and information technologies to accomplish an organizational task. (Townsend
& DeMarie, 1998, p.18). The dispersion may be moderate as in teams that are dispersed in several cities in close

proximity, or it may be more extreme where teams are in several time zones scattered across the globe (Lipnack et al.,
1997; Miles & Snow, 1986). In the most extreme version, team members remain on different continents in different

countries, interact primarily through computer-mediated communication and rarely or never see or speak to one another (Knoll & Jarvenpaa, 1995; O'Hara-Devereaux & Johansen, 1994). Some theorists have broadened the definition of virtual teams to include teams that have some individuals who are co-located. Here, members use a combination of face-to-face interaction in addition to communication via telecommunications links and collaborative technologies
(Duarte & Snyder, 1999). Virtual teams often require fluid membership for group problem solving and decision-making (Grant, 1995). The task may be temporary and/or adaptive to organizational and environmental change (Townsend et al., 1998, p.18). Inter-communal teams encourage synergistic, collective and coherent knowledge development out of

disparate areas of expertise and specialization. This furthers the creation of both organizational know-what as well as organizational know-how (Brown & Duguid, 1998). Dorothy Leonard-Barton points out that embracing cross-

community organization avoids isolation and furthers the prevention of turning core competencies into core rigidities
(Leonard-Barton, 1995).

Due to the importance of virtual teams to highly competitive firms, it is important to consider the complexity that these mobile teams add to the firms governance issues. Teams in general have a myriad of organizational behavioral issues, which may enhance or reduce effectiveness. Trust and leadership are two major issues confronting teams that affect their dynamics (Katzenbach & Smith, 1999; Lipman-Blumen, 1999; Pfeffer, 1994). These more complex governance forms may encounter greater problems during coordination due to mobility and complexity of communication(Dube' & Pare', 2001). Continual building on previous creative work requires an institutionalization of the knowledge transfer, reuse, and integration process as well as development of a repository for the explicit and tacit knowledge developed by these innovators. Knowledge workers must be able to trust the firm, and must be motivated and rewarded to encourage mentoring, documentation, and collaboration (Leonard-Barton & Deschamps, 1988; Szulanski,
2000).

Virtual teams may have problems beyond those of co-located teams due to dependence upon collaborative technology and the establishment of common ground (Grant, 1996; Majchrzak, Rice, Malhotra, King, & Ba, 2000). Although, the use of an emergent and malleable collaborative technology may lead to enhanced communication within the group, (Majchrzak et al., 2000) issues of trust (Jarvenpaa, Knoll, & al, 1998), collaboration and leadership may be magnified due to communication and distance problems (Jassawalla et al., 1999) or governance issues (Duarte et al.,
1999). Further, the organization may have constraints of time and financial resources that inhibit knowledge sharing

and communication (Neece, 2002b).

Moderators and Resources Two types of factors, found in the cross-disciplinary literature on virtual teams, influence the success of the process and the fulfillment of the project objectives. The term moderators is used for the first set of factors, grouped into seven (somewhat overlapping) categories. These factors moderate by directly or indirectly affecting performance. The eighth category, resources, includes both human electronic-based resources. Organizational support and purpose
4

Creative virtual teams work better under conditions of ambiguity and are inherently non-hierarchical
(Katzenbach et al., 1999; Lipman-Blumen, 1999). Innovative teams, in order to develop into what Lipman-Blumen calls

Hot Groups, do not prosper in a hierarchical structure but need support from a corporate patron will shield the group from the hierarchy. In firms with rigid SBU structure, innovative individuals are imprisoned resources since lateral communication is not encouraged. Career path cross-development increases the ability of employees to see these core competencies in a new light. Competence carriers should be regularly brought together from across the corporation to trade notes and ideas. The goal is to build a strong feeling of community among these people. (Prahalad, 1990) Both formal and informal communication structures and teambuilding interventions that improve the ability of team members to transfer, capture, and combine tacit knowledge into new knowledge forms may be a source of sustained competitive advantage (Bresman et al., 1999; Sherman & Lacey, 1999). Nonaka has stated, In most companies, the ultimate test for measuring the value of new knowledge is economicincreased efficiency, lower costs, improved ROI. But in the knowledge-creating company, other more qualitative factors are equally important (Nonaka, 1991). Such factors include the achievement of the firms vision, aspirations and strategic long-term goals. Knowledge hoarding, (creating scarcity) is a cultural phenomenon. Downsizing may artificially cause loss of knowledge by losing knowledge from previously unknown sources. Open meetings allow individuals to "invade" one another's boundaries and offer advice about a new perspective, encouraging knowledge creation, the antithesis of monopolistic thinking
(Nonaka & Takeuchi, 1995).

Egalitarian structure Most theorists have proposed that the structure of a virtual team should be egalitarian in order to provide a more fertile ground for innovative thinking and for open knowledge sharing. Critical competencies required for virtual team leaders including mentoring and coaching, technological skills, encouraging the use of technological tools, networking, building trust, cross-cultural management, career development and development of team process. Team members often take up a spontaneous leadership role at critical junctures in the project (also called shared leadership in the literature). Duarte and Tennant-Snyder suggest, people who lead and work in virtual teams need to have special skills, including an understanding of human dynamics, knowledge of how to manage across functional areas and national cultures, and the ability to use communication technologies as their primary means of communicating and collaborating. (Duarte et al., 1999). Establishment of purpose, values, goals and objectives, setting of policies and
5

procedures and clear distribution of workload enable all team members to understand and work toward the same objective (Katzenbach et al., 1999; Lipman-Blumen, 1999). Senge (1990) stresses the fact that a true commitment to a shared vision will bind people together around common identity and sense of destiny (Senge, 1990). Team culture: trust and collaboration Team culture is highly influenced by the frequency of communication (Cyert & Goodman, 1997) as well as quality of communication. Hoopes, (1999) found that teams that fully integrate and collaborate during the project process were found to be more successful than teams that split the workload and integrated the product later in the cycle. Integration is critical to the success of projects, and often results in a decrease in project completion time
(Hoopes & Postrel, 1999). Integrated problem-solving is also critical for successful process development. (Pisano, 1994)

Trust is an issue that has been found to be of major importance in virtual teams [Gibson, 2002 #1766] [Jarvenpaa, 1998 #1220]. The global virtual-team context eliminates certain forms of social control such as direct supervision, face-to-face contact during meetings, and close proximity for monitoring work progress (Jarvenpaa et al.,
1998). In new organizational structures such as networked organizations and teams, traditional social controls based on

authority are traded for governance based on self-direction and self-control (Miles & Snow, 1992). Trust, under this loose form of governance, will promote open and substantive information exchange, increases the influence of communication, and improves confidence in the relationship (Earley, 1986; Yeager, 1978). Thus, trust can reduce transaction costs in the group interrelationships (Cummings & Bromiley, 1996; Handy, 1995). Pare and Dube (1999) found in interviews with 20 virtual team leaders that early face-to-face meetings were considered essential in building vision, trust and mutual accountability (Pare' & Dube', 1999). However, this early collocation may not always be possible. All organizations are subject to political maneuvering. That is, they are subject to internal conflicts in relationships between people or groups in social or work situations based upon self-interest (Eisenhardt, 1989; Jensen &
Meckling, 1996; Williamson, 1981). Since the introduction of an integrated knowledge management system and

knowledge sharing policies and processes will cause major change for many individuals, it is subject to such conflicts. Individuals will be more easily acculturated through the use of a shared language (common language, interpreters, or coding), a shared experience base, or some shared cultural norms (Clark, 1996; Szulanski, 2000). Time constraints may also complicate communication and cause additional stress due to a limited notion of
6

what is productive work. Some practitioners and academic researchers have suggested setting a time or place for knowledge transfer, knowledge fairs, or chat rooms, to provide inducement to share(Davenport & Prusak, 1998). People: skills and knowledge The second moderator is the combination of skills, expertise, knowledge, diversity, and capabilities of the individual team members (Ghoshal & Bartlett, 1997; Pfeffer, 1994). Virtual teams allow firms to build a structurally flat organization with optimized team membership, selecting from the best people regardless of their geographic location. Access to previously unavailable expertise, enhanced learning, enhanced cross-cultural understanding, increased knowledge transfer, reuse and cross-functional/cross-domain interaction all add to the benefits for the firm (Townsend
et al., 1998).

