virtual team management research paper

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• DOI: 10.1177/0149206314559946
• Corpus ID: 53004870

Virtual Teams Research

• L. Gilson , M. Maynard , +2 authors M. Hakonen
• Published 1 July 2015
• Business, Computer Science
• Journal of Management

490 Citations

The many faces of a virtual team: a review of research done on individual member input to virtual teams, virtual project teams and their effectiveness, virtual team adaptation: management perspective on individual differences (preprint), team perceived virtuality: an emergent state perspective, challenges and barriers in virtual teams: a literature review, a meta-review of global virtual team research: thematic insights and future directions, virtual team member perspectives on personal development: a sequential explanatory study, teams in a new era: some considerations and implications, interactive effects of team virtuality and work design on team functioning, understanding the dimensions of virtual teams: a study of professional students in india, 167 references, virtual teams: a review of current literature and directions for future research, research note - a model of conflict, leadership, and performance in virtual teams, influences on creativity in asynchronous virtual teams: a qualitative analysis of experimental teams, managing virtual teams: a review of current empirical research, seeing remote team members as leaders: a study of us-scandinavian teams, a meta-analysis of the consequences of virtualness on team functioning, the impact of knowledge coordination on virtual team performance over time, when success isn’t everything – case studies of two virtual teams, something(s) old and something(s) new: modeling drivers of global virtual team effectiveness, conceptualizing and measuring the virtuality of teams, related papers.

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Virtual Teams in Times of Pandemic: Factors That Influence Performance

Victor garro-abarca.

1 School of Computing, Tecnológico de Costa Rica, Cartago, Costa Rica

Pedro Palos-Sanchez

2 Department of Financial Economics and Operations Management, University of Seville, Seville, Spain

Mariano Aguayo-Camacho

Associated data.

The raw data supporting the conclusions of this article will be made available by the authors, without undue reservation.

In the digital age, the global software development sector has been a forerunner in implementing new ways and configurations for remote teamwork using information and communication technologies on a widespread basis. Crises and technological advances have influenced each other to bring about changes in the ways of working. In the 70’s of the last century, in the middle of the so-called oil crisis, the concept of teleworking was defined using remote computer equipment to access office equipment and thus avoid moving around using traditional vehicles. Then from the 90s, with the advent of communications and the widespread use of the Internet, the first virtual work teams were implemented in software development companies that already had some of the important characteristics needed to work in this way, such as, cultural diversity, characterized tasks, geographical distribution of members, communication, interdependence of tasks, leadership, cohesion, empowerment, confidence, virtuality. This manuscript groups the main factors into different models proposed by the literature and also analyzes the results of a study conducted in the midst of the Covid-19 crisis on 317 software development teams that had to work in virtual teams (VT). The results of the quantitative methodology with structural equation modeling based on variance using the partial least squares route method are analyzed. The results of the research focus on some determinants that can directly affect the performance of the virtual team. A first determinant is communication in relation to the tasks. The second is trust in relation to leadership, empowerment and cohesion. The results of virtual teams provide information that can serve as a basis for future research lines for the implementation of virtual work strategies in post-pandemic work.

Introduction

The digital era has meant a change in the processes and routines of the business dynamics to which many organizations have had to adapt in order to compete and survive in globalized markets. The virtualization of organizational life and the digital transformation of labor relations goes hand in hand with the accelerated advance of technologies such as cloud computing, which have made it unnecessary to have tangible servers, software and hardware infrastructures in the company offices and many processes are being carried out by accessing personal equipment or terminals (computers, laptops, and mobile devices) connected to an increasingly fast Internet network. All this is possible thanks to the technology of virtualization ( Sánchez, 2017 ). Recent studies have analyzed the attitude of human resources to cloud technology and its importance in software as a service application - SaaS- ( Palos and Correia, 2017 ) and how the attitude of the worker has changed, thanks to online work training ( Palos-Sanchez, 2017 ). Thus, the digital virtualization of traditionally physical technological resources is also happening at the level of human resources, because increasingly the presence of workers in the same place is not necessary. This implies an immense challenge for the new electronic leadership of teams of collaborators who are increasingly dispersed geographically.

In the beginning, virtual teams were formed to facilitate joint creation and innovation among global or regional experts who did not have enough time to travel to fulfill the specialized tasks of the projects that required them. Today, virtual teamwork has evolved to a point where online collaboration is a way of working for national companies and more naturally for multinational or regional companies. The idea of virtual collaboration between workers, or virtual teamwork VT, consists of a team working together from different physical locations using collaborative ICTs. In the last 20 years this modality has been in constant growth due to the evolution and maturity of the digital era in terms of speed of telecommunications, the power of the computer equipment, the naturalness of adaptation to the use of ICTs in the work of digital natives (born since 1990) and digital migrants (born before 1990). However, at the beginning of the 21st century it was difficult to have faith in VTs due to the low level of maturity of virtual teams which made companies skeptical about the efficiency of this way of working. By the early 2000s, studies showed that the number of VTs that achieved their goals was not very encouraging and there was a significant failure rate. A few years later, things had not changed that much either. In 2004, there was talk of significant challenges in the implementation of virtual teams ( Piccoli et al., 2004 ). Another study ( Brett et al., 2006 ) revealed that most people thought that virtual communication was not as productive as face-to-face interaction, while half of the respondents said they were confused and overwhelmed by collaboration technology. Even so, this happened a few years ago and as technology advanced, companies matured with the use of ICT tools, so these early conclusions from the beginning of the century were not believed to be accurate anymore. A more recent study in 2009, involving 80 global software teams, indicated that well-managed virtual teams using virtual collaboration can outperform face-to-face (FtF) teams.

Additionally, a number of studies ( Jarrahi and Sawyer, 2013 ), indicate that virtual or remotely distributed team collaboration can also improve employee productivity. Therefore, an important question is: what can make a virtual team have better performance results than a face-to-face team? The answer has been provided by several studies that have summarized input factor models and their relationships with other factors grouped into socio-emotional and task-oriented processes and finally their relationships with output factors ( Powell et al., 2004 ; Gilson et al., 2015 ).

In addition to the aforementioned triggers of virtualization of organizational life and the digital transformation of processes ( Zúñiga Ramirez et al., 2016 ) and the interrelations of stakeholders as co-creators of value ( Martinez-Cañas et al., 2016 ; Ribes-Giner et al., 2017 ), it is also worth mentioning that the origin of remote work in a virtual team is originally teleworking.

Considering the above reasons and in view of finding ourselves in the midst of a rapidly evolving digital era coupled with a pandemic that has forced workers in many areas to perform remote work ( Velicia-Martin et al., 2021 ) and aligned with an effective strategy to contain and mitigate rate of spread of infection ( Brooks et al., 2020 ), this study has been undertaken in the midst of the COVID19 impact on virtual teams in the software development industry. The co-creation in virtual teamwork is a very important feature.

The main objective of this research, at a time with a pandemic and the current digital era ( Chen et al., 2020 ), is to analyze the relationship of important factors found in the literature by analyzing the performance of 317 software engineers in virtual teams. Software engineers, due to their training and experience, belong to virtual teams that include co-creation for the construction of software using agile methodologies and have recently been involved in working in virtual teams. This research is original because of the importance given to endogenous variables such as communication and trust. For this reason, the results of the survey carried out have served to understand what role different factors play in the performance of a group used to doing remote or virtual teamwork as part of their normal work. The study uses a structural equation approach with partial least squares (PLS) to evaluate the proposed performance model. The research is organized as follows. First, the Introduction explains the article based on the history of co-creation in current software development and its relationship to the study of vital equipment. Then there is a literature review, which analyzes relevant research on factors in VTs. Thirdly, methodology and justification of the hypotheses are presented. The results are then analyzed. In the Conclusions section, discussions and conclusions are made in which the practical implications of the research are given.

Literature Review

A virtual team is defined as a group of people or stakeholders working together from different locations and possibly different time zones, who are collaborating on a common project and use information and communication technologies (ICTs) intensively to co-create. It can be seen that one of the main characteristics is virtuality, which implies physical and temporal distance between members and a shared purpose ( Ebrahim et al., 2009 ).

Another essential characteristic of virtual teams, which differentiates it from traditional “face-to-face” (FtF) teams is the collaborative use of technology for work. This has been the result of the evolution of ICTs in this digital age, along with the trend toward globalization. In VTs there is naturally a geographical dispersion that entails certain cultural differences and social bonds are more difficult to achieve. All this generates a series of difficulties for communication between members and emotional relationships ( Duarte and Snyder, 2006 ; Lin et al., 2008 ; Shuffler et al., 2010 ).

Virtual teams are affected by a series of factors and phases, which have been investigated in the literature ( Abarca et al., 2020 ) and which give rise to different models for studying and relating them for performance. There are several models of VTs, from classical ones ( Martins et al., 2004 ; Powell et al., 2004 ) to a recent one ( Dulebohn and Hoch, 2017 ). Others analyze VTs at the management level ( Hertel et al., 2005 ) and others analyze them as a systemic Input-Process-Output or IPO ( Saldaña Ramos, 2010 ). This last model is based on others that studied face-to-face teams ( Hoch and Kozlowski, 2014 ) and proposes adaptations to the model when studying VT.

Research papers study the factors that influence VTs for virtual team management models and those that have a significant impact on performance are chosen and, in turn, are mentioned in the literature. As seen in Figure 1 , this study has taken into account the different phases of the IPO model and its adaptation ( Gilson et al., 2015 ) along with the factors that are organized into Inputs (related to communication and trust), Processes (task-oriented and socio-emotional) and Outputs (performance).

Reference IPO model for analyzing VTs. Source: Based on authors.

As observed in VT models, communication is studied in relation to the characteristics of the tasks that will be developed and co-created in a distributed way.

Task Features

The interaction between task type and communication and its impact on team performance has been investigated in the literature ( Montoya-Weiss et al., 2001 ; Bell et al., 2002 ; Rico and Cohen, 2005 ). Because virtual teams rely heavily on communication technologies to coordinate their work, it is necessary to examine the relationship between the nature of the task and the effectiveness of communication that impacts team performance.

Software development projects are characterized by great uncertainty in terms of requirements and risk planning and followed by technological suitability until the project is completed. Task uncertainty has been conceptualized using various dimensions of task complexity in the literature. Some of the dimensions studied are task variety and task analyzability ( Daft and Lengel, 1986 ); variability ( de Ven et al., 1976 ); uniformity ( Mohr, 1971 ); predictability ( Galbraith, 1973 ); and complexity ( Duncan, 1972 ). The proposed model of information processing by Daft and Macintosh (1981) is comprehensive and captures the nature of virtual teamwork effectively through the dimensions of task variety and task analyzability.

As seen in the VTs models, trust is considered as leadership, cohesion and team empowerment. These 3 characteristics are described in more detail below:

One definition of leadership states that it is when a person gets other people to do something ( Kort, 2008 ). Leadership is an influential relationship between leaders and followers who attempt to make changes that benefit their mutual purposes ( Kort, 2008 ).

In VTs, transformational leadership seems to also arise from personality and communication factors ( Balthazard et al., 2009 ) and can increase performance, satisfaction ( Purvanova and Bono, 2009 ) and motivation ( Andressen et al., 2012 ).

Clearly, leadership is important for VTs. In one study ( Glückler and Schrott, 2007 ) it was found that communication influenced who emerged as a leader.

Glückler and Schrott (2007) found that communication behavior influenced who emerged as a leader. Similarly, leader–member exchange ( Goh and Wasko, 2012 ), perceptions of supportive leadership ( Schepers et al., 2011 ), leadership roles ( Konradt and Hoch, 2007 ) and cross-cultural leadership ( Sarker et al., 2009 ) have received attention, and other research has studied the impact of the type of recognition a leader uses to motivate workers ( Whitford and Moss, 2009 ).

Research on VT leadership has grown rapidly, with two popular areas being leadership behavior and traits ( Gilson et al., 2015 ). Here, the work has examined inspirational aspects ( Joshi et al., 2009 ) as well as transformational and transactional leaders ( Huang et al., 2010 ; David Strang, 2011 ). In VT, transformational leadership seems to be due to personality and communication factors ( Balthazard et al., 2009 ) and can increase performance, satisfaction ( Purvanova and Bono, 2009 ) and motivation ( Andressen et al., 2012 ).

Several studies have examined the interaction between leadership and virtuality, finding that team members are more satisfied with their team and leader and perceive that their leader is better able to decode messages when the leader is geographically distant from the team ( Henderson, 2008 ). Hoch and Kozlowski (2014) found that virtuality dampened the relationship between hierarchical leadership and performance while improving the relationship between structural supports and performance.

Clearly, leadership within VTs is important. As such, leaders can play a central role in how a VT works, particularly because they influence how a team deals with obstacles and how the team ultimately adapts to such challenges. This can be seen in articles on team adaptation research ( Baard et al., 2014 ).

Other research suggests that classic leadership styles are appropriate for a virtual team:

Democratic ( McBer and Company, 1980 ) and referee leadership styles ( Rashid and Dar, 1994 ) have some characteristics that are very suitable for a virtual team. One negative factor could be that many meetings are needed to reach consensus. In a virtual team, it is difficult and time-consuming to hold meetings for each decision.

Operational leadership ( McBer and Company, 1980 ) may be a good option because this leadership style gives team members clear roles and tasks. In addition, the leader makes the processes and structures very clear, so lack of communication will be reduced. A negative feature of this style of leadership for virtual teams might be that the contribution of the team members, and their responsibilities, might be a little less than the team members want.

Coaching leadership ( McBer and Company, 1980 ) fits virtual teams very well because it gives a lot of freedom to the team members, which means that they are also responsible for their work and results. Team members can set their own goals and therefore also progress personally while working in the virtual team. This leadership style, however, also has some difficulties. The processes, structures and roles of the team may not always be very clear because the leader allows team members to establish and use their own. Therefore, the success of the virtual team might suffer a little.

According to Salisbury et al. (2006) research into classical teams ( Lott and Lott, 1965 ; Hogg, 1987 ) suggest that the physical distance between members can be translated into a psychological distance between them. Following this line of reasoning ( Salisbury et al., 2006 ) the physical dispersion of the virtual team could inhibit cohesion. In addition, virtual team members may have different ideas about what cohesion is. In other words, the idea of cohesion, which is the communication between group members, is affected by the medium used to communicate. This is especially true given the ease with which users can exchange non-task related information in some environments. Clearly, the differences in communication patterns between virtual and onsite teams suggest that measures (such as PCS) which are used in one context cannot be directly employed in another without reevaluating them ( Boudreau et al., 2001 ).

