Building High Performance Virtual Teams: Lessons Learned from MERLOT’s Business Discipline Editorial Board

1. Building High Performance Virtual Teams: Lessons Learned from MERLOT’sBusiness Discipline Editorial Board Cathy Owens Swift Georgia Southern University Ronald E. Purser San Francisco State University Maureen Hannay Troy University

2. Virtual Teams • Coworkers with complementary skills committed to a common purpose and goals with accountability • Geographically and organizationally dispersed. • Use various telecommunication and information technologies to accomplish goals

3. MERLOT Business Editorial Team

4. Pros/Cons of Virtual Teams • Benefits: • allows us to draw from a large pool of qualified participants while minimizing cliques and politics • Drawbacks: • loss of social contact, feelings of isolation, lack of trust (especially with new members)

5. Success Factors in Virtual Teams • High levels of trust among team members • Effective use of technology • Clear implementation of team concept • Effective individual performance

6. The Challenge of Building Trustin Virtual Teams • What are some of the barriers or obstacles to building trust in virtual teams? • What sort of trust related issues or problems have you observed in virtual teams? • How were such issues handled or resolved?

7. Trust • Effective teamwork depends on trust • In a virtual environment, trust is more ability/task based than interpersonal relationship based • Level of member performance over time results in building or denial of trust

8. Three Levels of Trust Calculus-based trust • easily broken by a violation of expectations • cannot sustain a team’s relationship Knowledge-based trust • More stable than calculus-based trust • Develops over time Identification-based trust • Based on social identity theory • Tend to forgive transgression because team is part of our personal identity

9. Three Levels of Trust High Identification-based Trust Knowledge-based Trust Calculus-based Trust Low

10. Trust in Virtual Teams • Cascio’s (2000) 3 traits to identify high trust teams: • Begin with some social interaction • Set clear goals for each member • Members are positive, enthusiastic, and focus on an action orientation in communications

11. Building Trust Virtually • Establish trust through performance consistency • Rapid response to team members (return emails, task completion) • Set strong norms around communication • Team leader role in reinforcing interactions

12. Virtual Team Trust“Performance Consistency” • When you are working with people you never see, you can develop trust, but you must respond to that person. Follow through. If you tell them you are going to get back to a customer, get back to them. • I think trusting someone in a virtual team is linked directly to their work ethic. It is task first. The trust has been built through the task-based relationship that has evolved. • You gain the trust in people when they deliver what they promise, when all are contributing to the same idea and goal. I think that on a virtual team you start trusting each other when you start meeting those results and everybody has their role within the team and knows what their responsibility is and takes ownership to achieve results. • Source: Five Challenges to Virtual Team Success: Lessons From Sabre, Inc. Kirkman, Rosen, Gibson, McPherson. (2002) Academy of Management Executive, 16, 67-80.

13. Swift Trust Meyerson, Weick, and Kramer (1996) • Swift trust is a concept relating to temporary teams whose existence is formed around a clear purpose and common task with a finite life span. • Its elements include a willingness to suspend doubt about whether others who are "strangers" can be counted on in order to get to work on the group's task...

14. TRANSFORMATION INPUT OUTCOMES Open Systems Model

15. Tools & Technology • Utilize synchronous and asynchronous communication tools • MERLOT Workspace • Email and bi-monthly teleconferences • Tracking spreadsheet • On-line tutorial for new reviewers • Web page for Business editorial board • Volunteer Reviewer Questionnaire

16. Kirkman, Rosen, Tesluk & Gibson (in press). Impact of Team Empowerment on Virtual Team Performance: The Moderating Role of Face-to-Face Interaction. Academy of Management Journal.

17. Implementation of Virtual Teams • Must set out a clear business reason for the team • Team must understand its mission/purpose • Team members must develop a sense of interdependence • Must have accountability and rewards for team members • Sources: Attaran & Attaran, 2003; Kezsbom, 2000; Redman & Sankar, 2003

18. Individual Performance • Potential for effort withholding behaviors (social loafing); can be minimized by building strong team identity • Members with high degree of centrality to the team and those that are information contributors are expected to be highest performers (Ahuja, Galletta, & Carley, 2003) • Members able to commit more resources are likely to be higherperformers (Ahuja et al., 2003)

19. Problems of Inequity • Equity Theory: People strive to maintain a ratio of their outcomes (rewards) to their own inputs (contributions) equal to the outcomes/input ratio of others whom they compare themselves • Inequities in rewards among MERLOT team members

20. Equity Theory Pay, benefits, opportunities, etc. the same, more or less OUTCOME INPUTS OUTCOME INPUTS < = > ? effort, ability, experience etc. A person evaluates fairness by comparing his/her ratio with others.

21. Outcomes Overreward Inequity Outcomes Inputs Inputs Outcomes Underreward Inequity Outcomes Inputs Inputs Overreward vs Underreward Inequity Comparison Other You

22. Equity Sensitivity • Benevolents • Tolerant of being underrewarded • Equity Sensitives • Want ratio to be equal to the comparison other • Entitleds • Prefer receiving proportionately more than others

23. Dealing with Motivational Problems in Virtual Teams • Please share your experience of dealing with a motivational problem (social loafing, inequity, etc) in a virtual team. • What was the nature of the problem? • Was it corrected/resolved and how?

24. Performance Indicators of MERLOT Business Team

25. Future Initiatives • Increasing number of volunteer peer reviewers • how will we build team identity, trust, and commitment with volunteer reviewers? • Integrating new technologies • video conferencing • online synchronous collaboration tools • new data sharing tools