Motivation and rewards Motivation of team members and the rewards structure that encourages or discourages team performance is a issue that has been the subject of debate since the Hawthorne experiments determined that people might be motivated by attention and recognition (Mayo, 1933). Negative motivation can discourage knowledge transfer and reuse (Hayes &
Clark, 1985; Katz & Allen, 1982; Zaltman, Duncan, & Holbek, 1973). Szulanski, (2000) notes, "Lack of motivation may

result in procrastination, passivity, feigned acceptance, sabotage, or outright rejection in the implementation and use of new knowledge (Szulanski, 2000)". Effort and uncertainty are two major hurtles in locating distant knowledge. Simon and March use the term 'satisficing' to describe the human tendency to settle for the knowledge or information that is adequate, but not ideal, in order to make a decision or for the immediate purpose at hand (March & Simon, 1958). "Localness adds to market inefficiency because it causes people to make do with less than optimal knowledge while a much better 'product' goes unsold or unused. In order to encourage knowledge owners to share, (firms should) evaluate their performance and provide incentives based on knowledge sharing (Davenport et al., 1998)." Studies have shown that the organizational context affects the motivation and the capability of individuals to practice knowledge transfer (Szulanski, 2000). In addition, the values and norms of the group and the organization
(Kostova, 1999) and the directives or incentives (Leonard-Barton et al., 1988) as well as the counseling and support of

management (Attewell, 1992) will either inhibit or encourage knowledge transfer and reuse. The ability to exploit knowledge transfer may be inhibited by the absorptive capacity of the receiver (Cohen & Levinthal, 1990). However, disincentives for reusing knowledge such as rewards for invention and not for reuse or cultural norms such as not
7

invented here may also hinder absorption. The challenges of abandoning past practices in favor of new methods can be significant as show in the innovation literature (Rogers, 1983), the planned organizational change literature (Glaser,
Abelson, & Garrison, 1983) and organizational learning literature (Argote, 1999).

Communication Process The use of collaborative technology cyberspaces for shared resources, digital libraries, access to instrumentation and team communication, has provided a platform for knowledge sharing among virtual team members. Ross-Flanigan (1998) discusses the potential loss of trust that through lack of face-to-face interaction but suggests that the frequency and quality of virtual communication fosters rather than discourages interdisciplinary cooperation. The access to greater quantities of information and a wider cross section of participants allows team members to more easily bridge the gap between theory and experiments (Ross-Flanigan, 1998). With flexible distributed access, team members who have limited time for a project can check in when it is convenient and offer suggestions or modifications. Communication Tools Resources available to each team can be human, electronic, physical (e.g. prototypes, samples), or document related resources and include some combination of data, information, explicit knowledge and tacit knowledge. The availability and ease of locating resources are a critical element of project success. Resources should also contain contextual information for ease of searching (Majchrzak & Beath, 2001; Majchrzak, Neece, & Cooper, 2001). Face to face interaction has been augmented by a variety of technological tools. "Integration of various functional systems provides maximum value when application software is integratedboth within and between enterprises. (Kalakota & Whinston, 1997) Software should enable integration across varied hardware and operating system platforms. Systems can also be adapted to suit the team. For example, Majchrzak (2000) found that one virtual group changed their frequency of use and incrementally adapted an experimental collaborative tool to satisfy the groups needs (Majchrzak et al., 2000). Global access will be required to take full advantage of the resources available. Since one of the main problems with international communication is cultural and language based, the deployment of real-time audio & videoconferencing for development and brainstorming should enhance this interactive communication (Dube' et al., 2001). Knowledge sharing and reuse
8

A wide variety of definitions have been offered for the terms, data, information, and knowledge. Further, distinctions have been made between tacit knowledge (that knowledge that defies simple codification) and explicit knowledge (knowledge that can be readily codified or written down) (Hedlund, 1994; Kogut & Zander, 1992). These definitions are less important here than the concept that all forms of data, information and knowledge should be contextualized, shared, combined, and reused in order to create new knowledge. Creation of new knowledge and innovation is often dependent upon tapping the tacit and often highly subjective insights, intuitions, and hunches of individual employees and making those insights available for testing and use by the company as a whole (Nonaka,
1991).

Knowledge transfer or sharing is the movement of knowledge from one source, the knowledge generator to a knowledge receiver or knowledge reuser either directly through personal contact or through an intermediary. Intermediaries include other persons, environmental resource planning systems (ERPs), knowledge management (KM) systems, other knowledge repositories or databases with search and retrieval capabilities, Centers of Excellence (Moore
& Birkinshaw, 1998), papers, books, seminars, collaborative tools, people such as translators or knowledge brokers,

contracts, plans, business processes and person to person contact by telephone, letters, emails or meetings (Brown et al.,
1998). Knowledge reuse is adapting and synthesizing existing components, technologies, techniques, or procedures for

use by a different person or group of people at a different time or location. It can be conceptualized as a communication problem: how to communicate information veridically between the two domains of the knowledge generator and knowledge reuser. Clark's (Clark, 1996; Clark & Brennan, 1993) theory of language use suggests that veridicality of communication is more likely when both parties to the communication have a "common ground". Common ground can be defined as the beliefs, knowledge and suppositions that the parties believe they share about the joint activity. Common ground can also be conceptualized as the set of shared norms and behaviors, defined as people behaving in ways expected by others (Ouchi, 1980; Tsoukas, 1996). Different communities have varying standards, different ideas of what is significant, different priorities, and divergent evaluating criteria (Brown & Duguid, 1991). For example, Hewlett Packard found that what looks like a best practice in California may not turn out to be the best practice in Singapore (Cole,
1999).

Role Based Performance Scale

9

In order to determine if a particular mode of practice or process is valuable to a firm it is important to assess the effectiveness of the people involved in the organization. In particular, organizations have begun to develop appraisal systems based on competency models. These focus on the skills people need to be effective in their current and future positions (Lawler, 1994). Welbourne, Johnson and Erez (1998) used role theory and identity theory to develop a generalizable measure of performance. Using role theory, they provided an explanation for why work performance should be multidimensional. Their model of work performance included several dimensions based upon identity theory including the roles of: job, career, innovator, team member, and organization citizen. The theory combines individual contributions within an organizational framework. The role-based performance scale (RBPS) assesses and measures these five unique components of behavior, many that are often overlooked in typical corporate performance appraisal instruments (Welbourne, Johnson, & Erez, 1998). In this study, we have utilized this instrument in assessing a small sub-group of the team. I then used the scale to assess the sub-groups self-assessment of effectiveness and process creativity in relationship to eight factors. 3. Methodology This treatise discusses a two-phase study of the virtual team process at Nortel, Inc. In Phase I, I conducted qualitative interviews and detailed case study of one large team, the Talent Acquisition Team, comprised of 340 members in the organization located in both Canada and the United States. In Phase II all members of this team were sent online surveys. The team leader was surveyed separately with additional questions and her results will be triangulated with the results of team members. Virtual team members, in this study of Nortel, Inc. shared a common task that involved more than 50% of their time at work. Some team members were collocated while others were dispersed geographically throughout North America (U.S. and Canada). The teams used a combination of face-to-face interaction along with telecommunications and collaborative technologies, keeping in touch daily or weekly. Nortel Inc. allowed access to the virtual team process including communication, knowledge sharing, motivation and knowledge reuse through the examination of the Talent Acquisition Team and its 40 sub-teams (3-21 members each). Each sub-team was involved in one or more tasks related to talent acquisition, including: university recruitment, Nortel internal and external job websites; internal recruitment; corporate recruiting including locating, interviewing, and/or hiring potential applicants. Some team members were members of more than one sub-team.
10