Studies about group behavior ( Hogg and Tindale, 2001 ) consistently report that, in working groups, the members’ ability to get along with each other is critical for well-being and task performance. The importance of developing such intra-group cohesion has been shown to be especially relevant in cases where members don not know each other, such as in newly formed groups or when members are assigned to new project teams ( Griffin, 1997 ). The Symbolic Convergence Theory (SCT) proposed by Bormann (1983 , 1996) and tested by Bormann et al. (1994 , 1997) provides a rich theoretical framework for understanding group cohesion in traditional and technology-based teams.

One type of group cohesion is task cohesion and occurs when members stay together because they are strongly involved with the group’s tasks. Task cohesion will be greater if members identify with the group’s tasks and find them intrinsically rewarding and valuable.

Group cohesion for virtual teams with members working at different geographic locations, for different organizations, and even in different sectors of the economy, need effective communication and close coordination to achieve goals ( Powell et al., 2004 ).

The positive relationship between cohesion and trust in working teams has been confirmed in many investigations ( Evans and Dion, 1991 ; Simons and Peterson, 2000 ; Baltes et al., 2002 ; Powell et al., 2004 ; Spector, 2006 ; Lu, 2015 ).

Empowerment

Empowerment is favorable acknowledgment by the team leader and allows team members to participate in decision making. Empowerment makes the team member trust the leader, and when the leader asks for opinions and comments, he or she processes them and makes decisions based on the suggestions.

Some past studies ( Kirkman et al., 2004 ) indicate that teams can be empowered in four different ways, (a) power, which is the collective belief that a team can be effective, (b) significance, which is the extent to which team members care about their tasks, (c) autonomy, in which team members have freedom to make decisions; and (d) impact, the degree to which team members feel that their tasks make important contributions.

The impact of team empowerment on the performance of EVTs in 10 telecommunications companies in Islamabad was studied by Gondal and Khan (2008) . That study found that there is a positive relationship between team empowerment and team performance in telecommunications teams. Team performance includes the variables of cooperation, coordination, trust, cohesion, effort, mutual support, team conflict, job satisfaction and effectiveness in terms of quality.

Kirkman et al. (2004) also studied 35 sales and service teams at a high-tech firm and investigated the impact of team empowerment on team performance and the intermediary role of face-to-face interaction. They found that team empowerment is positively related to both constructs of virtual team performance, which are process improvement and customer satisfaction.

As indicated ( Kirkman et al., 2004 ) empowerment in a virtual team can be a substitute for the leadership tasks of a single team leader ( Kerr and Jermier, 1978 ). The behavior of the team members due to the leader’s empowerment is directly and positively related to trust. It is considered a confidence-building attribute. For empowerment, commitment is only reached when the team has a shared vision and honest and regular communication with the leader.

Models usually study the processes of tasks by investigating communication and the social-emotional processes of trust. The degree of virtuality and the interrelationship of tasks are also considered important for performance.

Communication

In mixed teams, where some members are at the same physical location and others are not, communication problems can also occur. Team members at the same physical place often communicate in a deeper way than with the distant members and this ends up causing friction between them and, therefore, damages the performance of the team ( Powell et al., 2004 ).

Communication, coordination and knowledge sharing are essential elements of action processes to predict the efficiency and effectiveness of the team ( Kock and Lynn, 2012 ).

Another study ( Peñarroja et al., 2013 ) found that as virtuality increased, team coordination declined, but this relationship was partially mediated by levels of trust.

Early research on VTs proposed that initial FtF meetings should help encourage performance ( Geber, 1995 ). Han et al. (2011) extended this line of reasoning to creativity and compared modes of initial communication to assess their impact.

Understanding how, why, and under what conditions trust develops remains a popular research topic. In part, the importance of trust can be attributed to results that suggest it positively affects the success of VTs ( Furumo, 2009 ).

For VTs, trust is influenced by communication behavior, timely responses, open communication, and feedback ( Henttonen and Blomqvist, 2005 ).

More recent findings suggest that rapid trust is likely to be established with early communication and a positive tone ( Coppola et al., 2004 ) and may influence performance by improving member confidence and subsequent trust ( Crisp and Jarvenpaa, 2013 ).

Other research has studied the impact of global VTs on trust development ( Lowry et al., 2010 ). Culturally heterogeneous teams (China and the United States) and homogeneous teams were compared and no significant differences were found in the trust between FtF teams and VTs ( Lowry et al., 2010 ).

Furthermore, in a longitudinal study of global VTs, Goh and Wasko (2012) found that when everyone’s actions were visible, trust was not a key factor in resource allocation.

Finally, in globally distributed teams, trust mitigated the negative effects of member diversity on performance ( Garrison et al., 2010 ).

Finally, aspects such as performance, quality of the product or service obtained and member satisfaction are relevant for the results. Of course, performance is the essential variable and is the usual interest of research into virtual teams.

Performance

Overall, research suggests that working in VTs can have a positive impact on effectiveness ( Kock and Lynn, 2012 ; Maynard et al., 2012 ), while others provide evidence suggesting that virtual working affects effectiveness negatively ( Cramton and Webber, 2005 ; Schweitzer and Duxbury, 2010 ).

A positive trend appears to be that work in this area is beginning to take advantage of ratings from outside the team ( Andressen et al., 2012 ; Cummings and Haas, 2012 ), as well as objective measures of team performance ( Rico and Cohen, 2005 ; Rapp et al., 2010 ).

In considering the elements of effectiveness, several researchers have examined the quality of the project ( Altschuller and Benbunan-Fich, 2010 ). This makes sense, since VTs are often used for special projects. In addition, the quality of the decisions made and the time taken to reach a decision have been studied and the findings are often that VTs need more time to make decisions ( Pridmore and Phillips-Wren, 2011 ).

Other studies find that VTs that set goals early in their life cycle showed greater cohesion and performance ( Brahm and Kunze, 2012 ).

Other work in this area also suggests that team motivation and performance can be improved by using mixed incentive rewards ( Bryant et al., 2009 ).

One study ( Kirkman et al., 2013 ) considered the impact of national diversity on performance and found a curvilinear (U-shaped) relationship moderated by both media richness and psychological safety.

Materials and Methods

The present study was carried out to understand the factors which influence the performance of VTs in a professional team that is used to using “agile” methodologies and virtual working.

A quantitative causal study using partial least squares (PLS) was performed using an online questionnaire, with a sample of 317 participants (Software Engineers).

Questionnaire and Measurement Scales

A quantitative research divided into the following blocks was designed and then carried out and the results were used to test the hypotheses that constitute the theoretical model. The details are shown in Table 1 .

Variables of the proposed model.

Proposed Model

The proposed model that incorporated the hypothetical relationships is illustrated in Figure 2 .

Proposed model.

Research Hypotheses

The research hypotheses for the investigation of the factors that influence the performance of virtual teams are presented below.

Considerations of the Research Approach in the Hypotheses

Due to the quantitative approach chosen and by virtue of the delimiting nature of quantitative research, the hypotheses constitute the behavior that the variables or constructs are expected to show in the software development VT environment. Figure 2 shows the initial model. The hypotheses that are to be tested in this study are presented below:

• H1: The characteristics of the tasks have a direct and positive influence on the communication of the virtual team members.
• H2: The level of leadership of the members of the virtual team has a direct and positive influence on trust.
• H3: The level of cohesion of the members of the virtual team has a direct and positive influence on trust.
• H4: The level of empowerment of the members of the virtual team has a direct and positive influence on trust.
• H5: Communication between virtual workers has a direct and positive influence on the confidence of the virtual team.
• H6: Trust among virtual workers has a direct and positive influence on the performance of the virtual team.
• H7: The level of communication between virtual workers has a direct and positive influence on the performance of the virtual team.

Hypothesis Research Scope Considerations

The correlational scope used to find the relationships between variables that give an answer to a problem means that without proving these relationships there could be a causal link between the variables. Figure 2 shows the constructs of the hypotheses in the study model.

Additionally, it is important to reiterate, that the VT performance construct is based on the relationships with the aggregate constructs Communication (h9) and Trust (h10) which in turn are expected to have a strong relationship between them and this will be tested in the research (h7 and h8). Then, the latent variable called communication has the constructs of cultural diversity (h1), the characteristics of the tasks (h2), as well as the distribution index (h3). Finally, the variables leadership (h4), cohesion (h5), and empowerment (h6) are used to find the latent variable trust.

The model used for the research hypotheses, its variables and its relationships are described in the literature review section.

Sampling and Data Collection

1,200 software engineers with experience in programming with Agile methodology (which involves co-creation and collaboration in virtual teams) and who had graduated in the last 10 years, were directly invited to take part in the survey. 317 responses were collected.

The study was designed based on robust studies previously applied to telework and virtual teams in globally distributed teams for 20 years and after a robust literature review on the most relevant factors affecting the performance of these teams.

The study was applied at a privileged moment 3 months after the official declaration of the Covid pandemic19 by The World Health Organization.

The population taken into account for this study is considered stable because they were graduates of accredited engineering degrees from universities recognized in Costa Rica for their training in software development over the past 20 years and related colleagues.

Parallel to this study, a control study was conducted on another more heterogeneous population of professionals who in many cases had to start from scratch in the form of teleworking or virtual teams. This helped to understand and further refine the proposed model.

Demographic Details

As can be seen in Table 2 , the results found for the demographic features of the 317 members of virtual teams that use agile methodologies for the development of their projects are tabulated.

Demographic details.

For gender, it is normal that in Software Engineering (SE) there is a higher proportion of men (81%) than women (19%). For age, it should be noted that 65% of those who responded to the questionnaire about virtual teams of SE were digital natives (born after the 1990s).

For the time spent working in VTs, almost 90% of the young members of SE VTs had joined in the last 5 years, which is consistent with handling agile methodologies and virtual teams in this profession.

The proportion of leaders is approximately 30% of the group and members 70%. In the SE VTs it was notable that 58% of the members have also been project leaders before, due to the dynamics of the Agile methodology and value co-creation. The diversity of membership in organizations shows that the members from SE VTs were 25% of the sample group and the members of VTs from other professions (OP) were 5% due to their recent incorporation into this way of working.

The members of SE VTs (68%) were very interested in continuing working in VTs in a new post-Covid19 normality.

Important Findings

It is clear that the objective of the work is to analyze the determinants of performance in virtual teams in a time of pandemic, where conditions forced the vast majority of workers to develop their work within their homes remotely, forming virtual teams in which they already participated or had to organize in this way. With this objective, a survey has been conducted among software engineers and they have specified a structural equation model to analyze the relationship between different inputs and processes in the output. The results obtained show the relevance of communication and confidence in the performance of virtual teams. But before reviewing the complete model it is important to mention some important findings:

• – The participants in this study were professionals in the area of computer science, dedicated to the development of software. Mainly digital natives with experience in VTs, people with ages between 18 and 29 years (64.98%) and digital migrants between 30 and 39 years (18.93%) with high mastery of information and communication technologies ICTs. In general, they consider that virtual teamwork is an excellent way to develop their work in the world of technology. It is part of their profession. In the worst case, some engineers maintain a neutral stance toward the issue of virtual teamwork. Under normal conditions they have worked in virtual mixed mode and face to face, so under 100% pandemic conditions, they really didn’t have much of an adjustment problem, because they were already doing it before. Even when asked about the future, a high number (68.45%) see themselves working in virtual teams and 28.71% in mixed mode.
• – The professionals interviewed in many cases have indicated that communication in virtual teams is a factor that must be improved in frequency and quality because they feel that the initial instructions are not enough. Others take communication as a natural factor, regardless of whether the communication is virtual or face to face. Finally others indicate that communication in the virtual team is better with the good use of collaborative tools.
• – Trust is a very important factor in the study, because it allows employees to perform their tasks at a distance in a better way, as long as their tasks are measured by objectives. Too many controls throughout the work process make the virtual collaborator feel watched and that he is being evaluated negatively.
• – Regarding the geographical distribution, software engineers agree with professionals from other areas in that it saves them time and money and due to the intensive and natural use of ICT in their profession, the physical distance was not relevant to achieve the objectives.
• – Regarding the cultural diversity in this study, being regional, the interviewees gave positive answers because the cultural differences did not influence their performance in the software development projects that have in common in a standardized way the computational language and the technological architectures.
• – About the distribution of tasks, to be developed projects with agile methodologies, the specifications of functional and technical requirements are very clear from the beginning and also are clarified or refined in time with the coordination, co-creation and collaborative work, so engineers have clear what their tasks are throughout the process. As for the Interdependence of tasks there was no significant finding at the level of software development operations. It is possible that this is due to the fact that software projects are structured at the level of by-products and tasks in an orderly manner.
• – By using agile methodologies to develop work with virtual teams and distributing tasks among members early on, empowering each member individually and in relation to others has been vital in software projects. Depending on the level of experience and individual skills, empowerment is increasingly important in virtuality.
• – Leadership is a fundamental issue, which directly influences the confidence of virtual collaborators. In this study the members of the virtual teams gave it a moderate importance because of the work methodology and the mixed experience: virtual and face to face, the works are done in a collaborative and very horizontal way. Additionally, 58.04% indicated that they had already led some software development in this modality in the past.
• – The virtual team software development has made the collaborators work longer interacting through the ICTs, fighting to achieve common objectives. This has made that the cohesion between them has increased at work level.

Sample Frame

A random database of 1,000 software engineers graduated in the last 20 years from accredited software engineering or systems engineering careers at universities in Costa Rica, a country with a tradition and recognition of many years of software development for the region of Central and North America (mainly United States), was taken into account.

The survey was applied from May to July 2020, in the midst of the Covid19 pandemic, using an email invitation for respondents to fill out an electronic survey instrument using the Google Forms platform with 65 items.

Limitations

There are many factors previously studied that influence in one way or another the performance of VTs, but at the level of the proposed model they cannot all be included because they have shown that their influence has not been very strong or because the type of population that was chosen for this specific study was not relevant. For example, a limitation of this study is that the dimension of rewards was not considered, since in recent similar studies they have not shown significant relationships ( Tan et al., 2019 ).

