Investigating ICT-mediated task coordination modes in global virtual teams

Abstract

Global virtual teams (GVT) are increasingly prevalent in today's workplace. While such teams potentially offer productivity benefits to organizations, the benefits can be wiped out by coordination difficulties. Previous studies found that poor coordination in GVT resulted in fewer positive outcomes than collocated teams. GVT rely largely on information and communication technologies (ICT) to accomplish their work, including coordination of their task. While interest in the study of ICT usage in GVT has increased among researchers, there is little knowledge of how ICT can facilitate GVT's task coordination. With this motivation, this study aims to investigate how ICT can support GVT's task coordination. Based on three characteristics of ICT from media synchronicity theory that determine how particular ICT can support the communication complexities of different coordination modes, we propose optimal ICT-mediated task coordination modes. The effectiveness of these proposed ICT-mediated task coordination modes is explored qualitatively through an in depth study of three GVT. As a result, we develop a fit framework for ICT-mediated task coordination that can inform future research. Practically, the study aims to provide suggestions on the appropriate use of ICT to support GVT's task coordination.