The Talent Acquisition Team sponsor provided a set of informants from varying levels of the organization and various locations in the U.S. and Canada, on a random basis. This method of selection can be problematic in that management could pre-select those individuals who shared a certain bias, or those individuals whose time was less important. However, the interviewer found that the informants were at varying levels including the team sponsor, the functional leader of the team, leaders of sub-teams and basic team members. All informants appeared to be very open during the questioning and some were openly critical of current processes. Therefore, it appeared that these preselection biases were not factors in the selection. Informants were contacted and interviewed by a single interviewer by telephone or face-to-face. The single interviewer prevented inter-rater reliability problems. Interviewees were diverse in terms of their tenure at Nortel, gender, job descriptions and their level of leadership in the firm. Although there are many similarities between Canada and the United States, there are also many differences. While our languages are similar, there were inherent divergence between the cultures of members of the team based in culturally conservative parts of Canada and some less conservative areas of the United States. From anecdotal evidence, there were more similarities between Toronto team members and North-East U.S. personnel than between Toronto and Texas, for example. According to some participants, the more spirited and less restrained personalities of Southern and Texas-based American personnel was different than the culture of the more conservative Ottawa and Toronto-based Canadians and caused some friction in both directions. Further, Canadian personnel were particularly sensitive over the differences in culture, economic and political perspectives between our two nations. In addition, time changes and spatial distances for West-coast personnel (although only 3 hours and 3000 miles) seemed to be troublesome in some cases. Although certainly not as extreme as those time and distance issues discussed by Sarker and Sahay (1999), (Sarker & Sahay, 2002) these issues still need to be addressed in any virtual team processes. Phase I In Phase I, the interviewer had a list of set questions for both telephone and on-site face-to-face interviews. In addition an open-ended interview protocol was used to elicit further comments from each interviewee. This involved follow up questions relating to comments made by the participant. This protocol was piloted with an employee of Nortel Networks who was not a member of this team. The protocol first defined virtual teams and knowledge sharing for the interviewee and discussed the reason for and focus of the interview. Questions included the formal and informal structure of the team, communication methods and frequency, motivation for team participation, incentives
11

and disincentives, trust, collaboration, team environment, and the challenges of working on a virtual team. The participant was asked about the ways in which the team was most effective and least effective in reaching its goals and/or the goals of the firm. (Interview protocol is available on request). The interviewer fielded twenty interviews of sixteen participants, each lasting for one hour to two hours. These resulted in 102 pages of typed verbatim notes taken by the interviewer. Notes from all interviews were organized by each question. The researcher assembled several tables to identify patterns across the interviews and coded these answers. While the researcher was familiar with the literature review discussed at the beginning of the paper, the intention here was to identify factors that were derived from the interview notes, rather than impose factors from the literature. This grounded theory approach (Glaser & Strauss, 1967) assisted in identification of factors that affect the virtual team process. This methodology has been used successfully in the identification of factors that may not be apparent from previous research (Yin, 1994). By using this method, factors from the literature review were combined with new insights into the virtual team process from the interview results The following ten categories of factors were identified and included in a Virtual Team Process Model (Exhibit 1): 1) Organizational support and purpose, 2) Skills, expertise & capability, 3) Diversity, 4) Team culture of trust & collaboration 5) Egalitarian social network, 6) Knowledge sharing and communication, 7) Motivation and rewards, and 8) Importance of Communication tools (including electronic technologies and non-electronic communication), 9) Effectiveness of communication tools, 10) Frequency of use of communication tools. This process model was used to develop the questionnaire used in Phase II. Phase II Questionnaire In Phase II, each member of the Talent Acquisition group (340 members including those who had just been hired) was sent an email by the group leader requesting cooperation with of respondents with the researcher and providing a link to a 115 item web-based survey that was returned to an unbiased third party vendor. Follow up emails were sent twice as reminders from the group leader. The response rate for questions 1-87 and 102-115 was 40.3%. Due to a random technical problem with Netscape, not all of the respondents received the entire Role Based Performance Scale and questions 88-101 were omitted for most participants. Thus, only 53 respondents, 15.6% of the population, assessed their own effectiveness, creativity and general RBPS productivity using the Role Based Performance Scale (Welbourne et al., 1998). However, this problem was random. Therefore, we analyzed this
12

information and report here the small sample it represents. The data will be used to assist in developing theory for future testing. Scale Construction Scales were developed to analyze the variables included in the model. In analyzing the data, principal components analysis (factor analysis) was used to identify variables that do not correlate well with other variables on the same metric. Questions with factor loadings of magnitude 0.40 or greater were included in the metric. In only a few cases was more than one question eliminated from the metric. Notably however, the metric Frequency of Communication Tools had three questions that did not load well on a single factor; a single factor can only account for 27% of the variability in the data. Examinations of a two-factor solution indicate that the questions with low loadings can be considered a separate construct; two factors account for 48% of the variability. Due to this fact, Frequency of Communication Tools was eliminated from the model and this factor was only included in the all communication tools metric. Metrics were constructed by adding response choices together for each item with factor loadings with magnitudes greater than 0.40. Chronbachs Alpha was calculated for each metric. Descriptive statistics for each scale including the reliability estimate (Chronbachs Alpha), which represents the lower bound on the reliability of each metric, are included in Table 1. Pearson correlations were then calculated for each of the resulting metrics. Correlations can be seen in Table 2. 4. Results Virtual Teams Process Model I first discuss the qualitative findings from Phase I (Neece, 2002a), including the results of the in-depth case study. From the literature and team member interviews, the researcher developed a framework for studying virtual teams, based upon the process of a team project. In this framework, I examined the seven moderators of virtual team behavior and the use of resources by this virtual team. The Virtual Teams Process Model (Exhibit 1) may be useful for studying diverse types of virtual teams, organized for either long-term or short-term projects. The teams may be involved in a variety of projects including product innovation, process innovation, functional departmental projects, operational issues, and strategic development or implementation. It is for this reason that the generalized term project process was used, rather than an explicit stepwise progression. The project process has been addressed in a variety of contexts and industries and models have been developed for a variety of organizational forms that lead to theories of
13

optimal project process. For example, Sanchez and Mahoney (1996) present a modular model of product design where coordination is embedded into programmed innovation in an attempt to create the information structures of fully specified and standardized component interfaces in a modular product architecture (Sanchez & Mahoney, 1996). Pisano (1994) explores the replication of new routines in projects designed to improve process development (Pisano, 1994). There is a need for a more general project process framework for firms to compare the process of teams involved in a variety of activities within the organization. While many of the segments of this model may seem familiar, what is new is the combination of a multi-disciplinary approach to these model elements. They are important not only in an information science framework but also from the standpoint of organizational behavior, strategic management, organizational structure, productivity and innovation as well as other literatures. The model should provide understanding of the multi-disciplinary affects of various process elements, moderators and resources on team performance. The Virtual Teams Process Model (Exhibit 1) is such a framework. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Insert Exhibit 1 About Here -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------There are three states in the model. The first state is the inception of the project or the team development, during which the project objectives are determined. This process may take place at varying levels of the organization depending upon the project purpose. In a product development process, the objectives may arise from customer requests or a perceived void in a product line. In some organizations, such as 3M, objectives may be introduced by anyone in the firm. In a government or commercially related bidding process the project may develop to answer an announcement of opportunity (AO) or request for proposal (RFP). In a functional team, such as the Talent Acquisition Team at Nortel, Inc. the purpose may arise from administrative or strategic objectives. The second state includes the actual process elements carried out by the team. This state includes a loop back toward establishment of project objectives, as these may need to be re-addressed at any stage of the process. In addition, there is a feedback loop from the achievement of the objectives. The final state is the fulfillment of the project objectives. This state also has a feedback loop during which qualitative and quantitative analysis of team success in the fulfillment of project objectives should be communicated and discussed between the organizational actors including managers, team leader(s) and team members. In addition, team members should review their team process in order to improve team function in the future. This review allows team process to improve.
14