A second limitation that could be considered, is related to the fact that, the respondents belong to different institutional environments, regularly projects of 5–10 members, in medium sized software development companies. In this sense, it is common that they use agile methodology as the project organization standard, which compensates for the differences in size of the parent organization, type of products developed, the member’s country of origin and the country of origin of the final client.

The cultural diversity that has been extensively studied in virtual teams, in this study was included in the survey but its results did not show a significant influence because the software development projects were usually regional and associated with the same continent and time zones with few differences.

Analysis of Results

Results for the measurement model.

The measurement model was tested for internal reliability, convergent validity and discriminant validity. The internal reliability was evaluated using Cronbach’s alpha which needs a value of at least 0.70 for acceptable internal consistency ( Hair et al., 2013 ). Causality was analyzed using indicator loadings. Composite reliability was also used to investigate causality ( Werts et al., 1974 ). All the constructs had internal consistency as all the values for Cronbach’s alpha were higher than 0.7 ( Fornell and Larcker, 1981 ; Bagozzi and Yi, 1988 ; Hair et al., 2011 ). Fornell and Larcker (1981) used the Average Variance Extracted (AVE) to assess convergent validity, and stated that an acceptable value for this factor is AVE ≥ 0.50.

Table 3 shows the element loads, Cronbach’s alpha and AVE which were found for the constructs. Values for Cronbach’s alpha ranged from 0.914 to 0.709, which is higher than the recommended level of 0.70 and therefore indicates strong internal reliability for the constructs. The composite reliability ranged between 0.946 and 0.837 and the AVE ranged between 0.632 and 0.853, which are higher than the recommended levels. The conditions for convergent validity were therefore met. The discriminant validity was calculated with the square root of the AVE and the cross-loading matrix. For satisfactory discriminant validity, the square root of the AVE of a construct should be greater than the correlation with other constructs ( Fornell and Larcker, 1981 ).

Reliability, validity of the constructs, Fornell–Larcker criterion and HTMT.

These researchers carried out simulation studies to demonstrate that a lack of discriminant validity is better detected by means of another technique called the heterotrait-monotrait ratio (HTMT), which they had discovered earlier. All the HTMT ratios for each pair of factors was <0.90.

Results for the Structural Models

The structural model was built from the different relationships between the constructs. The hypotheses for the study were tested by analyzing the relationships between the different constructs in the model to see if they were supported ( Chin and Newsted, 1999 ; Reinartz et al., 2009 ).

The variance is found from the values for the reflective indicators of the constructs ( Barclay et al., 1995 ; Chin, 2010 ). This was found numerically by calculating the values of R 2 , which is a measure of the amount of variance for the construct in the model. The bootstrap method was used to test the hypotheses. The detailed results (path coefficient, β, and t -statistic) are summarized in Table 4 and Figure 3 .

Results of hypothesis: path coefficients and statistical significance.

Final model. *** p < 0.001 [ t (0.001; 499) = 3.106644601].

The measurements for approximate adjustments of the model ( Henseler et al., 2016 ; Henseler, 2017 ) are given by the Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR) value ( Hu and Bentler, 1998 ) which measures the difference between the observed correlation matrix and the implied correlation matrix of the model. SRMR shows the average magnitude of these differences.

A low value of SRMR means that the fit is better. In our case SRMR = 0.055, which was within the recommendations for a model with a good fit. A good fit is considered to be shown with a value of SRMR < 0.08 ( Hu and Bentler, 1998 ).

The following conclusions were made from the values for R 2 (see Table 5 and Figure 3 ) found in the research by Chin (1998) and show that 0.67 = “Substantial,” 0.33 = “Moderate,” and 0.19 = “Weak.” The result obtained for the main dependent variable of the model, Performance (PER) R 2 = 48.4% was moderate and the rest of constructs, Trust R 2 = 74.2% and Communication (COM) R 2 = 33.3%.

R 2 results.

This value shows that this model is “substantially” applicable to the performance of virtual teams. Please note that the variables that are not endogenous do not have a value for R 2 .

The results obtained for the proposed model have found that the performance of virtual teams is moderately justified by the determinants as R 2 = 48.4%. However, the value obtained for Trust ( R 2 = 74.2%) should be noted as it means that the variance of this construct explains to a high percentage, aspects such as the confidence of the virtual team. This is essential to improve the co-creation of software development teams.

This study confirmed that the most significant variable for the performance of the EVT is Trust (H6), since this variable has the strongest influence on the dependent variable Performance. It also has a very high predictive capacity as the determination coefficient is high (β = 0.684; t = 14.281).

These results coincide with other recent findings that confirm that Trust can influence performance by improving member confidence and the subsequent trust ( Crisp and Jarvenpaa, 2013 ). So when everyone’s actions are visible, trust was not a key factor in resource allocation ( Goh and Wasko, 2012 ).

The next most important variable in the model is Task features (H1). Virtual teams rely heavily on communication technologies to coordinate their work, so the relationship between the nature of the task and the effectiveness of communication was studied in order to find its subsequent impact on team performance. Therefore, one of the determinants was the characteristics of the tasks and the positive influence on the communication of the members of the virtual team. The result was positive with a confidence level of 99.9%. Therefore, H1 was supported (β = 0.577; t = 13.842). These results amply confirm that great uncertainty about the requirements and the risk planning, followed by the technological suitability of the projects, are key to communication.

Our study also confirmed that the level of empowerment of the members of the virtual teams was also found to have a significant effect on Trust (H4). This result showed that Empowerment positively promotes and increases the confidence of a virtual team (β = 0.348; t = 7.086).

These results coincide with previous work ( Gondal and Khan, 2008 ) that measured the impact of team empowerment on VT performance and demonstrated that there is a positive relationship between team empowerment and team performance in virtual teams. Our findings go further and state that this is achieved with Trust. As with other studies ( Kirkman et al., 2004 ), empowerment in a virtual team can work as an alternative to leadership. Thus, the activities that are normally done by a team leader can be carried out by the members ( Kerr and Jermier, 1978 ) by contributing with co-creation. This behavior of the team members because of the empowerment of the team members by the leader has a direct and positive relationship with trust. It is considered a confidence-building attribute. In empowerment, commitment is only reached when the team has a shared vision and honest and regular communication with the leader.

The relationship with the next highest confidence level for trust in the virtual teams was H3: the level of cohesion of the members of the virtual teams (β = 0.366; t = 6.725). This finding shows that the ability of the members of a virtual team to get along with each other is critical to the well-being of the group and task performance. These findings are consistent with previous work ( Evans and Dion, 1991 ; Simons and Peterson, 2000 ; Baltes et al., 2002 ; Powell et al., 2004 ; Spector, 2006 ; Lu, 2015 ).

Therefore, it will be very important for software development companies to implement intragroup cohesion measures. These findings are consistent with other work ( Griffin, 1997 ). Similarly, managers could implement economic incentives that support their software developers to be strongly involved with the group’s tasks. Task cohesion will be greater if members identify with the group’s tasks and find them intrinsically rewarding and valuable.

In the current context with the Covid-19 pandemic, this cohesion has been highly questioned. Let’s not forget that the isolation measures decreed by many governments have made it difficult to deal with aspects such as different geographical locations, belonging to different organizations, and different sectors of the economy. This has made effective communication and close coordination difficult. However, the results reaffirm the theories already shown ( Powell et al., 2004 ).

One of the factors is the level of leadership of the members of the virtual teams (H2). The results showed that this had a direct and positive influence on Trust (β = 0.138; t = 3.209). Clearly, leadership in VTs is important. The results obtained coincide with the study by Baard et al. (2014) and show that the role of leaders is important for working in a VT, especially because leaders influence the way a team faces obstacles and the way the team ultimately adapts to such challenges, which is very important for the confidence generated for the future.

Therefore, the leader of a virtual team must use a style that generates Trust as a mediating factor in the indirect effect that this has on Performance.

The Communication between virtual workers has a direct and positive influence on the confidence of the virtual team and was supported (β = 0.160; t = 3.741) with a confidence level of 99.9%. Our study does support this hypothesis and agrees with Peñarroja et al. (2013) , who found that as virtuality increased, team coordination declined, but this relationship was partially mediated by levels of Trust. In addition, as can be seen in the results, it is the least strongly supported hypothesis.

H7, the level of communication between virtual workers has a direct and positive influence on the performance of the virtual team, was not supported (β = 0.019; t = 0.353). This outcome appears to be conditioned by the very high levels of virtuality that have been reached during the containment measures decreed by governments at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic and, as stated above, clearly demonstrate that communication influences trust only through trust.

This result reaffirms the role of trust-building in achieving the highest performance of the virtual team and allows us to conclude that the confidence of all members in the virtual team is key to success in software development.

The proposed model based on the IPO adaptation ( Gilson et al., 2015 ) has been largely validated using a PLS-SEM analysis. Therefore, software companies can use it as a theoretical framework when preparing their human resources and Virtual Teams management policies.

The important role of Trust as a basis for most of the variables of the model shows that it should be considered as one of the most important and relevant variables, especially because of the increase in virtualization and teleworking during the Covid-19 pandemic. Companies must give greater importance to Trust and take into account that all measures which strengthen leadership, communication, cohesion or the configuration of task characteristics must be designed considering the trust generated. It is interesting to note that economic incentives can help with group cohesion and policies improve empowerment. One such incentive could be skills training for group members. These measures may become more important than leadership in the coming years, given the results found during the pandemic.

Finally, this study was completed with software developers who use agile methodologies and who have good IT skills. The results, therefore, show that the increased virtuality brought about by the pandemic can be an opportunity to innovate in communication to influence performance.

Data Availability Statement

Author contributions.

VG-A undertook the research, collected the data, and prepared the initial manuscript. PP-S completed, revised, and finalized the manuscript, and participated in the preparation of the manuscript. MA-C provided the intellectual input and analyzed the data. All authors contributed to the article and approved the submitted version.

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

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Virtual Team Collaboration and the Digital Transformation: Effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic, and a Five-Factor Model

• First Online: 01 September 2024

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• Jasmin Mahadevan 2  

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, virtual and remote teamwork have increased in scope and relevance. Being able to master this condition is therefore an essential skill. But what is virtual team collaboration, and what makes it successful? This chapter provides you with conclusive answers. It delineates various types of teams, such as global or COVID-induced virtual teams, and outlines how and why these have developed, also in light of the digital transformation. It proposes three dimensions and a five-factor model for high performance. Afterwards, you will know how to configure the key moderators of ‘best practice’ virtual team collaboration.

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Further Reading

Ipsos Group (2021): Return to the workplace 2021 global survey. A 29-country Ipsos survey. https://www.ipsos.com/sites/default/files/ct/news/documents/2021-07/Global%20Advisor%20-%20Return%20to%20Workplace%20Survey.pdf . Accessed 1 May 2024.

The study highlights how the COVID-19 pandemic has changed people’s workplace and work arrangement preferences in selected countries all over the globe.

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Mahadevan, J. (2024). Virtual Team Collaboration and the Digital Transformation: Effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic, and a Five-Factor Model. In: Virtual Team Collaboration. Springer Gabler, Wiesbaden. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-44969-8_2

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Conflict in virtual teams: a bibliometric analysis, systematic review, and research agenda

International Journal of Conflict Management

ISSN : 1044-4068

Article publication date: 6 June 2022

Issue publication date: 6 January 2023

The purpose of this study is to map the intellectual structure of the research concerning conflict and conflict management in virtual teams (VT), to contribute to the further integration of knowledge among different streams of research and to develop an interpretative framework to stimulate future research.

Design/methodology/approach

A data set of 107 relevant papers on the topic was retrieved using the Web of Science Core Collection database covering a period ranging from 2001 to 2019. A comparative bibliometric analysis consisting of the integration of results from the citation, co-citation and bibliographic coupling was performed to identify the most influential papers. The systematic literature review complemented the bibliometric results by clustering the most influential papers.

The results revealed different intellectual structures across several types of analyses. Despite such differences, 41 papers resulted as the most impactful and provided evidence of the emergence of five thematic clusters: trust, performance, cultural diversity, knowledge management and team management.

Research limitations/implications

Based on the bibliometric analyses an interpretative research agenda has been developed that unveils the main future research avenues. The paper also offers important theoretical contributions by systematizing knowledge on conflict in identifying VTs. Managerial contributions in the form of the identification of best practices are also developed to guide conflict management in VTs.

Originality/value

The uniqueness of this paper is related to its effort in studying, mapping and systematizing the knowledge concerning the topic of handling conflicts in VTs. Considering the current contingencies, this research is particularly timely.

• Virtual teams
• Conflict management
• Bibliometric analysis
• Remote working

Caputo, A. , Kargina, M. and Pellegrini, M.M. (2023), "Conflict in virtual teams: a bibliometric analysis, systematic review, and research agenda", International Journal of Conflict Management , Vol. 34 No. 1, pp. 1-31. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJCMA-07-2021-0117

Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2022, Andrea Caputo, Mariya Kargina and Massimiliano Matteo Pellegrini.

Published by Emerald Publishing Limited. This is published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) licence. Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and create derivative works of this article (for both commercial and non-commercial purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and authors. The full terms of this licence may be seen at http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode

1. Introduction

Handling conflicts properly in teams is crucial for possible success ( Caputo et al. , 2019 ). Due to the specific contingencies experienced by virtual teams (VTs), this aspect becomes even more prominent ( Gilson et al. , 2015 ). The Covid-19 pandemic forced many organizations to implement remote working, often in an abrupt and fast way, indicating a particularly favorable historic momentum to systematize previous knowledge on the topic and to offer ways forward. With such a purpose in mind, this paper aims to provide an overview of the evolution of the literature regarding conflict and conflict management in the context of VTs over the past two decades. For this study, we broadly define conflict as the situation where parties within a VT perceive that their goals or interests are incompatible or in opposition ( Ayoko and Konrad, 2012 ); whereas we consider conflict management to refer to the understanding of conflict as a whole, its antecedents, the process, the styles and strategies of handling conflicts and associated behaviors in the context of VT ( Caputo et al. , 2018a ). Even in the context and dynamics of the virtuality of VTs, we concur with Caputo et al. (2018a , 2018b , p. 11) that:

The main objective of conflict management is not to eliminate conflict, but to find different ways to manage it properly by controlling the dysfunctional elements of the conflict while facilitating its productive aspects.

The Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated the already rapid development of technologies in information and communication, further reducing the distances and increasing remote work interactions ( Garro-Abarca et al. , 2021 ). The hyper-globalization processes of the past decades have led, already before the pandemic, to the growing importance of VTs in today’s organizations ( Gibson et al. , 2014 ). VTs can be considered as groups of geographically dispersed co-workers who work interdependently, share common objectives, practices and procedures using technology to communicate and collaborate across time and space ( DeSanctis and Monge, 1999 ). These teams may come from different cultures, yet they operate in the same organizational cultural framework, can bring together a variety of knowledge and experience and deal with a high degree of technologically mediated interactions ( Batarseh et al. , 2017 ). These factors contribute to making today’s organizations more diverse and possibly more conflictual.

Previous reviews and conceptual work have touched on the issues related to conflict and conflict management in the context of VTs. In particular, Schiller and Mandviwalla (2007) highlighted the issues related to conflict management in VT in an early theoretical piece that looked at the use of theories in VT research. More recently, Gilson et al. (2015) presented a seminal overview of the research in VTs that unveiled 10 themes and 10 opportunities for future research. According to the authors, conflict management was mostly studied as a mediator in a unidimensional relation, resulting in the suggestion that conflict is more likely to happen in VTs and it negatively affects team dynamics, processes and outcomes. A similar suggestion is made by Jimenez et al. (2017) , in reviewing the works about global VTs, and Raghuram et al. (2019) , reviewing studies about virtual work, who highlighted how conflicts emerge mostly from cultural and language differences affecting team dynamics. The fragmentation of empirical literature about conflict in VTs and the limited conceptual attention given to the topic calls for an investigation and systematization of the literature about conflict and conflict management in VTs as timely and necessary to support both research and practice to navigate the uncertainties of today’s world.

Shedding light on the evolution of the study of conflicts and their associated management in VTs, a bibliometric analysis of 107 relevant articles published in peer-reviewed scientific journals has been performed to first identify the most influential studies and second, to systematize the academic knowledge by unveiling the existence of five thematic clusters: trust, performance, cultural diversity, knowledge management and team management. In particular, an innovative approach has been adopted by comparing results from alternative, complementary bibliometric tools, i.e. citations, normalized citations and bibliographic coupling, to identify the most influential articles in the field ( Caputo et al. , 2021 ).

This study provides several contributions theoretically, methodologically and practically. First, it contributes to strengthening the integration and systematization of the two bodies of literature in conflict management and VTs. Second, it provides a rigorous and systematic identification of the most influential papers in these fields and identifies thematic areas to bring forward the research. Third, it contributes to bibliometric and reviews studies by advancing the use of comparative bibliometric approaches. Finally, the paper interprets in an integrative framework the current knowledge on the field comprising nonlinear and recursive loops between its elements and, thanks to that, elaborates future research avenues.

The paper is organized into five sections, including this introduction, as follows. Section 2 describes the protocol adopted for selecting the paper and the analyses performed. Section 3 presents the results of the analyses and determines the most impactful papers. Section 4 uses the most impactful papers to propose a framework aimed at suggesting an agenda for future research. Section 5 summarizes the contributions of the paper and its limitations.

This paper aims to provide a comprehensive yet succinct and timely knowledge map of the studies investigating conflict management in VTs. Such a knowledge map is purposed to provide both scholars and practitioners with an overview of what we know i.e. best practices and main findings, and what we still do not know i.e. future research directions about managing conflict in virtual workplaces. The Covid-19 pandemic that resulted in large part of the office workforce working remotely is disrupting social relationships in the workplace. A review of conflict management in VTs is therefore necessary and needs to be carried out in a timely fashion to serve its purpose.

To achieve these objectives, we have built upon best practices in systematic literature review and bibliometric studies and complemented the two methodologies to fulfill simultaneously the breadth and depth of the analysis. The simultaneous use of these two complementary methods, albeit recent, is not entirely new as it has been validated in several studies ( Caputo et al. , 2021 ; Caputo et al. , 2018b ; Dabić et al. , 2020 ). It allows researchers to investigate a topic in depth through the systematic review while maintaining a wider picture of the evolution of knowledge through bibliometric analysis. In this study, we have also included a methodological innovation in the complementary use of alternative bibliometric analyses to identify the most influential papers in the field.

2.1 Sampling protocol

Consistent with the systematic review method ( Thorpe et al. , 2005 ; Tranfield et al. , 2003 ), a panel of experts was formed to define the field of research, choose the keywords, the database and the set of inclusion and exclusion criteria. The panel of experts consisted of two professors, one an expert in strategy, negotiation and conflict management and the other in organizational studies and team working, together with a PhD student specifically focused on the organizational dynamics of dispersed teams. A step-by-step process was followed as outlined in this section.

Step 1 . The database Web of Science (WoS) Core Collection® (research areas “Business Economics” and “Psychology”) was chosen after several alternative searches in Scopus and EBSCO because it retrieved a sample of high-quality articles representative of the best conflict in VTs research published to date. The choice of WoS Core Collection® is also supported and validated as appropriate for the field of inquiry by recent bibliometric studies in conflict management ( Caputo et al. , 2019 ).

Step 2 . A wide search string based on multiple levels of keywords was used ( Caputo, 2013 ) to ensure the capture of the most relevant papers on the topic. The first level included the keyword “Conflict”. The second level included the keywords about the remote/virtual nature of the investigated relationships: “smart OR virtual OR distributed OR distant OR remote”. The third level included keywords related to the organizational aspect of the teams, including “team OR group OR workplace OR workspace”. The search was run with Boolean operators (AND and OR) via the TS command, which searches among Title, Abstract, Author Keywords and Keywords Plus®. Consistent with best practices in bibliometric research and to ensure the comparability among the indicators, the year 2020 was excluded ( Caputo et al. , 2019 ). The search was carried out among peer-reviewed articles written in the English language and resulted in the first sample of 397 papers.

Step 3 . Due to the wideness of the search string, we proceeded to the manual “cleaning” of the data set by reading all the titles and abstracts of the selected papers to eliminate those that were not relevant to our search. When it was not possible to assess the relevance of the abstract, we obtained a digital copy of the full text of the paper. Excluded papers fall into two main categories: a large number of papers do not investigate conflict at all ( Ebrahim, 2015 ; Presbitero and Toledano, 2018 ), although the word “conflict” is presented in the search items. This situation mainly occurs because many papers had a declaration of conflict of interest that was caught by the search; others were eliminated because they simply mentioned “conflicting results” in the abstract or where conflict was just mentioned incidentally; a smaller portion of papers investigated conflict but not in a virtual environment ( Sheehan et al. , 2016 ). Following these criteria, two-hundred-ninety-three papers were eliminated because they were not relevant.

2.2 Analyses

The final data set of 107 papers was used as a basis for both the bibliometric analysis and a qualitative systematic literature review to develop a comprehensive map of the knowledge of the field.

Bibliometrics is a subset of scientometrics and applies statistical methods to the study of scientific activity in a scientific community ( Zupic and Čater, 2015 ). For our research, we followed the perspective known as positive bibliometrics ( Todeschini and Baccini, 2016 ). This is because we aim to describe and explain phenomena in science via the analysis of its scientific communication. In this view, bibliometric indicators represent phenomena or proxies of phenomena. For example, the citations received by an article that expresses a concept are a proxy of the diffusion and impact of said concept in the scientific community. Examples of positive bibliometrics are citation analysis, co-citation analysis, citation networks and productivity analysis.

Complementary bibliometric analyses were instrumental to identify the sample of the most influential papers to review. Prior studies argue for the use of more than one indicator ( Caputo et al. , 2019 ; Dabić et al. , 2020 ) as an effective way to limit the intrinsic bias that every indicator has.

First, we undertook a performance analysis based on indicators of activity. These indicators provide data about the volume and impact of research during a given timeframe via word frequency analysis, citation analysis and counting publications by the unit of analysis (e.g. authorship, country, affiliation, etc.).

Second, we built a science map based on indicators that provide spatial representations of how different scientific elements are related to one another to picture the structural and dynamic organization of knowledge about conflict management in VTs. We combined results from co-citation analysis and bibliographic coupling to identify the most influential papers, authors and journals and the co-occurrence of keywords analysis to identify the thematic structure of the field. Co-citation analysis “constructs measures of similarity between articles, authors or journals by using the frequency with which two units are cited together, i.e. co-citation counts” ( Caputo et al. , 2019 ). Therefore, co-citation analysis is powerful in showing a picture from the past, and it is biased by the time-dependency i.e. an older paper has the probability of obtaining more citations than a newer one. Bibliographic coupling is often used to aggregate papers by similarity, and it “measures the similarity between papers through their common cited references” ( Todeschini and Baccini, 2016 ). The advantage of a bibliographic coupling is to compare recent papers even if not been cited yet. The analysis of the co-occurrence of keywords uses the article’s keywords to investigate the conceptual structure of a field. According to Caputo et al. ( Caputo et al. , 2019 ):

This is the only bibliometric method that uses the content of the articles to directly measure similarity in which others use indirect measures such as citations and authorships, co-word analysis is particularly powerful and appropriate to develop a semantic map that helps in understanding the conceptual structure of a field.

By comparing and contrasting the results from activity indicators, co-citation analysis, bibliographic coupling and co-occurrence of keywords, it is possible to provide a systematic overview of the field ( Caputo et al. , 2021 ). The activity indicators will show the evolution of the field and its impact. Co-citation and bibliographic coupling will show an unbiased view of the most influential articles, authors and journals, whereas the co-occurrence of keywords will show the thematic map of the topics investigated.

The software VOSViewer ( van Eck and Waltman, 2010 ) was used to calculate the bibliometric indicators and provide the graphic representation of the networks. For a detailed explanation of the scripts and mathematical algorithms adopted in VOSViewer, please see van Eck and Waltman (2007 , 2010 ).

Combining the results of co-citation analysis and bibliographic coupling allowed us to identify a list of the most influential papers that were then considered for the qualitative systematic literature review. We have combined the top 20 papers resulting from three indicators: absolute citations, normalized citations and bibliographic coupling strength. Absolute citations are represented by the total number of citations received by a paper. Normalized citations are represented by the number of citations of the paper divided by the average number of citations of all papers published in the same year and included in our data set ( van Eck and Waltman, 2016 ). The bibliographic coupling strength is measured by the bibliographic coupling total link strength algorithm in VOSViewer, indicating the level of similarity and interconnectedness of a paper in the field regardless of the received citations ( van Eck and Waltman, 2016 ). Integrating these three measures allows us to reduce the age bias of papers and include in the evaluation the influence of a paper, not only the number of citations received but also how the content of the paper relates to other papers in the same scientific community.

The resulting data set of unique papers in the top 20 list from each indicator is composed of 41 papers, which constituted the data set for the literature review.

Having selected the most influential articles to review, we proceeded to the literature review based on the content analysis of selected papers ( Duriau et al. , 2007 ). Following best practices, each article was read in full and analyzed qualitatively ( Barclay et al. , 2011 ; Pittaway and Cope, 2007 ). Articles were coded, tagged and later grouped into clusters based on their content; the articles were allowed to be part of more than one cluster ( Caputo et al. , 2016b ). The process was dynamic, allowing new tags to be included during the process of reading articles to allow flexibility in categorizing information and reducing biases that may arise from a rigidly pre-set system ( Caputo et al. , 2016b ; Dabić et al. , 2020 ). Short and Palmer (2008 , p. 279) categorize content analysis into three methods: “human-scored systems, individual word-count systems, and computerized systems that use artificial intelligence”. We combined computer-aided techniques with human-scored techniques, integrating rigor and insights from the bibliometric analyses with the interpretation of researchers.

3. Results of the bibliometric analyses

3.1 activity bibliometric indicators.

Our bibliometric analysis confirms a constant growth of attention to the handling problems in VTs over time with an increasing number of journal outlets.

Figure 1 shows how the field started in 2001 and is in a growing directory, although the number of papers published is still limited, making the study of conflict in VTs a niche.

In terms of journals, 58 unique outlets have published 107 papers in the data set. Table 1 shows the 20 most cited journals and indicates also the number of published papers and average citations received by them. In terms of total citations, Organ Sci., Acad. Manage. J., J. Manage. Inform. Syst., J. Int. Bus. Stud. and Inf. Manage., are the most influential outlets. However, if we consider the number of papers published, which is a proxy of the interest of a journal on the topic, Small Group Res., J. Manage. Inform. Syst., Organ Sci., Inf. Manage. and J. Manag. are the five most interested journals. Instead, looking at the impact of the individual articles, the situation changes again with J. Int. Bus. Stud., Acad. Manage. J., Organ Sci., Int. J. Confl. Manage. and Inf. Manage. It can be noted how Organization Science and Information Management are the journals appearing in the top five in all three measures.

Looking at the authors, 290 scholars have authored the 107 papers in the data set. Out of these, only three, Ahuja, Staples and Zornoza, have authored at least three papers and can, therefore, be considered the most prolific in the field. Table 2 lists the most prolific authors who have authored at least two papers. Interestingly, if we look at the most cited authors, only three of them (Hinds, Majchrzak and Staples) appear in the top 10 of most cited ( Table 3 ).

The studies in the data set were authored by affiliates of 186 research institutions from 28 different countries. The research in the field of conflict in VTs appears to be predominantly made in the USA (65 papers) and other western countries.

3.2 Co-citation analysis: the foundations of the field

The co-citation analysis is a powerful tool to investigate the foundations of the research about conflict in VTs through the analysis of the references cited by the papers in our data set. The analysis reveals those that are the most cited references, authors and journals. Table 4 shows the statistics and criteria used for the co-citation analysis.

By performing a co-citation analysis, we were able to identify the 10 most cited papers, authors and journals that constitute the theoretical pillars of the research on the conflict in VTs. The results show how such research is grounded in the literature about VTs and remote working ( Cramton, 2001a ; Jarvenpaa and Leidner, 1999 ) pillar studies in conflict management ( Jehn, 1995 ) and the early studies integrating the two ( Hinds and Bailey, 2003 ; Mortensen and Hinds, 2001 ).

