Mary Beth Watson-Manheim

How virtual are we? Measuring virtuality and understanding its impact in a global organization

Abstract.  Employees in global corporations are increasingly involved in ‘virtual teams’ on a regular basis. Conflicting definitions of virtuality make it hard to measure such things as how much virtual teaming occurs and how virtual teaming affects performance. As a consequence, it is hard to allocate funding and to design infrastructures and software to support this specific mode of working. Using the concept of discontinuities, or changes in expected conditions, we propose a virtuality index to assess how ‘virtual’ a given setting is. The discontinuities used include geography, time zone, organization, national culture, work practices, and technology. The index separately measures these aspects of virtuality and their effect on perceived team performance. Data collected at a large multinational corporation clustered into three overarching discontinuities: team distribution, workplace mobility, and variety of work practices. The study revealed that being distributed in and of itself had no impact on self‐assessed team performance. Work practice predictability and sociability mitigated effects of working in discontinuous environments, while variety of practices (cultural and work process diversity) and employee mobility negatively impacted performance.

Communication media repertoires: dealing with the multiplicity of media choices

In todays organizations, employees have an ever-increasing variety of communication media to use in the performance of work activities. In this study, we seek to expand our understanding of media usage in organizations where there is a multiplicity of communication media available to employees. We use communication media repertoires as the lens through which we explore how media is used in the support of communication-based work performed by individuals in complex organizational settings. Data were collected in sales divisions at two large corporations in the information technology industry. We compared multiple media use within and between the two sales divisions, and identified similarities and differences in repertoires. Our findings suggest that use of repertoires is influenced by institutional conditions (e.g., incentives, trust, and physical proximity) and situational conditions (e.g., urgency, task, etc.), and by routine use of the media over time. Based on the findings, we propose a framework for investigating the use of multiple media in organizations through examination of communication media repertoires. Implications of these findings for research and practice are discussed.

Perceived discontinuities and constructed continuities in virtual work

Boundaries such as time, distance, organisation and culture have been a useful conceptual tool for researchers to unpack changes in the virtual work environment, moving from a dichotomous perspective that contrasts face‐to‐face and virtual work to a more nuanced hybrid perspective. However, researchers may tacitly assume that all members of a virtual team and virtual teams collectively will respond to a boundary in a similar way. We posit instead that boundaries are a dynamic phenomenon and may have different consequences under different circumstances. We offer organisational discontinuity theory as a tool for more focused investigation of the virtual work environment. Discontinuities and continuities describe the setting in which individuals in a virtual team operate, both actual work practices and the perceptions of the individuals in the virtual work environment. The terms offer a starting point to identify and understand what may otherwise seem to be paradoxical differences in how virtual team members respond to boundaries.

Virtuality and Team Performance: Understanding the Impact of Variety of Practices

Abstract In many corporations today, it is common to have teams with members located in different geographic locations, different time zones, and even different countries. These virtual teams are strategically important to organizations as they adapt to constantly changing market and political conditions such as global outsourcing. Despite the research and investment in technologies supporting virtual work, it remains unclear how virtuality, or the conditions under which virtual teams work, affects performance. Prior research suggests performance of virtual teams runs the gamete from failure to success. A global understanding of the specific impacts of virtual work on performance, positive or negative, remains elusive because researchers have not yet ascertained which aspects of virtuality are especially relevant in a given setting. In this study conducted at Intel Corporation, we examine how different components of virtuality influence specific aspects of performance of virtual teams. We use both quantitative and qualitative data in our analysis. Our findings indicate that variety of practice creates significant negative influence on several aspects of performance, including communication and trust in team members, and ability to meet commitments and complete projects on time. Also, members experiencing more variety of practice perceived less risk-taking in their teams and less ability to focus the team on the right questions for the projects being undertaken.

Aligning IS Research & Practice: A Research Agenda for Virtual Work

Recent advances in information technologies have led organizations to diversify their organizational structures. One of the most prominent trends in this diversification is to conduct work in distributed or virtual environments. Distributed work alternatives are numerous, but the common characteristic that defines these alternatives is the physical separation of employees from each other and/or their organizations workplace. Several corporations have reported their efforts, successes, and failures at implementing some form of distributed work. Practitioners face a number of issues when considering virtual work alternatives. However, research does not seem to successfully help in understanding and solving some of these key issues. This paper attempts to develop a new and broader research agenda that takes into account emerging issues and concerns of practitioners, existing published work, and interdisciplinary perspectives on the topic. In doing so, emerging trends in virtual work and supporting technologies are explored.