Variance Models Based on analysis of the interview data and the literature survey, the researcher was able to develop two variance models for a modified set of moderators and resources. The first variance model assists in identifying those factors that affect the following dependent variables: 1) Knowledge sharing and reuse, 2) The importance of developing communication tools, and 3) The effectiveness of existing communication tools. The factors include: Organizational support and purpose; Egalitarian structure; Team culture, trust, collaboration and relationships; People, skills, expertise & capabilities; Motivation and rewards; and Communication process (See Exhibit II). -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Insert Exhibit II About Here -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------In the second variance model, a different set of dependent variables included: 1) The High Role Based Performance Self-Efficacy Scale (RBPS); 2) Team effectiveness (a subset of RBPS) and 3) Team Creativity (a subset of RBPS). These were also tested with Knowledge sharing and reuse and an All Communications tools variable added as Independent variables. In the following section, I will discuss both the empirical results as well as a few of the participant comments regarding each of these issues. These interview discussions provide a richness of perspective that data alone cannot provide. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Insert Exhibit III About Here -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Knowledge sharing This scale had an inter-item reliability of .7683. Empirical results for Knowledge sharing and Reuse found all other scales to be correlated with this scale. In examining Knowledge Sharing as a dependent variable in Variance Model 1, regression results found statistically significant relationships at the .05 level between Knowledge sharing and Team Culture, Egalitarian Structure, and Communication Process and at the .10 level with Organizational Support. The R Square for this model was .5099. Knowledge sharing was not found to be statistically significant in relation to the RBPS, Effectiveness or Creativity. Knowledge sharing and communication skills are enabled through skill development, education and training. In addition the culture of sharing should be supported at all levels of the organization. In knowledge markets there are knowledge sellers (also known as the experts), and knowledge buyers. Three factors cause knowledge markets to operate inefficiently (Davenport et al., 1998). One factor is the incompleteness of information and guides for both
15

buyers and sellers, including explicit information about price structure. A project manager mentioned, (One team member) was to divide up his workload, but for a month he had not shared his knowledge and workload with (a second team member). A second factor is the asymmetry of knowledge, abundant knowledge in one department and a shortage somewhere else. Knowledge feasts and famines have more to do with information patterns and distribution systems rather than absolute scarcity as discussed by the team sponsor, There is not enough knowledge sharingThe fact that we are a virtual team (and are located) all over the world has its downside. The third factor is the localness of knowledge. In fact, due to lack of trust, face-to-face interaction is often the best way to procure knowledge. Reliable information about more distant knowledge sources is often unavailable. A participant discussed this problem, (Only about) fifty percent of the people share information with others. Maybe it is because they have never met face-to-face. There are several pathologies, which explain non-optimal behavior regarding knowledge transfer. The first of this is a knowledge monopoly (knowledge hoarding). Among those interviewed, knowledge hoarding was rarely mentioned. In fact one team member mentioned, I dont see anyone keeping resumes to themselves. Trade barriers in the knowledge market may be caused by unwillingness to accept knowledge from outside sources (not invented here). An organization may lack knowledge transfer infrastructure, effective market mechanisms, or there may be a perception of inadequate quality of available information. One interviewee commented, Some of the ideas some people have are not that good. So it would depend upon who told me the idea, or how much thought had gone into the idea that was presented to me. Communication Tools The All Communication tools scale had an inter-item reliability of .8686, importance of communication tools, .6401, and effectiveness of communication tools .6879. Empirical results yielded some difficulty with the subcategory of frequency of use of communication tools due to some problems with individual questions failing to meet the requirements of factor analysis, even after splitting the category in two. Therefore, we chose to drop this separate category and included the remaining questions in the all communication tools category used in Model 2. In general, these three scales were positively correlated with all other scales. In the Model 1 regression, People: Skills and

16

Capabilities and Communication Processes both were statistically significant in relationship to both the Importance and the Effectiveness of Communication, with corresponding R Squares of .2498 and .2537. At Nortel, a combination of electronic, human, physical, and document-related resources are available to team members. These resources may contain data, information, explicit knowledge or tacit knowledge or a combination of any of these. Human resources quality and quantity seemed to vary from group to group. Keeping up with high quality personnel needs is difficult with the high growth planned by Nortel, Inc. Some individuals complained that there was insufficient manpower to drive the Talent Acquisition process, Where you are hiring 10,000 people in one year, we may have had a lot of little leaks, but then you turn up the volume and you really see where the leaks are. Other individuals were pleased with the available resources, As far as the resources I have, I have expert contributors. I have someone who is assigned to me in talent marketingsomeone in competitive intelligencesomeone from talent acquisition. Its a pretty cool infrastructure. You haveeverything you need in a recruiting organization. If you looked at all of the elements you need, weve pretty much got it. Extensive use of email and voice mail for interaction was found among all personnel, especially those who were not collocated. However, email saturation was a common complaint. Weekly teleconferences are popular. However, difficulty in getting everyone to join the call was cited as the biggest hurdle. Visual information is sent via email prior to the call to enhance communication. It was interesting that none of the interviewees mentioned collaborative technologies such as virtual white boards for real time visual access during discussions. These technologies can be used in real time or asynchronously and are more collaborative than emails. Also, considering that this is a high technology firm, it was surprising that only the team sponsor used videoconferences. Desktop video capability is not provided. The problem may be the lack of facilities and/or quality of the technology. One manager mentioned quality, I have participated in videoconferences. Its not a refined technology. In fact, it can almost impede communication. If you get there and cannot connect, you have to improvise. I would not give it a glowing recommendation just yet. We dont make the video-conference systems, we make the infrastructure it travels on. The lack of immediate response and visual impressions were two problems cited in relation to virtual communication. Travel for face-to-face meetings may assist remotely located employees in feeling more connected. One project manager in Canada noted that some off site group members felt that they were out of the loop. Disenfranchisement of solitary home-based workers in remote locations was found to be a problem with certain team
17

members. We do have a new employee who wants to come up here every week from Orlando, Florida. Role Based Performance Self-Efficacy Scale, Effectiveness and Creativity The Role Based Performance Self-Efficacy Scale is a highly tested measure of performance in four major roles: job, career, innovator, team member, and organization citizen(Welbourne et al., 1998). The theory combines individual contributions within an organizational framework. As previously discussed, a random problem with the online software caused most of the respondents to fail to receive most of the RBPS. Unfortunately we cannot know how many individuals actually received this section, only that 15.6% answered any questions on this page. This scale has an inter-question reliability of .9155. The sub-sets of Team Effectiveness and Creativity have reliabilities of .8224 and .8697 accordingly. The RBPS correlated with the scales of Organizational Support, Egalitarian Structure, Team Culture, Motivation and Rewards, and Communication Process. Findings in the regression were statistically significant for Communication Process and Egalitarian Structure at the .10 level. Findings in the regression for the sub-sets of Effectiveness and Creativity were statistically significant at the .05 level for Communication Process only. The Team Leader was asked to assess the effectiveness of the entire group on a five point Likert Scale from 1 strongly disagree to 5 strongly agree. Her assessment of the group effectiveness is as follows: 3.47= The group is working hard enough to get the task done well, on time and within the budget. 3.40 = Members have the diverse expertise required to accomplish the task 3.33 = Members use their knowledge efficiently 4.20 = The task requires members to use a variety of high-level skills. 4.73 = The group task has meaningful and visible outcomes. 3.93 = The group has autonomy in deciding how the work is done 3.07 = The group gets regular feedback on how well the group is performing 2.93 = The has developed an approach to the work that if fully appropriate for the task 2.80 = Assess how well the group is implementing the strategy that you have planned for the group Average effectiveness score 3.54 Team members scored themselves quite high on the RBPS (Table 1) at 82.4082 with an average score of 4.15 per item. On the Effectiveness scale the mean was 20.25 on a 5-item scale for an average score of 4.05. They scored themselves similarly on the creativity scale with an average score of 4.02. What is interesting here is that the group leader scored them very high on meaningful and visible outcomes, which is the measure that may mean the most to team members, and scored them low on appropriate approach to the work and strategic implementation, concepts that they may not understand or fully grasp. Organizational Support and purpose
18