A combined reading of the most influential cited references and the network of similarities ( Figure 2 ) show that the research about conflict in VTs relies on a coherent and homogeneous network grounded in the scientific community of the fields of management and organization studies ( Table 5 ).

3.3 Bibliographic coupling: the structure of the field

Bibliographic coupling analysis is used to evaluate the current structure of a field based on a clustering technique that allows us to compare recent papers even if not yet cited; therefore, not being biased by time. However, the method has severe limitations in cases like ours that analyze smaller research fields ( Jarneving, 2007 ); hence, the technique was adopted to complement citation and co-citation analysis and was not used to create clusters but rather to identify the network relevance of papers, authors and journals. All papers (107), authors (290) and journals (58) from the data set were included in the analysis ( Figure 3 ) ( Table 6 ).

By performing a bibliographic coupling analysis, we were able to identify the 10 most connected papers, authors and journals that constitute the current structure of the research in the conflict in VTs. Via the visualization of networks technique, is it also possible to show how the field is well interconnected across the three levels of analysis, confirming the finding that the research about conflict in VTs relies on a coherent and homogeneous scientific community.

3.4 Co-occurrence of keywords

The analysis based on the co-occurrence of keywords allows us to show the intellectual structure of the field by identifying and grouping the main topics that have been subject to investigation. This method is particularly useful to complement the previous analysis as it offers a direct measure of similarity of topics by analyzing the actual content of the papers via the keywords.

The keyword analysis was performed by adopting the Keyword Plus tool from WoS. Even though the Keyword Plus is usually chosen to ensure consistency across the classification of articles’ keywords, it was necessary to perform a manual harmonization of the spelling of those keywords.

Previous studies have considered Keyword Plus to be effective as the keywords provided by the authors in terms of bibliometric analysis, investigating the knowledge structure of scientific fields ( Zhang et al. , 2016 ). The adoption of Keyword Plus allows the researcher to limit biases and risks associated with the manual tagging of content. Only keywords that occurred at least five times were kept; this resulted in having only 39 keywords to constitute the largest usable set of connected terms ( Table 7 ).

The network diagram and overlay visualization of the keywords ( Figure 4 ) show that the intellectual structure of the topics is quite homogeneous and has evolved. In particular, the research on conflict in VTs started with the investigation of technological topics and issues related to cultural diversity, personality and leadership.

3.5 Synthesis of results

Having shown the individual results of activity indicators, co-citation, bibliographic coupling and co-occurrence of keywords, we moved our attention to a synthesis that allowed us to identify the most influential papers to be included in the systematic literature review.

Table 8 shows the top 20 articles according to three complementary metrics: the normalized citations, the total citations and the link strength. The total citations are computed by counting all citations received by a paper in the WoS Core Collection at the time of the study. The normalized number of citations in a paper equals the number of citations in the paper divided by the average number of citations of all papers published in the same year and included in the data set ( van Eck and Waltman, 2016 ). The total link strength indicates the total strength of the links of an article with the other articles in the data set calculated via the bibliographic coupling analysis ( van Eck and Waltman, 2016 ). By comparing these three measures, we can countereffect the biases of each of them in terms of age of the article, relative impact and connectedness in the field. As a result, 41 unique articles were discovered to be included in at least one of the metrics and formed the basis for our systematic literature review.

4. Systematic literature review

This section presents the results of the systematic literature review that has been based on the most influential articles belonging to each cluster and the classification obtained by analyzing the content of each article. We have identified five thematic clusters: trust, performance, cultural diversity, knowledge management and team management.

4.1 Trust cluster

The issue of trust is among the key topics in conflict and conflict management studies ( Caputo et al. , 2019 ). Trust is an extremely important variable for successful collaboration ( Donovan, 1993 ) and increased relational capital ( Connelly and Turel, 2016 ). Nevertheless, trust is also regularly perceived as a challenging issue for team effectiveness ( Breuer et al. , 2016 ), particularly under virtuality, due to the lack of clarity on interaction mechanisms ( Bierly et al. , 2009 ; DeRosa et al. , 2004 ). Being a crucial construct for any variation of teams, trust is proved as more difficult and important to achieve in the circumstances of physical dispersion of team members ( Brahm and Kunze, 2012 ; Breuer et al. , 2016 ; Connelly and Turel, 2016 ; Staples and Webster, 2008 ; Yakovleva et al. , 2010 ). Peñarroja et al. (2013) concluded that the level of virtuality negatively influences team trust, whereas trust is also vital for reducing both interpersonal and task conflicts ( Connelly and Turel, 2016 ; Curseu and Schruijer, 2010 ) as well as for successful conflict management processes ( Bierly et al. , 2009 ). Virtuality is mainly considered to be a moderating variable in the relationship between trust and conflict ( Bierly et al. , 2009 ), where trust may be both an output and an input of the group processes, such as conflict ( Marks et al. , 2001 ). A further explanation is provided by studies that determined that the greater the degree of virtuality, the greater the negative impact on trust by relationship conflict ( Bierly et al. , 2009 ; Peñarroja et al. , 2013 ). In this vein, Breuer et al. (2016) showed that a high degree of virtuality increases internal team risks that in turn increase the necessity for trust, thus forming a loop relationship between a group functioning, conflict and trust ( De Dreu and Weingart, 2003 ). In general, the relationship between team functioning, conflict and trust could be described as a negative association between conflicts and trust exacerbated by the degree of virtuality ( Bierly et al. , 2009 ; Polzer et al. , 2006b ).

4.2 Performance cluster

The next cluster is based on team performance which is considered to be highly influenced by internal team communication in VTs ( Massey et al. , 2014 ; Montoya-Weiss et al. , 2001 ; Sarker et al. , 2011 ). VTs have different characteristics than traditional teams ( Brahm and Kunze, 2012 ), and it was found that people are capable of adapting to the conditions of VTs, such as restricted communication channels, probable instability of internet connection and lacking opportunities for informal communication ( van der Kleij et al. , 2009 ). Moreover, video communication and similar technologies reduce the main differences between teams that are co-located and geographically dispersed teams ( Bradley et al. , 2013 ). A great number of studies have shown that geographical distance between team members may complicate conflict management ( Cramton, 2001b ; Hill and Bartol, 2016 ). However, the extensive usage of mediated communication technologies may exaggerate the negative impacts of conflict in teams ( Kankanhalli et al. , 2006 ) due to complexities such as the unavailability for frequent discussions, information exchange and clarifications regarding personal and task issues, which may result in misunderstandings and further communication closure ( Mortensen and Hinds, 2001 ). In other words, virtuality increases the complexity of the triggers and the dynamics of conflicts as well as their management and resolution ( Friedman and Currall, 2003 ). In turn, such communication complexities among team participants (conflicts) negatively influence team performance ( Connelly and Turel, 2016 ; Turel and Zhang, 2010 ). However, the understanding of the underlying mechanisms of how conflicts work and their influence on team performance in VTs still demands additional research ( Connelly and Turel, 2016 ). There are several debates about the impact of conflict on VT performance. For instance, Hinds and Mortensen (2005) state that the virtuality of teams increases the vulnerability to conflicts due to the lack of casual, unplanned communication between team members, which, in turn, negatively influences the overall team performance. However, in a review of the literature, Ortiz de Guinea et al. (2012) emphasize contrasting findings where virtuality and performance correlate both in positive and negative directions. The recent body of research regarding conflicts and team performance in VTs admits that virtuality should be perceived as a continuous rather than binary variable to avoid clashing results ( Griffith et al. , 2003 ; Malhotra and Majchrzak, 2014 ; Ortiz De Guinea et al. , 2012 ). It was discovered that a level of virtuality should include distance indicators of separation, the configuration of a proportion working virtually and face-to-face and time parameters of virtual collaboration ( Ortiz De Guinea et al. , 2012 ). For studies looking at team performances, it is crucial to consider contextual conditions, degrees of virtuality and mediating technologies as they may significantly alter the relationship ( Malhotra and Majchrzak, 2014 ). For example, research where virtuality is treated as a continuous variable shows less presence of conflicts in more VTs and no impact on the performance ( Ortiz De Guinea et al. , 2012 ). Kankanhalli et al. (2006) propose a theoretical framework where both task conflict and relationship conflict do not have a direct influence on VT performance, contingent upon the conflict resolution approach (for both), task complexity (for task conflict) and task interdependence (relationship conflict). Looking at conflict management, research has indicated that the conflict management style ( Paul et al. , 2004b ) and conflict management behavior ( de Dreu and van de Vliert, 1994 ; Montoya-Weiss et al. , 2001 ) are critical conditions for successful team performance in the dimension of virtual collaboration. Additionally, collaborative conflict management style was indicated as a positive influencing factor on team performance, whereas group heterogeneity was found to be a barrier to successful conflict management and effective group performance ( Paul et al. , 2004b ).

4.3 Cultural diversity cluster

Cultural diversity is one of the most ambiguous concepts regarding communication, teams and organizational studies. A series of meta-analyses validate this point stressing the nature of the complex notion to be both a benefit and a challenge ( Smith et al. , 1994 ; Stahl et al. , 2010 ). In the context of teams and team working, cultural diversity refers to the different cultural backgrounds of the team members ( Harush et al. , 2018 ), including diversity in nationality ( Gibbs et al. , 2017 ) and broader cultural aspects ( Kankanhalli et al. , 2006 ), such as linguistic diversity ( McDonough et al. , 1999 ) and cultural dimensions ( Hofstede, 1991 ). As a concept, cultural diversity is perceived as a key to a greater and innovative performance ( Polley and McGrath, 1984 ) or the contrary, as a reason for ingroup miscommunications ( Brett et al. , 2006 ; Staples and Zhao, 2006 ). Globalization dynamics and technological advancements ( Paul et al. , 2004b ) are increasing virtuality and multiculturality in teams ( Gibson et al. , 2014 ), resulting in the prevalence of geographically dispersed international teams over face-to-face ones ( Stahl et al. , 2010 ). The combination of physical dispersion and cultural diversity ( Shachaf, 2008 ) increases the complexity of VTs due to the more radical differences between team members’ attitudes and perceptions ( Zimmermann, 2011 ). As a result, communication and the gaining of possible benefits associated with diversity may become more problematic ( Gibson and Gibbs, 2006 ). Implementing cultural diversity may result in misunderstandings and conflicts between team members ( Maznevski et al. , 2006 ; Paul et al. , 2004b ; Stahl et al. , 2010 ) due to reasons such as the communication ( Shachaf, 2008 ) and social categorization ( Harush et al. , 2018 ). Hence, conflict management is of significant importance as often team dynamics are complicated not only in the virtual settings but also by the cultural heterogeneity ( Paul et al. , 2004a ; Paul, Seetharaman, et al. , 2004b ). The debate whether cultural diversity increases or decreases conflicts in VTs is continuing ( Kankanhalli et al. , 2006 ; Mortensen and Hinds, 2001 ). Kankanhalli et al. (2006) discovered from their in-depth study that cultural diversity in VT leads to relationship and task conflicts, which they explain by the similarity attraction theory ( Wells and Aicher, 2013 ) and social identity theory ( Ashforth and Mael, 1989 ). Usage of the latter theory is also supported by Mortensen and Hinds (2001) and Harush (2018) , who emphasized the vital role of forming a global identity as a self-categorization process to a shared team ingroup identity to reduce the level of relational conflicts in GVT’s environment, especially in the circumstances of low task interdependence. Paul, Seetharaman, et al. (2004b) support the negative impact of team members’ cultural diversity on conflict resolution processes and group interactions due to the variations in values. Furthermore, Staples and Zhao (2006) concluded that culturally diverse teams indicated lower levels of satisfaction and cohesion and higher levels of conflicts. However, it was also pointed out that culturally diverse VTs showed higher performance rates and fewer conflicts than face-to-face ones. This finding emphasizes the importance of taking under consideration not just every separate characteristic of a team but the combinations of the teams’ settings. Whilst to some, cultural heterogeneity of teams can negatively impact interactions and communication processes, increasing conflicts ( Pelled, 1996 ), to others, diversity can be very beneficial for teams’ dynamics and conflict reduction ( Staples and Zhao, 2006 ). These opposing viewpoints could be explained by several factors. For instance, Paul et al. (2004a) , in contrast to a widespread belief about the negative impact of cultural diversity on group dynamics, found that higher levels of agreement within international groups could be achieved by conflict management ( Paul et al. , 2004a ) and relevant media choices ( Klitmøller and Lauring, 2013 ). Additionally, according to Stahl et al. (2010) , the physical dispersion of team members tends to moderate the impact of cultural diversity on conflicts as the virtual international teams showed lower levels of conflicts and higher social integration compared with multicultural collocated teams. These findings were similarly indicated by Mortensen and Hinds (2001) in their earlier research with the reason that the notion of reduced conflicts could be a result of either stronger ingroup integration or an adverse environment for conflicts to arise.

4.4 Knowledge management cluster

Efficient knowledge management is vital for the success of a company, project or team ( Chiravuri et al. , 2011 ). The process of knowledge transferring, sharing and exchanging provides additional challenges for collocated teams ( Ortiz De Guinea et al. , 2012 ). Due to the globalization dynamics, knowledge sharing between geographically distributed team members and experts has become an integral part of international companies and VTs ( Raab et al. , 2014 ). Consequently, knowledge management in VTs and presumed conflicts came to the scholars’ attention due to the complex settings of geographically distributed teams. The implied challenges are explained as difficulties in sharing comprehensive knowledge with no face-to-face communication potentially creating sub-groups ( Boh et al. , 2007 ) and reducing the attention of team members under virtual circumstances ( Ortiz De Guinea et al. , 2012 ). This, in turn, may lead to misunderstandings ( Hinds and Bailey, 2003 ), failure of information sharing ( Hinds and Mortensen, 2005 ) and other interpersonal difficulties ( Boh et al. , 2007 ). Ortiz De Guinea et al. (2012) argue that the predominantly multicultural composition of geographically dispersed teams issues such as language diversity may jeopardize the knowledge sharing process and boost the frequency of conflicts. Chiravuri et al. (2011) indicated that a combination of a lack of face-to-face cues ( Klitmøller and Lauring, 2013 ) and probable culturally contrasting behavioral models can cause different patterns of information exchange, which in turn leads to misunderstandings ( Cramton, 2001b ; Kayworth and Leidner, 2002 ) and conflicts during the knowledge capture process. At the end of the study, the authors emphasized a repertory grid cognition-based technique (“cognitive mapping technique that attempts to describe how people think about the phenomena in their world” [ Tan and Hunter, 2002 , p. 40]) as a reliable measure for decreasing conflicts in VTs in the knowledge capture process ( Chiravuri et al. , 2011 ). Furthermore, Klitmøller and Lauring (2013) put a value on the multicultural element of VTs and its important role in the process of selecting particular types of media for knowledge exchange (e.g. using a rich media for more ambiguous matters and a lean media in case of canonical knowledge exchange). Raab et al. (2014) researched the mechanisms of knowledge sharing in a globally dispersed context identifying a link between the imbalance of the geographical distribution of group members and the low efficiency of knowledge sharing due to the strong social categorization processes ( Polzer et al. , 2006a ) and potential conflicts between subgroups ( Fiol and O’Connor, 2005 ; Hinds and Mortensen, 2005 ). Indeed, a proper mix of technological and organizational elements is believed to be crucial for proper knowledge exchange, open knowledge sharing and all other issues connected to knowledge management in the conditions of virtual collaboration ( Zammuto et al. , 2007 ). Tools of virtual communication may reduce cultural differences ( Stahl et al. , 2010 ) and positively impact knowledge-sharing processes ( Klitmøller and Lauring, 2013 ).

