THE EFFECTS OF SPATIAL AND TEMPORAL DISPERSION ON VIRTUAL TEAMS' PERFORMANCE

Abstract

It has been over than 20 years since organizations started relying on virtual teams, which are groups of geographically separated workers collaborating through IT-enabled communication channels. Virtual teams differ from co-located teams in the way they communicate, and this difference is one of the main reasons why virtual teams still experience the negative effects of geographical separation. Prior research has outlined several dimensions of the separation, i.e., spatial and temporal separation; however the consequences of different dimensions of separation and their impact is still unclear due to the challenges of conducting empirical research. In this thesis, we employ a simulation-based approach to systematically study the performance implications of a population of virtual information system development (ISD) teams under different spatial and temporal settings. The simulation framework provides us with a means to analyse the impact of spatial and temporal dispersion and their components. Our analyses suggest that spatial dispersion has a stronger negative effect compared to temporal dispersion, and that the overall effect of spatial dispersion can be attributed more to information distortion, rather than to information loss. In addition, our results suggest that goal alignment (an indirect effect of temporal dispersion) has a stronger impact on teams? performance, as compared to collaboration delay (a direct effect of temporal dispersion). Our results offer the theoretical and practical insights into the management of virtual ISD teams.