The organization needs to provide special support for virtual teams. Such support includes the perception of equal opportunities, adequate technological and physical infrastructure and support for virtual functionality. Nortel, Inc. provides excellent technological support for virtual teams and extensive access to electronic and telephonic means of interaction. The corporation has accepted telecommuting and remote intranet access by many employees. One project manager commented, I feel strongly that virtual teams work and enjoy working for this company because it is accepted by the company. It is a definite advantage. It allows us to open up the diversity and incorporate other people rather than forcing them to show up on site every day. The same project manager was also concerned about the tendency for the firm to outsource non-core services and to automatically lay off the bottom 10% of employees. There is an inkling in the back of my head that some day I will be outsourced and laid off. It is fourth quarter and people are being laid off (in accordance with the) talent segmentation process, doing away with the bottom 10%. I agree with this but it is disheartening Leadership issues include the establishment of purpose, communication of values, coordination and development of an enabling culture. The team sponsor discussed the team purpose, The main mission of the group is to get the right talent in the company at the right time and put them in the right place. Each group has a talent planwhat vehicles we use to attract the talent, how do you get them interviewed, hired and embedded as a Nortel employee? The timing of the study was difficult for many team members. Several had just been told that there would be a new team sponsor of the Talent Acquisition Team and the group was undergoing a reorganization. Since the study completion, the entire team has now disbanded. While most interviewees seem to take leadership and job changes in stride, one participant discussed the disruptive nature of this particular change, (The team sponsor) moving to another group was pretty shocking without any notice(there are) a lot of changes going on and there is no communication. Team culture: trust, collaboration, and relationships Cultural issues such as encouraging trust, collaboration vs. competition, developing working relationships and team spirit all contribute to team effectiveness. The challenges of virtual teams was discussed by one team leader, You have to work smarter to make a virtual team work well. If you take people working in different time zones and then you take some of the challenges and magnify these, time zones and cultural differences, you understand how challenging coordination is. While Nortel supports a virtual team culture, project managers noted that some people are less capable of producing while off site. One project manager discussed this,
19

Most of the people are dependable and do a good job, but it takes a special person that can handle being on their own in another location. There were individual differences in capabilities for collaboration rather than competitive behavior as was noted by the following comments by two participants in different sub-teams. (One team member) looks at the other recruiters as being his competition. But the other folks are more collaborative potential leaders are more collaborative. (However) the majority of recruiters are highly competitiveWhen they come into this collaborative environment it is a complete shock. People will discuss who can be trusted. (The) team was not perfect because of this. They (recruiters) are used to being paid on volume and commission and they are competitive and do not help each other out. That has had an impact on our team. People: skills, expertise & capabilities Essential factors concerning people are developing or acquiring team members with the appropriate skills, expertise, and capabilities. It is also important to deal sensitively with diversity (age, gender, national origin, ethnicity, culture, location) and personality issues. Nortel Inc. uses the Talent Acquisition Team for finding qualified and creative employees, but the team itself also searches for their own qualified employees. Individuals found that the participatory nature and friendships with other people were important enablers. One participant commented, Doing a job well, feeling I contribute by maximizing quality and quantity of hires. Self-actualization, learning more as I am doing it. Competing with myself a customer focused approach. Friendships are a big part. The quality of work done by individuals from outsourced firms, was seen as a problem by several team members, The most frustrating (part) is that once an offer is made, the drafting of the documents is done by another group and the mistakes that happened generated frustrationsa lot of time was spent putting out fires. Several sub-team leaders and managers discussed challenges evinced by the flatter more virtual organization: You are having to affect other people even though they do not report to you. But it requires even better relationship building skills. Team members should be selected for both depth of knowledge resources and contacts and breadth of knowledge resources and networks. Nowhere is this more evident and critical than in talent acquisition. Coff (1999) mentions that the development of extensive internal networks should enhance the firm's capabilities (Coff, 1999). The frequent job rotation at Nortel Inc. appears to create a greater number of weak ties in the organization, as confirmed by interviewees who often mentioned that Nortel hired many independent recruiters who had a larger variety of contacts. Motivation and Rewards

20

Organizations and teams should reward sharing, group rewards enable collaboration while pay for performance and individual rewards encourage hoarding and monopolies. Among the recruiters there seems to be an internal conflict between organizational motivation (extrinsic rewards) and psychic rewards (intrinsic motivation). One recruiter mentions both, There is a contradiction between what was desirable and what was stated. This was regardless of the objective criteria. (Rewards are) both volume-based (and for) thinking outside the box and being customer driven. In spite of this, people want to be number one and have as many hires as possible. Some enjoy the adrenaline. The problem stems from the basic corporate financial reward structure as the team sponsor concludes, There is quite a bit of competition among the groups. The Nortel structure rewards individuals, not team efforts. I came in brand newthere was a lot of competition for them to prove themselves to me. We have these silos, since we reward the individual approach. 5. CONCLUSION & FURTHER STUDY

In conclusion, this study has been limited as it is a case study of only one firm and sub-teams involved in only one functional area of the firm. During this study I found empirical and qualitative evidence to support in a limited way many of the moderators and resources in the empirical model. However, there is evidence to support further interest additional study of both the Virtual Team Process Model and Variance Model 1 and Variance Model 2. Case studies as well as empirical studies are required in a variety of organizations, in other functional and operational areas and in various domains. During such studies, we may find additional moderators of virtual team process or differences in how these moderators affect different types of firms or functions within firms. In particular, it will be of import to delve further into the relationship between the moderators of behavior and the Role Based Performance Self-Efficacy Scale and other types of Effectiveness instruments. It is valuable, however, to consider this multi-dimensional and multi-disciplinary view of the virtual team process and to urge firms to consider these views during team development and organizational strategic planning. In the dynamic framework of change, the dissemination and utilization of knowledge, and the enhancement of capabilities of the virtual team process will be the major driver of innovation and value creation.