4.5 Team management cluster

“E-communicational”, i.e. a manager positions himself as a part of a VT and takes under consideration teleworking specificities maintaining informal communication, interpersonal trust, increasing perceived proximity and also exposing a strong shared identity that tends to prevent conflicts ( Mortensen and Hinds, 2001 ); and

“Control mode”, i.e. managers are not co-teleworkers as they manage VTs prevailingly, focusing on work objectives with high levels of institutionalization and formalization.

On the one hand, managerial interference may impede establishing social connections between group representatives ( Gulati, 1995 ). On the other hand, managers should intervene in the virtual setting of a team, stimulating frequent and effective communication. In this way: team members could build better social relationships ( Malhotra et al. , 2007 ; Raab et al. , 2014 ; Saunders and Ahuja, 2006 ) and not experience conflicts due to obstacles in the technological adaptation ( Thomas and Bostrom, 2010 ). The latter claim is also supported by Chiravuri et al. (2011) , who consider that a manager has to be involved in the in-group processes to discern the nature of conflicts. In the case of a cognitive conflict, this should be closely monitored as it is capable of causing either stagnation of the process or improved solutions ( Chiravuri et al. , 2011 ). In the study by Raab et al. (2014) , managerial involvement was found to be a mitigator of cultural boundaries but had no moderating effect on the relationship between trust and satisfaction with knowledge sharing in globally dispersed groups. Thus, managers may be concerned with tracking the essence and type of a conflict in VT’s dynamics and implementing appropriate conflict management techniques to increase the productivity of a project.

5. Setting-up a research agenda

The purpose of this paper is the systematization of the accumulated knowledge of the field and, because of that, paving interesting and promising research avenues ( Caputo et al. , 2018b ; Tranfield et al. , 2003 ), especially about the results of the systematic literature review, the clear focus characterizing research of emerging conflicts and conflict management in VT, and these are interpreted in a framework stressing possible interconnections and relationships among them.

The logic of the framework is consistent with the traditional input-process-output (IPO) approach to studies on VT and has been used in previous systematic literature reviews ( Garro-Abarca et al. , 2021 ; Gilson et al. , 2015 ). Differently from that, however, the linearity of a pure IPO logic did not emerge from the results of that literature. For this reason, our interpretative framework cannot postulate a single or cause-effect directionality between its theoretical blocks, hypothesizing fuzzy and yet to be untangled relationships. The “fuzziness” refers to a nonlinearity, i.e. a block seems to have several impacts on others e.g. direct, indirect, moderated or mediated effects; recursive relationships, i.e. most of the blocks have bi-directional relationships with the others; thus, self-reinforcing loops based on previous interaction either positive and negative may occur; configurational approach, i.e. a single block when considered in isolation seems to hold a limited explanatory power, and better results would be achieved analyzing several factors together. Thus, it would be reasonable to say that it is not so much the presence or the intensity of a single element/block to determines the outcomes but the co-presence or, conversely, the co-absence of a set of elements that is the key interpretation. In Figure 5 , we only adopted the categorization of the IPO framework, specifically the antecedents, dynamics and outcomes, and we also depicted rippled lines among these categories to represent the fuzziness of these relationships. However, any category of the theoretical blocks potentially influences and is influenced by the others; thus, the arrows are present at both ends of the lines.

The first category of antecedents is fixed elements that come from the structural contingencies in which a VT operates its composition. These structural elements refer to the demographic, cultural and individual characteristics of team members, and they can be grouped under the umbrella concept of the heterogeneity existing in a team. This heterogeneity is the root of several latent or actual conflicts and conflict-related dynamics that may affect individual team members or the whole group ( Schaubroeck and Yu, 2017 ). For example, different personalities or intensity of traits, e.g. consciousness and extraversion, may increase or lessen dyadic conflicts among members ( Turel and Zhang, 2010 ). However, these elements do not affect only conflicts but also shape different strategies to manage them, opening the debate to a contingent and contextual approach to conflict management in VTs. As evidenced from the thematic clusters, heterogeneity may pertain to different cultural backgrounds that may hinder the process of cohesion due to the homophily phenomenon, thus preferring individuals with similar characteristics or common shared culture. This stimulates the formation of sub-groups ( Gibson and Gibbs, 2006 ), highlighting the necessity of specific strategies to reduce conflicts and the fault-lines within a team. Heterogeneity, however, is a broader concept than merely culture ( Boh et al. , 2007 ). As the geographical dispersion of team members increases, the higher is the likelihood of having team members with diverse institutional, economic and other contingencies that may stimulate an increment of conflicts, stricter management of them and other problems in the functioning of a team ( Jimenez et al. , 2017 ). This heterogeneity may directly influence a team or individual performance, but its indirect effect via conflicts, conflict management strategies and functioning processes of a team are still yet to be explored (dynamics). Future research avenues could inquire what type of heterogeneity factors can have a different impact in VT from those traditionally stressed for co-located teams. Even more interesting could be a study of whether heterogeneity plays a different role in the strategy to manage those conflicts or affect the team functioning of a VT in different ways. For instance, are these potential tensions more marked in VTs related to the fact that interactions are less frequent and with less embedded exchanges ( Hinds and Bailey, 2003 )? Conversely, as individual differences seem to play a minor role in VTs, can these tensions be lessened when in co-located teams ( Wakefield et al. , 2008 )? Paying attention to the heterogeneity of a VT also holds strong implications for practice; managers and leaders should first carefully design the composition of a VT not only for reasons of technical competencies but also of cultural and soft skill aspects related to the team members. This may reduce potential conflicts at several levels. Second, even if a proper design is not implementable, the heterogeneity of a VT should be fully acknowledged to counterbalance the tendency to disengage.

The second category of this interpretative framework is represented by what has been termed as dynamics, as all these elements pertain to interactions among members and the several processes through which VT functions and performs ( Breuer et al. , 2016 ). In our framework based on identified clusters, we consider these categories: the conflicts, in terms of their nature and level of impact, the conflict management process and other relevant dynamic interactions occurring in a team, called team functioning that specifically includes the process of building trust and that of managing knowledge flows. As premised, the fuzziness of these relationships also reveals that blocks of the same category have internal relationships e.g. conflict management impacts, and is impacted by, the characteristic of conflicts in VTs and by the team functioning elements of VTs. Similarly, we expect conflicts to impact team functioning directly and via the various degrees of conflict management and vice versa.

In terms of conflicts in VTs, discrimination should be made of the nature of the conflict. Virtuality, on the one hand, may stimulate relational conflicts, as misunderstandings in communication and lack of trust occur more readily ( Hinds and Bailey, 2003 ). Caputo et al. (2019) , in a bibliometric overview of conflict management studies, highlighted the important role of culture in the relationship between trust and conflict. It is expected that building trust and managing trust-based conflicts are more complex in virtual settings due to their enhanced multicultural composition and the difficulty for individuals to decodify clues in a virtual environment. However, in task-based conflict, such a clear negative influence does not seem so prominent ( Gibbs et al. , 2017 ). To summarize, can conflicts of different nature be affected by virtuality, and in which ways? Are there interactional effects? Similarly, the specific level at which conflicts are embedded is also relevant. Conflicts may spur at an individual level, for example, a team member that has to juggle between work and personal life ( Clark, 2000 ). The Covid-19 pandemic poses serious questions about the ambivalence of flexible work arrangements and also in VTs, especially concerning team members with care duties ( Hilbrecht et al. , 2008 ). Conflicts can be related to a dyadic sphere from a faction of the team members to the whole group ( Park et al. , 2020 ). These different levels are not well addressed in team literature, and the virtuality adds complexity to the debate. How do individual, dyadic and group-level conflicts influence each other? How does virtuality impact the propagation of a specific level of conflict onto others? Is it stronger or more insulated?

Conflict and conflict management strategies should also be clear prerogatives of the leaders of VT. Leaders should determine the specific nature and level of impact of this conflict to design proper conflict management strategies. Escalating or de-escalating strategies should be in place to keep a high level of engagement and other team dynamics.

There are several dynamic processes, such as communication ( Jarvenpaa and Leidner, 1999 ), leadership ( Hill and Bartol, 2016 ) and temporality ( Saunders and Ahuja, 2006 ), all of which may cause or redeem conflicts in VTs. In turn, when properly (or poorly) executed, these dynamics create sediment (or detriment) for social identification and trust, fueling (or hindering) any further in-group interactions, exchanges and conflicts ( Brahm and Kunze, 2012 ; Harush et al. , 2018 ). Future studies are required to untangle the nexus between such dynamics, especially as moderators and mediators ( Gilson et al. , 2015 ). This is also true about the structural elements: are there joint processes influencing each other to cause conflicts? In addition, as Garro-Abarca et al. (2021) highlighted, the Covid-19 pandemic has quickly changed organizational routines moving traditional co-located teams into the virtual space. Did the changes induced by the pandemic create alternative processes and their related conflict? Does a “new normal” exist in which processes will be managed differently from the past, blending elements of virtuality into traditional teams? All these considerations are research avenues to be considered.

Virtuality, in general, seems to reduce the ability of a VT to manage knowledge ( Raab et al. , 2014 ), but some positive effects have also been depicted ( Klitmøller and Lauring, 2013 ). These contrasting results are probably because knowledge management is a broad concept traditionally articulated in sub-processes: knowledge acquisition, creation, sharing or transferring, accumulation or retrieving and application or usage ( Inkinen, 2016 ). Each of these processes may be influenced differently from virtuality, the heterogeneity of the team and the other team functioning dynamics. For example, knowledge sharing is reinforced by participative leadership styles ( Pellegrini et al. , 2020 ), but participation and engagement may be reduced in VT due to latent conflicts. Conversely, knowledge accumulation in a virtual environment may be enhanced as to properly function; most VTs need a large stock of codified knowledge. Thus, future studies should address the relationships between every single process of knowledge management and their interactional effects with the antecedents of conflicts, the type and level and strategies to manage them, not forgetting to consider the indirect and interactional effects of other team functioning processes. To summarize, how do the different processes of knowledge management relate to conflicts, conflict management strategies and team functioning in a VT context? Future studies may consider the fast-changing technological environment of the past decade, for example, considering the advent of the 4.0 revolution. If more inclusive and far-reaching information and communications technology tools alleviate the differences between co-located and VTs ( Bradley et al. , 2013 ), the sophisticated approaches of the 4.0 such as the Internet of Things ( Caputo et al. , 2016a ), big data ( Rialti et al. , 2020 ) and artificial intelligence algorithms may offer interesting modifications about the impact on knowledge management and team performance in general ( Manesh et al. , 2020 ). How will the 4.0 revolution affect conflicts in VTs?

Considering the practical implications related to several teams’ functioning processes, leaders may consider constructing a managerial grid to keep control of either the individual performance or the overall group-level results. These ongoing evaluations can help to detect conflicts earlier and thus structure a proper conflict management strategy.

Considering the final category of outcomes, conflicts have been generally studied concerning their negative impacts on the performance of VTs. Virtuality tends to exacerbate conflicts and may reduce the consequentially a VT’s performance ( Hinds and Mortensen, 2005 ). However, as already presented in this framework, a relationship of linearity must be excluded. Too many other co-factors may intervene due to the heterogeneity of the composition of the team, the way conflicts are handled, and their impacts on other crucial dynamics. Conflicts cannot be reduced in this univocal direction ( Ortiz De Guinea et al. , 2012 ). Future studies are, thus, invited to clearly define their performance variables and hopefully consider virtuality as a continuum ( Malhotra and Majchrzak, 2014 ) to avoid partial conclusions. Adopting this framework, interesting avenues may be explored about the interactional effects of its several theoretical building blocks. For example, does the different nature of conflicts impact differently on performance? Are these impacts also affected by the specific sources of conflicts (processes of latent elements)?

Further future research avenues may also come from the adoption of newer methodologies in the field of conflict management, such as fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA), a methodology we could not find in the analyzed data set but that is receiving growing attention in management research ( Kraus et al. , 2018 ; Pappas et al. , 2021 ). FsQCA is a set-theoretic approach that is used to investigate complex causality, and therefore, allows for the identification of specific combinations of conditions called configurations that are nonexclusive and lead to the same outcome ( De Crescenzo et al. , 2020 ; Ragin, 2008 ). Future studies could use fsQCA to test empirically our proposed framework allowing the complexity of conflict and conflict management in VTs to be investigated.

6. Conclusion

This paper presents the results of an investigation into the existing literature published over the past two decades about conflict management and VTs. To provide a thorough and systematic analysis in support of the growing needs of managing virtual workforces and projects, innovative bibliometric methods have been deployed, displaying an overall view of the field of research and a systematic review has provided us with the details of the five identified thematic clusters enabling a holistic framework to be developed. Results have shown the importance of the interlinkages between the five clusters such as trust, performance, cultural diversity, knowledge management and team management are well-defined topics that rely on each other’s findings for advancing knowledge and practice.

