Emma S. Nordbäck

Social presence as a multi-dimensional group construct in 3D virtual environments

One of the key challenges of distributed teams is the lack of social presence resulting from multiple work locations. Virtual environments (VEs) have been viewed as a collaboration tool for distributed teams that can enhance social presence via shared collaboration space and avatars. We observed, recorded, and analyzed the VE meetings of a globally distributed team. Data were analyzed through quantitative and qualitative content analysis. Our findings show that in the meetings, social presence was a situational phenomenon that constantly varied in strength. Social presence occurred as either a subgroup or group phenomenon, which at times coexisted at both levels. In particular, 2 of the 3 subdimensions of social presence, psychological involvement and behavioral engagement, were observable in team interaction.

Workplace flexibility and communication flows: a structurational view

ABSTRACT Informed by structuration theory, this study demonstrates how organizational structures – flexibility policies related to worker teleworking – shape communication flows of membership negotiation and activity coordination. Interviews with 53 employees from 2 large Finnish firms revealed that in the organization in which teleworking was permitted workers agentively structured their workdays to use the policy to serve both individual and organizational needs and easily adapted to coworkers’ teleworking. By contrast, nearly the opposite was found in the organization that allowed teleworking only by exception; in fact, most did not value teleworking or desire additional flexibility. Through negative discourses about telework, an organizational culture that did not support flexible work was reproduced, maintaining the expectation and effect that organizational activity occurred only at the office. We conclude with practical insights concerning how differences in policies can enable co-creation of differing employee task performance and workplace relationships, and most especially employee views about work–life boundary management.

Cognitive and Behavioral Leadership Coordination: Linking Shared Leadership to High Performance in Global Teams

The ability of a single leader to exert direct influence on globally distributed teams diminishes when members are scattered across boundaries. Shared leadership may be necessary to lead such teams more effectively. Earlier research has found contradicting effects of shared leadership on team performance, suggesting the possibility that there may be some interaction effects at play. In this study we use Grounded Theory to explore these effects, such as whether and how shared leadership interacts with global team boundaries and team coordination. We interviewed 58 team members and leaders from 6 teams and found that shared leaderships influence on team performance is moderated by leadership coordination, such that shared leadership has a stronger effect when the distributed leadership activity is effectively coordinated, both cognitively and behaviorally. We also found that team leadership coordination needs to vary depending on the global boundaries spanned by the team.

Back to Basics: Facilitating Engagement in Modern Work Environments

We seek a simple model of job characteristics and leadership for workers in a digitalized work place, where self-management is increasingly required as more work is done through enterprise digital and social media rather than face-to-face interaction. We look to work location, supervisor communication, feedback from the work itself, technology support, and work-related knowledge as precursors to work engagement. Here, we assess some of the basics of work design and management for employees across a range of work strategies as part of a larger study on flexible work and work-life balance in metropolitan areas. We find the strongest relationship with work engagement to come from feedback from the work itself and the knowledge to work independently. Supervisor communication also plays a role in work engagement, but location is surprisingly of little importance. We discuss the generalizability of these results and how future research can consider location in greater depth.