Laura Hambley

Virtual Team Leadership: Perspectives From the Field

The purpose of this study was to improve the understanding of virtual team leadership occurring within existing virtual teams in a range of organizations. Qualitative data were collected through comprehensive interviews with nine virtual team leaders and members from six different organizations. A semi-structured interview format was used to elicit extensive information about effective and ineffective virtual team leadership behaviours. Content analysis was used to code the interview transcripts and detailed notes obtained from these interviews. Two independent raters categorized results into themes and sub-themes. These results provide real-world examples and recommendations above and beyond what can be learned from simulated laboratory experiments. The four most important overarching findings are described using the following headings: 1) Leadership critical in virtual teams, 2) Virtual team meeting effectiveness, 3) Personalizing virtual teamwork, and 4) Learning to effectively use different media. These findings represent the most significant and pertinent results from this qualitative data and provide direction for future research, as well as practical recommendations for leaders and members of virtual teams.

Predicting Teleworker Success: An Exploration of Personality, Motivational, Situational, and Job Characteristics

This study explored personality and motivational traits related to teleworker performance and satisfaction, including sociability, need for achievement and autonomy, diligence and organisation. Situational factors were also compared between teleworkers and non-teleworkers, such as number of children, job autonomy and job complexity. Implications for research and practice are discussed.

Bringing Group-Level Personality to the Electronic Realm: A Comparison of Face-to-Face and Virtual Contexts

Despite the increasing popularity of virtual teams in organizations, very little is known about how personality traits may differentiate effective virtual teams from effective face-to-face teams. This paper sought to examine if extraversion, oppenness to experience, and an individuals predisposition to be a team player would be differentially related to team performance and team cohesion based on whether the teams met face-to-face (FTF) or via videoconference (VC). A total of 285 undergraduate students were randomly assigned to 62 teams (35 FTF and 27 VC) of four to five members. It was found that openness to experience was positively related to team cohesion for the VC teams and negatively related to team cohesion for the FTF teams. Openness to experience was positively related to team performance only in the FTF condition. The relationship between extraversion and team cohesion was positive in the FTF condition. In FTF teams a positive relationship was found between predisposition to be a team player a...

Prediction of cyberslacking when employees are working away from the office

Abstract The landscape of counterproductive workplace behavior is changing with the rapid integration of advanced communication technologies in the modern workforce. Specifically, employers are increasingly allowing employees to spend some work time at home, and to stay connected with the office through communication technologies. These telework arrangements bring about a new form of counterproductive workplace behaviors, namely, cyberslacking. Cyberslacking involves using the Internet for non-work related purposes while on company time. Engaging in cyberslacking might be particularly relevant when working at home because it would be easier to avoid being caught by supervisors and co-workers. The current study examines personality, satisfaction, and perceived performance as antecedents of cyberslacking while working away from the office. Findings from a field study indicate that cyberslacking is positively related to Procrastination, and negatively related to Honesty, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness. Cyberlacking was also found to be negatively related to both satisfaction and perceived performance while working remotely. The study suggests that personality might be used as an avenue for screening those who may be selected for remote work, or to help develop structures that reduce cyberslacking opportunities for those with personalities that are predisposed to cyberslacking (e.g., closer managerial monitoring of the employee’s daily output).

FOUR MULTI-ITEM INTERRATER AGREEMENT OPTIONS : COMPARISONS AND OUTCOMES

This study compared four multi-item indices of interrater agreement: (a) intraclass correlation coefficient, (b) within-group interrater agreement, (c) modified within-group interrater agreement, and (d) average deviation index. Findings included (a) that the different indices of interrater agreement provided different information about the agreement across raters, (b) standards for acceptable agreement are inconsistent for the several indices, (c) the average deviation index showed most groups had acceptable agreement, and (d) removing data from analyses based on unacceptable interrater agreement values does little in the way of affecting overall outcomes. Implications include that interrater agreement indices are not interchangeable and that for research purposes the concern about interrater agreement may be overstated.