Although this study adopted a rigorous and systematic methodology of review, some limitations remain. Specifically, a limitation may lie in focusing on management studies that contribute to focusing and positioning the paper in a clear discipline of research and homogeneity of data, but it may result in overlooking contributions from other fields. Moreover, to fulfill the need for homogeneity of bibliographic data, the study focused only on published journal articles omitting books, book chapters, conference papers and nonpeer-reviewed papers. This limitation is balanced by the higher quality and rigor of studies that have been peer-reviewed and future studies, perhaps using a meta-analytic approach, may also consider these outputs. As in previous systematic review studies, our study has been privileged to offer a wider overview and research agenda rather than deepening into fine-grained details. However, as this tradeoff is a natural consequence of review studies, our review and agenda offer a solid ground for future studies to build upon and further advance our knowledge of conflict management in VTs, satisfying the latest needs of organizations and societies linked to the increase in remote working conditions.

Number of papers published per year

Network diagram of co-citation analysis

Network diagram of bibliographic coupling analysis

Network diagram and overlay visualization of keywords

A framework for conflict management in virtual teams

Most cited journals

Most prolific authors

Most cited authors

Criteria of the co-citation analysis

Co-citation analysis

Bibliographic coupling analysis

Main topics from the co-occurrence of keywords analysis

Most influential articles

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Corresponding author

About the authors.

Andrea Caputo is an Associate Professor in Management at the University of Trento, Italy, and at the University of Lincoln, UK, where he is part of the UNESCO Chair in Responsible Foresight for Sustainable Development. His main research interests include entrepreneurial decision-making, negotiation, digitalization and sustainability, internationalization and strategic management of SMEs. He is the editor of the book series “Entrepreneurial Behaviour” (Emerald), and Associate Editor of the Journal of Management and Organization. His research was published in over 100 contributions, including articles in highly ranked journals, e.g. HRM Journal , Journal of Business Research, Small Business Economics , International Journal of Conflict Management , Journal of Knowledge Management , Business Strategy and the Environment and IEEE TEM among the others.

Mariya Kargina is a PhD Candidate in Organizational Behavior at the University of Rome “Tor Vergata”. She holds a Master of Science from the University of Lincoln, UK. Her research interests are cross-cultural management, cultural intelligence and global virtual teams. Her research was published in the Journal of Marketing Analytics and presented at several international conferences.

Massimiliano Matteo Pellegrini is an Associate Professor of Organizational studies and Entrepreneurial behaviors at the University of Rome “Tor Vergata”. Previously, he worked at Roehampton University Business School and University of West-London. He is the editor of the book series “Entrepreneurial Behaviour” (EmeraldPublishing), Associate Editor at International Journal of Transition and Innovation System, and past Chair of the Strategic Interest Group of Entrepreneurship (E-ship SIG) at the European Academy of Management (EURAM). He published in highly ranked journals as e.g. Journal of Business Research , Small Business Economics , Journal of Business Ethics , IEEE Transaction on Engineering Management and Journal of Small Business .

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Virtual Teams and Management Challenges

Academic Leadership Journal, 9(3), pp. 1-7, Summer 2011

7 Pages Posted: 19 Apr 2012

Nader Ale Ebrahim

Research and Technology Department, Alzahra University, Vanak, Tehran, Iran, Postcode: 19938 93973; Centre for Research Services, Institute of Management and Research Services (IPPP), University of Malaya (UM); University of Malaya (UM) - Department of Engineering Design and Manufacture

Shamsuddin Ahmed

University of Malaya (UM)

Zahari Taha

Date Written: 2011

Collaboration is becoming increasingly important in creating the knowledge that makes business more competitive. Virtual teams are growing in popularity [1] and many organizations have responded to their dynamic environments by introducing virtual teams. Additionally, the rapid development of new communication technologies such as the Internet has accelerated this trend so that today, most of the larger organization employs virtual teams to some degree [2]. A growing number of flexible and adaptable organizations have explored the virtual environment as one means of achieving increased responsiveness [3]. Howells et al. [4] state that the shift from serial to simultaneous and parallel working has become more commonplace. Based on conventional information technologies and Internet-based platforms virtual environments may be used to sustain companies’ progress through virtual interaction and communication.

Keywords: Virtual R&D teams, Virtual Team, Management Challenge, Collaboration, ICT application

JEL Classification: L1, L11, L2, M11, M12, M1, Q1, O1, Q31, Q31, P24, L17, O32, P29

Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation

Nader Ale Ebrahim (Contact Author)

Research and technology department, alzahra university, vanak, tehran, iran, postcode: 19938 93973 ( email ), centre for research services, institute of management and research services (ippp), university of malaya (um) ( email ).

Kuala Lumpur, Wilayah Persekutuan 50603 University of Malaya (UM) Kuala Lumpur, Wilayah Persekutuan 50603 Malaysia

HOME PAGE: http://https://umresearch.um.edu.my/

University of Malaya (UM) - Department of Engineering Design and Manufacture ( email )

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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Virtual teams in times of pandemic: factors that influence performance.

• 1 School of Computing, Tecnológico de Costa Rica, Cartago, Costa Rica
• 2 Department of Financial Economics and Operations Management, University of Seville, Seville, Spain

In the digital age, the global software development sector has been a forerunner in implementing new ways and configurations for remote teamwork using information and communication technologies on a widespread basis. Crises and technological advances have influenced each other to bring about changes in the ways of working. In the 70’s of the last century, in the middle of the so-called oil crisis, the concept of teleworking was defined using remote computer equipment to access office equipment and thus avoid moving around using traditional vehicles. Then from the 90s, with the advent of communications and the widespread use of the Internet, the first virtual work teams were implemented in software development companies that already had some of the important characteristics needed to work in this way, such as, cultural diversity, characterized tasks, geographical distribution of members, communication, interdependence of tasks, leadership, cohesion, empowerment, confidence, virtuality. This manuscript groups the main factors into different models proposed by the literature and also analyzes the results of a study conducted in the midst of the Covid-19 crisis on 317 software development teams that had to work in virtual teams (VT). The results of the quantitative methodology with structural equation modeling based on variance using the partial least squares route method are analyzed. The results of the research focus on some determinants that can directly affect the performance of the virtual team. A first determinant is communication in relation to the tasks. The second is trust in relation to leadership, empowerment and cohesion. The results of virtual teams provide information that can serve as a basis for future research lines for the implementation of virtual work strategies in post-pandemic work.

Introduction

The digital era has meant a change in the processes and routines of the business dynamics to which many organizations have had to adapt in order to compete and survive in globalized markets. The virtualization of organizational life and the digital transformation of labor relations goes hand in hand with the accelerated advance of technologies such as cloud computing, which have made it unnecessary to have tangible servers, software and hardware infrastructures in the company offices and many processes are being carried out by accessing personal equipment or terminals (computers, laptops, and mobile devices) connected to an increasingly fast Internet network. All this is possible thanks to the technology of virtualization ( Sánchez, 2017 ). Recent studies have analyzed the attitude of human resources to cloud technology and its importance in software as a service application - SaaS- ( Palos and Correia, 2017 ) and how the attitude of the worker has changed, thanks to online work training ( Palos-Sanchez, 2017 ). Thus, the digital virtualization of traditionally physical technological resources is also happening at the level of human resources, because increasingly the presence of workers in the same place is not necessary. This implies an immense challenge for the new electronic leadership of teams of collaborators who are increasingly dispersed geographically.

In the beginning, virtual teams were formed to facilitate joint creation and innovation among global or regional experts who did not have enough time to travel to fulfill the specialized tasks of the projects that required them. Today, virtual teamwork has evolved to a point where online collaboration is a way of working for national companies and more naturally for multinational or regional companies. The idea of virtual collaboration between workers, or virtual teamwork VT, consists of a team working together from different physical locations using collaborative ICTs. In the last 20 years this modality has been in constant growth due to the evolution and maturity of the digital era in terms of speed of telecommunications, the power of the computer equipment, the naturalness of adaptation to the use of ICTs in the work of digital natives (born since 1990) and digital migrants (born before 1990). However, at the beginning of the 21st century it was difficult to have faith in VTs due to the low level of maturity of virtual teams which made companies skeptical about the efficiency of this way of working. By the early 2000s, studies showed that the number of VTs that achieved their goals was not very encouraging and there was a significant failure rate. A few years later, things had not changed that much either. In 2004, there was talk of significant challenges in the implementation of virtual teams ( Piccoli et al., 2004 ). Another study ( Brett et al., 2006 ) revealed that most people thought that virtual communication was not as productive as face-to-face interaction, while half of the respondents said they were confused and overwhelmed by collaboration technology. Even so, this happened a few years ago and as technology advanced, companies matured with the use of ICT tools, so these early conclusions from the beginning of the century were not believed to be accurate anymore. A more recent study in 2009, involving 80 global software teams, indicated that well-managed virtual teams using virtual collaboration can outperform face-to-face (FtF) teams.

Additionally, a number of studies ( Jarrahi and Sawyer, 2013 ), indicate that virtual or remotely distributed team collaboration can also improve employee productivity. Therefore, an important question is: what can make a virtual team have better performance results than a face-to-face team? The answer has been provided by several studies that have summarized input factor models and their relationships with other factors grouped into socio-emotional and task-oriented processes and finally their relationships with output factors ( Powell et al., 2004 ; Gilson et al., 2015 ).

In addition to the aforementioned triggers of virtualization of organizational life and the digital transformation of processes ( Zúñiga Ramirez et al., 2016 ) and the interrelations of stakeholders as co-creators of value ( Martinez-Cañas et al., 2016 ; Ribes-Giner et al., 2017 ), it is also worth mentioning that the origin of remote work in a virtual team is originally teleworking.

Considering the above reasons and in view of finding ourselves in the midst of a rapidly evolving digital era coupled with a pandemic that has forced workers in many areas to perform remote work ( Velicia-Martin et al., 2021 ) and aligned with an effective strategy to contain and mitigate rate of spread of infection ( Brooks et al., 2020 ), this study has been undertaken in the midst of the COVID19 impact on virtual teams in the software development industry. The co-creation in virtual teamwork is a very important feature.

The main objective of this research, at a time with a pandemic and the current digital era ( Chen et al., 2020 ), is to analyze the relationship of important factors found in the literature by analyzing the performance of 317 software engineers in virtual teams. Software engineers, due to their training and experience, belong to virtual teams that include co-creation for the construction of software using agile methodologies and have recently been involved in working in virtual teams. This research is original because of the importance given to endogenous variables such as communication and trust. For this reason, the results of the survey carried out have served to understand what role different factors play in the performance of a group used to doing remote or virtual teamwork as part of their normal work. The study uses a structural equation approach with partial least squares (PLS) to evaluate the proposed performance model. The research is organized as follows. First, the Introduction explains the article based on the history of co-creation in current software development and its relationship to the study of vital equipment. Then there is a literature review, which analyzes relevant research on factors in VTs. Thirdly, methodology and justification of the hypotheses are presented. The results are then analyzed. In the Conclusions section, discussions and conclusions are made in which the practical implications of the research are given.

Literature Review

A virtual team is defined as a group of people or stakeholders working together from different locations and possibly different time zones, who are collaborating on a common project and use information and communication technologies (ICTs) intensively to co-create. It can be seen that one of the main characteristics is virtuality, which implies physical and temporal distance between members and a shared purpose ( Ebrahim et al., 2009 ).

Another essential characteristic of virtual teams, which differentiates it from traditional “face-to-face” (FtF) teams is the collaborative use of technology for work. This has been the result of the evolution of ICTs in this digital age, along with the trend toward globalization. In VTs there is naturally a geographical dispersion that entails certain cultural differences and social bonds are more difficult to achieve. All this generates a series of difficulties for communication between members and emotional relationships ( Duarte and Snyder, 2006 ; Lin et al., 2008 ; Shuffler et al., 2010 ).

Virtual teams are affected by a series of factors and phases, which have been investigated in the literature ( Abarca et al., 2020 ) and which give rise to different models for studying and relating them for performance. There are several models of VTs, from classical ones ( Martins et al., 2004 ; Powell et al., 2004 ) to a recent one ( Dulebohn and Hoch, 2017 ). Others analyze VTs at the management level ( Hertel et al., 2005 ) and others analyze them as a systemic Input-Process-Output or IPO ( Saldaña Ramos, 2010 ). This last model is based on others that studied face-to-face teams ( Hoch and Kozlowski, 2014 ) and proposes adaptations to the model when studying VT.

Research papers study the factors that influence VTs for virtual team management models and those that have a significant impact on performance are chosen and, in turn, are mentioned in the literature. As seen in Figure 1 , this study has taken into account the different phases of the IPO model and its adaptation ( Gilson et al., 2015 ) along with the factors that are organized into Inputs (related to communication and trust), Processes (task-oriented and socio-emotional) and Outputs (performance).

Figure 1. Reference IPO model for analyzing VTs. Source: Based on authors.

As observed in VT models, communication is studied in relation to the characteristics of the tasks that will be developed and co-created in a distributed way.

Task Features

The interaction between task type and communication and its impact on team performance has been investigated in the literature ( Montoya-Weiss et al., 2001 ; Bell et al., 2002 ; Rico and Cohen, 2005 ). Because virtual teams rely heavily on communication technologies to coordinate their work, it is necessary to examine the relationship between the nature of the task and the effectiveness of communication that impacts team performance.

Software development projects are characterized by great uncertainty in terms of requirements and risk planning and followed by technological suitability until the project is completed. Task uncertainty has been conceptualized using various dimensions of task complexity in the literature. Some of the dimensions studied are task variety and task analyzability ( Daft and Lengel, 1986 ); variability ( de Ven et al., 1976 ); uniformity ( Mohr, 1971 ); predictability ( Galbraith, 1973 ); and complexity ( Duncan, 1972 ). The proposed model of information processing by Daft and Macintosh (1981) is comprehensive and captures the nature of virtual teamwork effectively through the dimensions of task variety and task analyzability.

As seen in the VTs models, trust is considered as leadership, cohesion and team empowerment. These 3 characteristics are described in more detail below:

One definition of leadership states that it is when a person gets other people to do something ( Kort, 2008 ). Leadership is an influential relationship between leaders and followers who attempt to make changes that benefit their mutual purposes ( Kort, 2008 ).

In VTs, transformational leadership seems to also arise from personality and communication factors ( Balthazard et al., 2009 ) and can increase performance, satisfaction ( Purvanova and Bono, 2009 ) and motivation ( Andressen et al., 2012 ).

