Team Dispersion, Emergent States, and Performance in Virtual IT Service Provisioning Teams

Abstract

Today, virtual teams composed by dispersed team members relying on computer-supported collaborative work are common in the information technology (IT) service provisioning industry. Despite the increasing interest in virtual team research, there is a limited understanding of a multidimensional view of team dispersion and its effect on the performance of virtual teams via the team´s socioemotional states. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the influence of team distribution and variety of work practices on the performance of virtual IT service provisioning teams via the emergent states of trust and cohesiveness. To this aim, an input-process-output framework was adopted to develop a conceptual model and a survey with IT service provisioning professionals was conducted. The results suggest that a variety of work practices constitutes a barrier to the performance of virtual IT service provisioning teams; and that trust and cohesiveness are important mediators in this cause-effect relationship.