21

REFERENCES Argote, L. 1999. Organizational learning: Creating, retaining, and transferring knowledge. Norwell, MA: Kluwer. Attewell. 1992. Technology diffusion and organizational learning: The case of business computing. Organization Science, 3(1): 1-19. Bettis, R. A. & Hitt, M. A. 1995. The new competitive landscape. Strategic Management Journal, 16(Summer). Bresman, H., Birkinshaw, J., & Nobel, R. 1999. Knowledge Transfer In International Acquisitions. Journal of International Business Studies, 30(3): 439-462. Brown, J. S. & Duguid, P. 1991. Organizational Learning and Communities of Practice: Towards a Unified View of Working, Learning, and Innovation. Organization Science, 2: 40-57. Brown, J. S. & Duguid, P. 1998. Organizing Knowledge. California Management Review, 40(3): 90-111. Clark, H. & Brennan, S. 1993. Grounding in communication. In Groupware and computer-supported cooperative work. In R. M. Baecker (Ed.). San Francisco, California: Morgan Kaufmann. Clark, H. 1996. Using Language. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Coff, R. 1999. Who reaps the gains from social capital? Appropriating Rent from Dynamic Capabilities. Paper presented at the Academy of Management Meeting, Chicago. Cohen, W. & Levinthal, D. 1990. Absorptive capacity: A new perspective on learning and innovation. Administrative Science Quarterly, 35(1): 128-152. Cole, R. E. 1999. Managing quality fads: How American business learned to play the quality game. New York, N.Y.: Oxford University Press. Cummings, L. L. & Bromiley, P. 1996. The organizational trust inventory (OTI): development and validation. In R. M. Kramer & T. R. Tyler (Eds.), Trust in Organizations: Frontiers of theory and research: 302-330. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, Inc. Cyert, R. M. & Goodman, P. S. 1997. Creating Effective University-Industry Allliances: An Organizational Learning Perspective. Organizational Dynamics, 1997(Spring): 45-57. D'Aveni, R., A. 1994. Hypercompetition: Managing the Dynamics of Strategic Maneuvering. New York: The Free Press. Davenport, T. H. & Prusak, L. 1998. Working Knowledge: How Organizations Manage What They Know. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press. Duarte, D. L. & Snyder, N. T. 1999. Mastering Virtual TeamsStrategies, Tools, and Techniques that Succeed. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Dube', L. & Pare', G. 2001. Global Application of Collaborative Technology in Collaborative Teams. Communications of the ACM, 44(12). Earley, P. C. 1986. Trust, perceived importance of praise and criticism, and work performance: an examination of feedback in the United States and England. Journal of Management, 12(4): 457-473. Eisenhardt, K. M. 1989. Agency theory: An assessment and review. Academy of Management Review, 14: 57-74. El Sawy, O. A., Malhnotra, A., Gosain, S., & Young, K. M. 1999. IT-Intensive Value Innovation in the Electronic Economy: Insights from Marshall Industries. MIS Quarterly, 23(3 September): 305-335. Frost, C. F. 1996. Changing Forever: The Well-Kept Secret of America's Leading Companies. East Lansing, Michigan: Michigan State University Press. Galbraith, J. R. 1994. Competing with Flexible Lateral Organizations (2nd. ed.). Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley. Ghoshal, S. & Bartlett, C. A. 1997. The Individualized Corporation: A Fundamentally New Approach to Management (1 ed.). New York: HarperCollins. Glaser, B., G. & Strauss, A., L. 1967. The Discovery of Grounded Theory; Strategies for Qualitative Research. Hawthorne, NY: Aldine De Gruyter. Glaser, E. M., Abelson, H. H., & Garrison, K. N. 1983. Putting knowledge to use. San Francisco: Josey-Bass. Grant, A., W.H. 1995. Realizing Your Company's Full Profit Potential. Harvard Business Review(September-October
22

1995). Grant, R. M. 1996. Toward a Knowledge-Based Theory of the Firm. Strategic Management Journal, 17: 109-122. Hamel, G. & Prahalad, K. C. 1994. Competing For TheFuture. Boston MA: Harvard Business School Press. Handy, C. 1995. Trust and the virtual organization. Harvard Business Review, 73(3 May-June): 40-50. Hayes, R. H. & Clark, K. B. 1985. Exploring productivity differences at the factory level. New York: Wiley. Hedlund, C. 1994. A model of knowledge management and the N-form corporation. Strategic Management Journal, 15: 73-90. Hoopes, D. G. & Postrel, S. 1999. Shared knowledge, "glitches," and product development performance. Strategic Management Journal, 20: 837-865. Jarvenpaa, S. L., Knoll, K., & al, e. 1998. Is anybody out there? Antecedents of trust in global virtual teams. Journal of Management Information Systems, 14(4): 29-65. Jassawalla, A. R. & Sashittal, H. C. 1999. Building collaborative cross-functional new product teams. Academy of Management Executive, 13(3): 50-63. Jensen, M. C. & Meckling, W. H. 1996. Theory of the Firm: Managerial Behavior, Agency Costs and Ownership Structure. In J. M. Shriftz & J. S. Ott (Eds.), Classics of Organization Theory, 4th ed. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth. Kalakota, R. & Whinston, A. B. 1997. Electronic Commerce, A Manager's Guide. Reading, MA; Harlow, England, Menlo Park, CA et al: Addison-Wesley Longman, Inc. Katz, R. & Allen, T. J. 1982. Investigating the Not Invented Here (NIH) Syndrome: A look at the performance, tenure and communication patterns of 50 R & D project groups. R & D Management, 12(1): 7-19. Katzenbach, J. R. & Smith, D. K. 1999. The wisdom of teams: creating the high-performance organization. New York: HarperCollins. Kim, W. C. & Mauborgne, R. 1997. Value Innovation: The strategic logic of high growth. Harvard Business Review, 75(1, Jan-Feb): 103-112. Knoll, K. & Jarvenpaa, S. L. 1995. Learning virtual team collaboration. Paper presented at the Hawaii International Conference on Systems Sciences Proceedings. Kogut, B. & Zander, U. 1992. Knowledge of the firm, combinative capabilities, and the replication of technology. Organization Science, 3: 383-397. Kostova, T. 1999. Transnational transfer of strategic organizational practices: A contextual perspective. Academy of Management Review, 24(2): 308-324. Lawler, E. E., III. 1994. From Job-Based to Competency-Based Organizations. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 15(1): 3-15. Leonard-Barton, D. & Deschamps, I. 1988. Managerial influence in the implementation of new technology. Management Science, 34(10): 1252-1265. Leonard-Barton, D. 1995. Wellsprings of Knowledge: Building and Sustaining the Sources of Innovation. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business School Press. Lipman-Blumen, J. 1999. Hot Groups. New York: Oxford University Press. Lipnack, J. & Stamps, J. 1997. Virtual Teams: Reaching across Space, Time and Organizations with Technology. New York: John Wiley. Majchrzak, A., Rice, R. E., Malhotra, A., King, N., & Ba, S. 2000. Computer-mediated inter organizational knowledge-sharing: Insights from a virtual team innovating using a collaborative tool. Information Resources Management Journal, 13(1): 44-59. Majchrzak, A. & Beath, C. 2001. Beyond user participation: A process model of learning and negotiation during system development. In A. Segars & J. Sampler & R. Zmud (Eds.), Redefining the Organizational Roles of Information Technology in the Information Age: University of Minnesota Press. Majchrzak, A., Neece, O. E., & Cooper, L. P. 2001. Knowledge Reuse for Innovation - The Missing Focus in Knowledge Management: Results of a case analysis at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Paper presented at the Conference Paper: Academy of Management 2001, Washington, D.C.
23