Exploring the Relationship Between Communication Risk Perception and Communication Portfolio

With the rapid development of information communication technologies (ICT) over the past decade, the nature of how organization members communicate has changed, becoming far more complex and challenging. Communication risks brought about by technology-mediated communication can sometimes be detrimental to the overall organizational function and success. We classify these communication risks into three types: reception, understanding, and action risks. We propose the notion of communication portfolio which refers to a single ICT or a specific combination of lCTs that can be used to manage any perceived risk of communication. Specifically, this study aims to examine the relationship between perceived risks (i.e., risk of reception, risk of understanding, and risk of action) in the communication process and the dimensions (i.e., content, and structuring mechanism) of the communication portfolio used for communication. We also identify communication risk factors that may accentuate the different types of risks. We develop a communication risk perception framework to illustrate the relationship between the communication risk factors, the different types of communication risks, and the communication portfolio. Finally, we illustrate how the communication risk perception framework can be applied in a real-life natural setting by using the shuttle Challenger incident, as an example.

Distributed analysis: the last frontier?

It is widely agreed that the trend toward distributed software development is growing. Although there are difficulties involved, this trend is here to stay, as organizations will continue to search for ways to develop software at lower cost but with same quality. Current research has focused primarily on the later stages of the software development life cycle, especially coding of software requirements. However, as organizations become more virtual, distributed development will become more apparent throughout the entire life cycle. In this study, we investigate distributed analysis in software development. We report on results from a field experiment with two graduate level Information Systems classes, one located in Porto Alegre, Brazil and one in Chicago, U.S. The students in Brazil played the role of users whereas the students in Chicago role-played analysts. The Chicago-based students developed a requirements document for an information system by interviewing the Brazil students using an electronic discussion board. Our findings provide insight into the distributed analysis process and identify sources of potential problems.

Co-Production of Prolonged, Complex, and Negative Services An Examination of Medication Adherence in Chronically Ill Individuals

This study examines customer coproduction in a prolonged, complex, and negative service context—medication adherence in chronically ill individuals. We integrate services and medical perspectives to develop a novel theoretical framework of adherence as a nested system of coproduction behaviors, characterized by temporal and scope dimensions. Utilizing a qualitative approach, our findings point to two key insights about coproduction in the customer sphere. First, the enactment and form of regular-restricted, intermittent-intermediate, and irregular-expansive coproduction behaviors are determined by the characteristics of the customer sphere—that is, coproduction is contextualized. Second, the coproduction system in the customer sphere is complex and the different levels are interdependent. Our research contributes to the emerging literature on service coproduction by elucidating the behaviors through which customers strive toward adherence. The identified coproduction framework holds important implications for providers of prolonged and complex services and future research directions.

e-Collaboration in Distributed Requirements Determination

It is widely agreed that the trend toward distributed software development is growing. Although there are difficulties involved, this trend is here to stay, as organizations will continue to search for ways to develop software at lower cost but with same quality. Current research has focused primarily on the later stages of the software development life cycle, especially coding of software requirements. However, as organizations become more virtual, distributed development will become more apparent throughout the entire life cycle. In this study, we investigate distributed e-collaboration in requirements determination in software development. We report on results from a field experiment with two graduate level Information Systems classes, one located in Porto Alegre, Brazil and one in Chicago, Ilinois, USA. The students in Brazil played the role of users whereas the students in Chicago role-played analysts. The Chicago-based students developed a requirements document for an information system by interviewing the Brazil students using an electronic discussion board. Our findings provide insight into the distributed analysis process and identify sources of potential problems.

A multi-level socio-technical systems telecommuting framework

Telecommuting can help to create organisational efficiencies and improve competitive advantage. It has been studied from a variety of perspectives, including that of transportation, management, psychology, and information systems. However, telecommuting literature, while abundant and diversified, often reports contradictory results, creating dilemmas for practice and research. Past researchers noting such conflicting findings often identify the lack of guiding theoretical bases as a key problem. In an attempt to explain the contradictory results found in prior research and in practice, we review telecommuting literature and expose conceptualisation issues that need to be addressed in the development of a telecommuting research model: telecommuting as both a context and an aspect of work, as a multi-level concept and as a time-dependent concept. The proposed multi-level model, guided by socio-technical systems theory, illustrates the inter-relationships of telecommuting antecedents and outcomes across levels of analysis and over time. The research offers a number of important implications for future research, as well as for managers involved in or affected by telecommuting in their organisations.