IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication Mar 2006

Team Leaders' Technology Choice in Virtual Teams

A. Sivunen ; M. Valo

Abstract

Virtual teams face challenges arising from geographical distance, cultural differences, and differing modes of interaction. Team leaders in particular face these challenges because they are primarily responsible for efficient team management. Technology choices made by leaders have become a focus of interest in communication studies, but questions regarding media choice in virtual teams have not been widely studied. This article describes an in-depth, ethnographic exploration of Finnish virtual team leaders who work in natural teams in organizational contexts. The principal goal was to examine their choice of communication technologies in daily work. The results indicate that the choice was based on four factors. First, there are two factors that are person-related: ACCESSIBILITY and SOCIAL DISTANCE. Accessibility refers to people's ease of access through a particular medium, and social distance suggests that the technology selection is based on the social distance between the persons involved. Second, there are two task-related factors: idea sharing and informing. These factors describe team leaders' media selection by the nature of the task at hand. The findings suggest that team leaders' technology choice can be partly explained by traditional media selection theories, but in virtual contexts, accessibility becomes an important determinant of which technology is chosen.

Journal
IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication
Published
2006-03-01
DOI
10.1109/tpc.2006.870458
CompPile
Open Access
Closed
Topics
qualitative research
Export
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Citation Context

Cited by in this index (8)

  1. Weimann et al. (2013)
    Enhancing Team Performance Through Tool Use: How Critical Technology-Related Is…
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  2. Assudani (2011)
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  3. Bjorn et al. (2010)
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  4. Flammia et al. (2010)
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  5. Sarker et al. (2009)
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  1. Rutkowski et al. (2008)
    Communication in Virtual Teams: Ten Years of Experience in Education
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  2. Amant (2007)
    Online Education in an Age of Globalization: Foundational Perspectives and Prac…
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  3. Amant (2007)
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CrossRef global citation count: 65 View in citation network → Build reading path →

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