March, J. G. & Simon, H. A. 1958. Organizations. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Mayo, E. 1933. The human problems of an industrial civilization. Boston, MA: Harvard University Graduate School of Business Administration. Miles, R. E. & Snow, C. C. 1986. Organizations: new concepts for new forms. California Management Review, 18(3 Spring): 62-73. Miles, R. E. & Snow, C. C. 1992. Causes of failures in network organizations. California Management Review, Summer: 53-72. Moore, K. & Birkinshaw, J. 1998. Managing knowledge in global service firms: Centers of Excellence. Academy of Management Executive, 12(4): 81-92. Neece, O. E. 2001. Virtual team process at Nortel, Inc.: Moderators and resources enabling effective team interaction. Paper presented at the Western Academy of Management, Santa Fe, New Mexico. Neece, O. E. 2002a. Moderators and resources enabling effective virtual team communication: A case study at Nortel Inc. Paper presented at the Americas Conference on Information Systems, Dallas, Texas. Neece, O. E. 2002b. A strategic systems perspective of organizational learning: Development of a process model linking theory and practice. In E. Szewczak & C. Snodgrass (Eds.), Managing the Human Side of Information Technology. Hershey, PA: Idea Group. Nonaka, I. 1991. The Knowledge-Creating Company. Harvard Business Review(November-December). Nonaka, I. & Takeuchi, H. 1995. The Knowledge-Creating Company. New York: Oxford University Press. Nortel. 1999. Nortel Networks Annual Report: 101. Brampton, Ontario, Canada: Nortel Networks, Inc. O'Hara-Devereaux, M. & Johansen, B. 1994. Global Work: Bridgning Distance, Culture, and Time. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Ouchi, W. G. 1980. Markets, bureaucracies, and clans. Administrative Science Quarterly, 25: 129-141. Pare', G. & Dube', L. 1999. Virtual Teams. Paper presented at the Proceedings of the 20th International Conference on Information Sciences. Pfeffer, J. 1994. Competitive Advantage Through People; Unleashing the Power of the Work Force. Boston: Harvard Business School Press. Pisano, G. P. 1994. Knowledge, integration, and the locus of learning: An empirical analysis of process development. Strategic Management Journal, 15: 85-100. Prahalad, C. K. a. G. H. 1990. The Core Competence of the Corporation. Harvard Business Review, 90 No 3(May June): 79 - 91. Rogers, E. 1983. The diffusion of innovation (3rd. ed.). New York: Free Press. Ross-Flanigan, N. 1998. The virtues (and vices) of virtual colleagues. Technology Review, 101(2 , Mar/Apr): 52-59. Sanchez, R. & Mahoney, J. T. 1996. Modularity, flexibility, and knowledge management in product and organization design. Strategic Management Journal, 17(Winter): 63-76. Sarker, S. & Sahay, S. 2002. Information systems development by US-Norwegian virtual teams: Implications of time and space. Paper presented at the Proceedings of the 35th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, Honolulu, Hawaii. Senge, P. M. 1990. The Leader's New Work: Building Learning Organizations. Sloan Management Review, 32(Fall, No. 1): 7-23. Sherman, W. S. & Lacey, M. Y. 1999. The Role of Tacit Knowledge in the Team Building Process: Explanations and Interventions. Paper presented at the Academy of Management Meeting, Chicago. Szulanski, G. 2000. The Process of Knowledge Transfer: A Diachronic Analysis of Stickiness. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 82(1, May): 9-27. Townsend, A. & DeMarie, S. 1998. Virtual Teams: Technology and the Workplace of the Future. Academy of Management Executive, 12(3): 7-29. Tsoukas, H. 1996. The firm as a distributed knowledge system: A constructionist approach. Strategic Management
24

Journal, 17(Winter): 11-25. Welbourne, T., Johnson, D. E., & Erez, A. 1998. The Role-Based Performance Scale: Validity Analysis of a TheoryBased Measure. Academy of Management Journal, 41(5): 540-555. Williamson, O. 1981. The economics of organization; the transactions-cost approach. American Journal of Sociology, 87(548-577). Yeager, S. J. 1978. Measurement of independent variables which affect communication: a replication of Roberts and O'Reilly. Psychological Reports: 1320-1324. Yin, R., K. 1994. Case Study Research; Design and Methods. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications. Zaltman, G., Duncan, R., & Holbek, J. 1973. Innovations and organizations. New York: Wiley.

Organizational Support & Purpose Skills, expertise, capability of team Diversity of team members Team culture of trust and collaboration Egalitarian social network Knowledge sharing & communication Motivation and rewards Importance, effectiveness and frequency of use of communication tools

Ten Factors

Determine Project Objectives

Project Process

Fulfillment of Project Objectives

Exhibit 1: Virtual Team Process Model

25

Organizational support & purpose **w/ K sharing Knowledge sharing & Reuse Egalitarian Structure *w/ K sharing Team Culture: Trust, collaboration, relationships *w/ K sharing People: skills, expertise, capabilities *w/ Importance & Effective of Commun. Tools Motivation and Rewards ***Correlations only Communication Process *w/ K sharing, Import & Effect of Comm. Tools Exhibit II: Virtual Team Moderators & Resources Variance Model
*Factors with positive regression coefficients at .05 ** Factors with positive regression coefficients at .10 (Table A) ***Note: All Factors had statistically significant correlat ions (Table C)

Importance of Communication Tools

Effectiveness of Communication Tools

26

Organizational support & purpose ***w/ RBPS Egalitarian Structure **w/RBPS Team Culture:Trust, collaboration, relationships ***w/ RBPS & Team effectiveness People: skills, expertise, capabilities Motivation and Rewards ***w/ RBPS Communication Process *w/ Team effectiveness, creativity and ** RBPS Knowledge sharing & Reuse Team effectiveness in completion of Task objectives as self-assessed

Role Based Performance Self-Efficacy

Team task process creativity as Self-assessed

Freq, Import & Effect of Communication Tools Exhibit III: Virtual Team Role Based Performance Self -Efficacy and Team Effectiveness
*Factors with positive regression coefficients at .05 ** Factors with positive regression coefficients at .10 (Table B) ***Factors with statistically significant correlations thatdo not have positive regression coefficients (Table C)

27

TABLE 1. DESCRIPTIVE DATA FOR COMPOSITE SCALES (N=137) Scale Name # of Items 6 7 5 20 5 4 18 11 6 5 5 4 6 Minimum Statistic 10 14 11 56 12 8 41.23 22 11 3 6 7 15 Maximum Mean Statistic Statistic 30 35 25 100 25 20 89 55 30 19 25 20 30 21.153 26.8689 20.1519 82.4082 20.2453 16.0943 71.5025 38.4323 22.6996 11.8207 19.6556 13.7628 23.3767 Std. Deviation Variance Statistic Statistic 3.6676 3.6693 3.0176 10.4262 3.4301 2.7892 9.5083 7.0265 4.1967 3.7507 3.2228 2.6647 2.7872 13.451 13.463 9.106 108.705 11.766 7.779 90.407 49.372 17.612 14.068 10.386 7.101 7.768 Skewness Kurtosis Statistic Std. Error Statistic -0.193 -0.504 -0.521 -0.315 -0.648 -0.648 -0.54 -0.031 -0.566 -0.336 -0.742 -0.089 -0.241 0.207 0.207 0.207 0.34 0.327 0.327 0.207 0.207 0.207 0.207 0.207 0.207 0.207 0.299 0.596 0.154 -0.2 -0.287 0.273 0.115 -0.01 0.176 -0.629 1.417 -0.236 -0.075 Reliability* Std. Error Chronbach's Alpha 0.411 0.411 0.411 0.668 0.644 0.644 0.411 0.411 0.411 0.411 0.411 0.411 0.411 0.7683 0.6401 0.6879 0.9155 0.8224 0.8697 0.8686 0.8371 0.8195 0.753 0.6984 0.5796 0.5168

Knowledge Sharing: Import. of Commun. Tools: Effective Commun. Tools: RBPS: Team Effectiveness: Creativity: All Communication Tools: Communication Process: Culture: Collaboration Egalitarian Structure: Motivation: Organizational Support: People:

TABLE 2. PEARSON CORRELATION OF SCALES FREQCOMA FREQCOMB TEAMEFFC EGALSTRC IMPCOMTL COMPROC COMTOOL ORGSUP HRBPSE ALLCOM KSHARE CREATV CULTUR PEOPLE MOTIVE

KSHARE IMPCOMTL COMTOOL FREQCOMA FREQCOMB HRBPSE TEAMEFFC CREATV ALLCOM COMPROC CULTUR EGALSTRC MOTIVE ORGSUP PEOPLE

1 0.318 0.416 0.355 0.306 0.192 0.211 0.318 0.416 0.655

0.08 0.489 0.629 0.625

0.42 0.204 0.428 0.302 0.23 0.207 0.321 0.356

1 0.655 0.535 0.004 0.323 0.079 0.184 0.768 0.422 0.243

1 0.488 0.268 0.264 0.069 0.253 0.905 0.47 1 0.055 0.235 0.101 0.019 0.543 0.32 0.306 0.004 0.268 0.055 1 0.03 -0.041 8E-04 0.311 0.331 0.192 0.323 0.264 0.235 0.03 1 0.792 0.772 0.272 0.462 0.355 0.535 0.488 0.211 0.079 0.069 0.101 -0.041 0.792 0.08 0.184 0.253 0.019 8E-04 0.772 1 0.54

0.385 0.318 0.265 0.333 0.378 0.306 0.311 0.197 0.319 0.171 0.365 0.307 0.029 0.219 0.201 0.343 0.502 0.36 0.361 0.22 0.2 0.155

0.54 0.071 0.408 0.337 0.402 0.225

1 0.242 0.324 0.143 0.232 0.119 0.091 0.169

0.489 0.768 0.905 0.543 0.311 0.272 0.071 0.242 1 0.565 0.453 0.377 0.248 0.384 0.439 0.629 0.422 0.47 0.32 0.331 0.462 0.408 0.324 0.565 1 0.619 0.571 0.268 0.497 0.361 0.625 0.243 0.385 0.306 0.365 0.343 0.337 0.143 0.453 0.619 0.42 1 0.692 0.321 0.483 0.374 0.23 0.318 0.311 0.307 0.502 0.402 0.232 0.377 0.571 0.692 1 0.404 0.627 0.383 0.204 0.207 0.265 0.197 0.029 0.36 0.225 0.119 0.248 0.268 0.321 0.404 1 0.5 0.38 0.2 0.091 0.384 0.497 0.483 0.627 0.428 0.321 0.333 0.319 0.219 0.361 0.5 1 0.328 0.302 0.356 0.378 0.171 0.201 0.22 0.155 0.169 0.439 0.361 0.374 0.383 0.38 0.328 1

0.7683 0.6401 0.6879 0.636 0.4206 0.9155 0.8224 0.8697 0.8686 0.8371 0.8195 0.753 0.6984 0.5796 0.5168

* For bold: Correlations larger than 0.29 (or smaller than -0.29) are significant at the 0.05 level ** For the rest: Correlations larger than 0.17 (or less than -0.17 are statistically significant)

ALPHA

28

TABLE 3: VARIANCE MODEL 1 - MODERATORS AND RESOURCES Dependent Variable: Knowledge Sharing: B (Constant) Organization Support People: Capabilities Culture: Collaboration Motivation: Egalitarian Structure: Communication Process: 3.7277 0.2253 0.0545 0.3981 -0.0664 -0.2062 0.2019 Std. Error t 2.2445 0.1184 0.0927 0.0808 0.0841 0.0955 0.0435 Sig. 0.0992 0.0594 * 0.5579 0.0000 0.4315 0.0327 0.0000 R 0.7141 R Square Adjusted R Square 0.5099 0.4873

1.6609 1.9022 0.5875 4.9288 -0.7891 -2.1582 4.6437

ANOVA Sum of Squares df Mean Square F Sig. Regression 932.7587 6.0000 155.4598 22.5403 0.0000 Residual 896.6063 130.0000 6.8970 Total 1829.3650 136.0000

Dependent Variable: Imp Comm Tools: B (Constant) Organization Support People: Capabilities Culture: Collaboration Motivation: Egalitarian Structure: Communication Process: 11.5394 0.2404 0.3169 -0.0561 0.0081 -0.1352 0.1905 Std. Error t 2.7781 0.1466 0.1147 0.1000 0.1041 0.1183 0.0538 Sig. 0.0001 0.1034 0.0066 0.5760 0.9383 0.2552 0.0006 R R Square Adjusted R Square 0.4998 0.2498 0.2152 Predictors: (Constant), Com Process: ANOVA Sum of Squares df Mean Square F Regression 457.4258 6.0000 76.2376 Residual 1373.6079 130.0000 10.5662 Total 1831.0337 136.0000 Sig. 0.0000

4.1538 1.6400 2.7629 -0.5607 0.0775 -1.1429 3.5414

7.2152

Dependent Variable: Effective Com Tools: B (Constant) Organization Support People: Capabilities Culture: Collaboration Motivation: Egalitarian Structure: Communication Process: 6.1998 0.0914 0.2222 0.0883 0.0598 -0.0858 0.1388 Std. Error t 2.2279 0.1176 0.0920 0.0802 0.0835 0.0948 0.0431 Sig. 0.0062 0.4380 0.0171 0.2729 0.4753 0.3674 0.0016 R 0.5354 R Square Adjusted R Square 0.2866 0.2537

2.7828 0.7779 2.4154 1.1010 0.7160 -0.9044 3.2164

ANOVA Sum of Squares df Mean Square F Regression 354.9427 6.0000 59.1571 Residual 883.4219 130.0000 6.7956 Total 1238.3646 136.0000

8.7053

Sig. 0.0000

TABLE 4: VARIANCE MODEL 2 - ROLE BASED PERFORMANCE SELF-EFFICACY, EFFECTIVENESS & CREATIVITY Dependent Variable: RBPS: B (Constant) Organization Support People: Capabilities Culture: Collaboration Motivation: Egalitarian Structure: Communication Process: Knowledge Sharing: All Communication Tools. 48.9226 -0.7619 0.2931 -0.4145 0.7954 1.1079 0.5706 -0.1360 -0.0176 Std. Error t Sig. 0.0092 17.8655 2.7384 0.8418 -0.9051 0.3708 0.5727 0.5117 0.6117 0.5566 -0.7447 0.4608 0.5495 1.4476 0.1555 0.0925 * 0.6427 1.7236 0.0502 * 0.2826 2.0191 0.5648 -0.2408 0.8109 0.1701 -0.1033 0.9182

R 0.5968

R Square Adjusted R Square 0.3562 0.2274

ANOVA Sum of Squares df Regression 1858.6040 Residual 3359.2328 Total 5217.8367

Mean Square F Sig. 8.0000 232.3255 2.7664 0.0156 40.0000 83.9808 48.0000

Dependent Variable: Team Effectiveness: B (Constant) Organization Support People: Capabilities Culture: Collaboration Motivation: Egalitarian Structure: Communication Process: Knowledge Sharing: All Communication Tools. 14.7418 -0.3800 0.1129 -0.0311 0.2016 0.3470 0.1987 -0.0092 -0.0935 Std. Error t Sig. 0.0147 5.8022 2.5407 0.2675 -1.4202 0.1626 0.1897 0.5950 0.5549 0.1784 -0.1742 0.8625 0.1839 1.0961 0.2790 0.2136 1.6248 0.1114 0.0341 0.0908 2.1876 0.1853 -0.0498 0.9605 0.0561 -1.6668 0.1027 R 0.5427 R Square Adjusted R Square 0.2945 0.1663

ANOVA Sum of Squares df Regression 180.1919 Residual 431.6194 Total 611.8113

8.0000 44.0000 52.0000

Mean Square F Sig. 22.5240 2.2961 0.0377 9.8095

Dependent Variable: Creativity: B (Constant) Organization Support People: Capabilities Culture: Collaboration Motivation: Egalitarian Structure: Communication Process: Knowledge Sharing: All Communication Tools. 10.6848 -0.2684 0.0863 -0.1331 0.0736 0.1791 0.1627 -0.0793 0.0269 Std. Error t Sig. 0.0413 5.0817 2.1026 0.2343 -1.1456 0.2582 0.1662 0.5194 0.6061 0.1562 -0.8518 0.3989 0.1611 0.4570 0.6499 0.1870 0.9577 0.3435 0.0468 0.0795 2.0455 0.1623 -0.4883 0.6278 0.0491 0.5482 0.5863

R 0.4261

R Square Adjusted R Square 0.1816 0.0328

ANOVA Sum of Squares df Regression 73.4536 Residual 331.0747 Total 404.5283

8.0000 44.0000 52.0000

Mean Square F Sig. 9.1817 1.2203 0.3099 7.5244

29