Clearly, leadership is important for VTs. In one study ( Glückler and Schrott, 2007 ) it was found that communication influenced who emerged as a leader.

Glückler and Schrott (2007) found that communication behavior influenced who emerged as a leader. Similarly, leader–member exchange ( Goh and Wasko, 2012 ), perceptions of supportive leadership ( Schepers et al., 2011 ), leadership roles ( Konradt and Hoch, 2007 ) and cross-cultural leadership ( Sarker et al., 2009 ) have received attention, and other research has studied the impact of the type of recognition a leader uses to motivate workers ( Whitford and Moss, 2009 ).

Research on VT leadership has grown rapidly, with two popular areas being leadership behavior and traits ( Gilson et al., 2015 ). Here, the work has examined inspirational aspects ( Joshi et al., 2009 ) as well as transformational and transactional leaders ( Huang et al., 2010 ; David Strang, 2011 ). In VT, transformational leadership seems to be due to personality and communication factors ( Balthazard et al., 2009 ) and can increase performance, satisfaction ( Purvanova and Bono, 2009 ) and motivation ( Andressen et al., 2012 ).

Several studies have examined the interaction between leadership and virtuality, finding that team members are more satisfied with their team and leader and perceive that their leader is better able to decode messages when the leader is geographically distant from the team ( Henderson, 2008 ). Hoch and Kozlowski (2014) found that virtuality dampened the relationship between hierarchical leadership and performance while improving the relationship between structural supports and performance.

Clearly, leadership within VTs is important. As such, leaders can play a central role in how a VT works, particularly because they influence how a team deals with obstacles and how the team ultimately adapts to such challenges. This can be seen in articles on team adaptation research ( Baard et al., 2014 ).

Other research suggests that classic leadership styles are appropriate for a virtual team:

Democratic ( McBer and Company, 1980 ) and referee leadership styles ( Rashid and Dar, 1994 ) have some characteristics that are very suitable for a virtual team. One negative factor could be that many meetings are needed to reach consensus. In a virtual team, it is difficult and time-consuming to hold meetings for each decision.

Operational leadership ( McBer and Company, 1980 ) may be a good option because this leadership style gives team members clear roles and tasks. In addition, the leader makes the processes and structures very clear, so lack of communication will be reduced. A negative feature of this style of leadership for virtual teams might be that the contribution of the team members, and their responsibilities, might be a little less than the team members want.

Coaching leadership ( McBer and Company, 1980 ) fits virtual teams very well because it gives a lot of freedom to the team members, which means that they are also responsible for their work and results. Team members can set their own goals and therefore also progress personally while working in the virtual team. This leadership style, however, also has some difficulties. The processes, structures and roles of the team may not always be very clear because the leader allows team members to establish and use their own. Therefore, the success of the virtual team might suffer a little.

According to Salisbury et al. (2006) research into classical teams ( Lott and Lott, 1965 ; Hogg, 1987 ) suggest that the physical distance between members can be translated into a psychological distance between them. Following this line of reasoning ( Salisbury et al., 2006 ) the physical dispersion of the virtual team could inhibit cohesion. In addition, virtual team members may have different ideas about what cohesion is. In other words, the idea of cohesion, which is the communication between group members, is affected by the medium used to communicate. This is especially true given the ease with which users can exchange non-task related information in some environments. Clearly, the differences in communication patterns between virtual and onsite teams suggest that measures (such as PCS) which are used in one context cannot be directly employed in another without reevaluating them ( Boudreau et al., 2001 ).

Studies about group behavior ( Hogg and Tindale, 2001 ) consistently report that, in working groups, the members’ ability to get along with each other is critical for well-being and task performance. The importance of developing such intra-group cohesion has been shown to be especially relevant in cases where members don not know each other, such as in newly formed groups or when members are assigned to new project teams ( Griffin, 1997 ). The Symbolic Convergence Theory (SCT) proposed by Bormann (1983 , 1996) and tested by Bormann et al. (1994 , 1997) provides a rich theoretical framework for understanding group cohesion in traditional and technology-based teams.

One type of group cohesion is task cohesion and occurs when members stay together because they are strongly involved with the group’s tasks. Task cohesion will be greater if members identify with the group’s tasks and find them intrinsically rewarding and valuable.

Group cohesion for virtual teams with members working at different geographic locations, for different organizations, and even in different sectors of the economy, need effective communication and close coordination to achieve goals ( Powell et al., 2004 ).

The positive relationship between cohesion and trust in working teams has been confirmed in many investigations ( Evans and Dion, 1991 ; Simons and Peterson, 2000 ; Baltes et al., 2002 ; Powell et al., 2004 ; Spector, 2006 ; Lu, 2015 ).

Empowerment

Empowerment is favorable acknowledgment by the team leader and allows team members to participate in decision making. Empowerment makes the team member trust the leader, and when the leader asks for opinions and comments, he or she processes them and makes decisions based on the suggestions.

Some past studies ( Kirkman et al., 2004 ) indicate that teams can be empowered in four different ways, (a) power, which is the collective belief that a team can be effective, (b) significance, which is the extent to which team members care about their tasks, (c) autonomy, in which team members have freedom to make decisions; and (d) impact, the degree to which team members feel that their tasks make important contributions.

The impact of team empowerment on the performance of EVTs in 10 telecommunications companies in Islamabad was studied by Gondal and Khan (2008) . That study found that there is a positive relationship between team empowerment and team performance in telecommunications teams. Team performance includes the variables of cooperation, coordination, trust, cohesion, effort, mutual support, team conflict, job satisfaction and effectiveness in terms of quality.

Kirkman et al. (2004) also studied 35 sales and service teams at a high-tech firm and investigated the impact of team empowerment on team performance and the intermediary role of face-to-face interaction. They found that team empowerment is positively related to both constructs of virtual team performance, which are process improvement and customer satisfaction.

As indicated ( Kirkman et al., 2004 ) empowerment in a virtual team can be a substitute for the leadership tasks of a single team leader ( Kerr and Jermier, 1978 ). The behavior of the team members due to the leader’s empowerment is directly and positively related to trust. It is considered a confidence-building attribute. For empowerment, commitment is only reached when the team has a shared vision and honest and regular communication with the leader.

Models usually study the processes of tasks by investigating communication and the social-emotional processes of trust. The degree of virtuality and the interrelationship of tasks are also considered important for performance.

Communication

In mixed teams, where some members are at the same physical location and others are not, communication problems can also occur. Team members at the same physical place often communicate in a deeper way than with the distant members and this ends up causing friction between them and, therefore, damages the performance of the team ( Powell et al., 2004 ).

Communication, coordination and knowledge sharing are essential elements of action processes to predict the efficiency and effectiveness of the team ( Kock and Lynn, 2012 ).

Another study ( Peñarroja et al., 2013 ) found that as virtuality increased, team coordination declined, but this relationship was partially mediated by levels of trust.

Early research on VTs proposed that initial FtF meetings should help encourage performance ( Geber, 1995 ). Han et al. (2011) extended this line of reasoning to creativity and compared modes of initial communication to assess their impact.

Understanding how, why, and under what conditions trust develops remains a popular research topic. In part, the importance of trust can be attributed to results that suggest it positively affects the success of VTs ( Furumo, 2009 ).

For VTs, trust is influenced by communication behavior, timely responses, open communication, and feedback ( Henttonen and Blomqvist, 2005 ).

More recent findings suggest that rapid trust is likely to be established with early communication and a positive tone ( Coppola et al., 2004 ) and may influence performance by improving member confidence and subsequent trust ( Crisp and Jarvenpaa, 2013 ).

Other research has studied the impact of global VTs on trust development ( Lowry et al., 2010 ). Culturally heterogeneous teams (China and the United States) and homogeneous teams were compared and no significant differences were found in the trust between FtF teams and VTs ( Lowry et al., 2010 ).

Furthermore, in a longitudinal study of global VTs, Goh and Wasko (2012) found that when everyone’s actions were visible, trust was not a key factor in resource allocation.

Finally, in globally distributed teams, trust mitigated the negative effects of member diversity on performance ( Garrison et al., 2010 ).

Finally, aspects such as performance, quality of the product or service obtained and member satisfaction are relevant for the results. Of course, performance is the essential variable and is the usual interest of research into virtual teams.

Performance

Overall, research suggests that working in VTs can have a positive impact on effectiveness ( Kock and Lynn, 2012 ; Maynard et al., 2012 ), while others provide evidence suggesting that virtual working affects effectiveness negatively ( Cramton and Webber, 2005 ; Schweitzer and Duxbury, 2010 ).

A positive trend appears to be that work in this area is beginning to take advantage of ratings from outside the team ( Andressen et al., 2012 ; Cummings and Haas, 2012 ), as well as objective measures of team performance ( Rico and Cohen, 2005 ; Rapp et al., 2010 ).

In considering the elements of effectiveness, several researchers have examined the quality of the project ( Altschuller and Benbunan-Fich, 2010 ). This makes sense, since VTs are often used for special projects. In addition, the quality of the decisions made and the time taken to reach a decision have been studied and the findings are often that VTs need more time to make decisions ( Pridmore and Phillips-Wren, 2011 ).

Other studies find that VTs that set goals early in their life cycle showed greater cohesion and performance ( Brahm and Kunze, 2012 ).

Other work in this area also suggests that team motivation and performance can be improved by using mixed incentive rewards ( Bryant et al., 2009 ).

One study ( Kirkman et al., 2013 ) considered the impact of national diversity on performance and found a curvilinear (U-shaped) relationship moderated by both media richness and psychological safety.

Materials and Methods

The present study was carried out to understand the factors which influence the performance of VTs in a professional team that is used to using “agile” methodologies and virtual working.

A quantitative causal study using partial least squares (PLS) was performed using an online questionnaire, with a sample of 317 participants (Software Engineers).

Questionnaire and Measurement Scales

A quantitative research divided into the following blocks was designed and then carried out and the results were used to test the hypotheses that constitute the theoretical model. The details are shown in Table 1 .

Table 1. Variables of the proposed model.

Proposed Model

The proposed model that incorporated the hypothetical relationships is illustrated in Figure 2 .

Figure 2. Proposed model.

Research Hypotheses

The research hypotheses for the investigation of the factors that influence the performance of virtual teams are presented below.

Considerations of the Research Approach in the Hypotheses

Due to the quantitative approach chosen and by virtue of the delimiting nature of quantitative research, the hypotheses constitute the behavior that the variables or constructs are expected to show in the software development VT environment. Figure 2 shows the initial model. The hypotheses that are to be tested in this study are presented below:

H1: The characteristics of the tasks have a direct and positive influence on the communication of the virtual team members.

H2: The level of leadership of the members of the virtual team has a direct and positive influence on trust.

H3: The level of cohesion of the members of the virtual team has a direct and positive influence on trust.

H4: The level of empowerment of the members of the virtual team has a direct and positive influence on trust.

H5: Communication between virtual workers has a direct and positive influence on the confidence of the virtual team.

H6: Trust among virtual workers has a direct and positive influence on the performance of the virtual team.

H7: The level of communication between virtual workers has a direct and positive influence on the performance of the virtual team.

Hypothesis Research Scope Considerations

The correlational scope used to find the relationships between variables that give an answer to a problem means that without proving these relationships there could be a causal link between the variables. Figure 2 shows the constructs of the hypotheses in the study model.

Additionally, it is important to reiterate, that the VT performance construct is based on the relationships with the aggregate constructs Communication (h9) and Trust (h10) which in turn are expected to have a strong relationship between them and this will be tested in the research (h7 and h8). Then, the latent variable called communication has the constructs of cultural diversity (h1), the characteristics of the tasks (h2), as well as the distribution index (h3). Finally, the variables leadership (h4), cohesion (h5), and empowerment (h6) are used to find the latent variable trust.

The model used for the research hypotheses, its variables and its relationships are described in the literature review section.

Sampling and Data Collection

1,200 software engineers with experience in programming with Agile methodology (which involves co-creation and collaboration in virtual teams) and who had graduated in the last 10 years, were directly invited to take part in the survey. 317 responses were collected.

The study was designed based on robust studies previously applied to telework and virtual teams in globally distributed teams for 20 years and after a robust literature review on the most relevant factors affecting the performance of these teams.

The study was applied at a privileged moment 3 months after the official declaration of the Covid pandemic19 by The World Health Organization.

The population taken into account for this study is considered stable because they were graduates of accredited engineering degrees from universities recognized in Costa Rica for their training in software development over the past 20 years and related colleagues.

Parallel to this study, a control study was conducted on another more heterogeneous population of professionals who in many cases had to start from scratch in the form of teleworking or virtual teams. This helped to understand and further refine the proposed model.

Demographic Details

As can be seen in Table 2 , the results found for the demographic features of the 317 members of virtual teams that use agile methodologies for the development of their projects are tabulated.

Table 2. Demographic details.

For gender, it is normal that in Software Engineering (SE) there is a higher proportion of men (81%) than women (19%). For age, it should be noted that 65% of those who responded to the questionnaire about virtual teams of SE were digital natives (born after the 1990s).

For the time spent working in VTs, almost 90% of the young members of SE VTs had joined in the last 5 years, which is consistent with handling agile methodologies and virtual teams in this profession.

The proportion of leaders is approximately 30% of the group and members 70%. In the SE VTs it was notable that 58% of the members have also been project leaders before, due to the dynamics of the Agile methodology and value co-creation. The diversity of membership in organizations shows that the members from SE VTs were 25% of the sample group and the members of VTs from other professions (OP) were 5% due to their recent incorporation into this way of working.

The members of SE VTs (68%) were very interested in continuing working in VTs in a new post-Covid19 normality.

Important Findings

It is clear that the objective of the work is to analyze the determinants of performance in virtual teams in a time of pandemic, where conditions forced the vast majority of workers to develop their work within their homes remotely, forming virtual teams in which they already participated or had to organize in this way. With this objective, a survey has been conducted among software engineers and they have specified a structural equation model to analyze the relationship between different inputs and processes in the output. The results obtained show the relevance of communication and confidence in the performance of virtual teams. But before reviewing the complete model it is important to mention some important findings:

– The participants in this study were professionals in the area of computer science, dedicated to the development of software. Mainly digital natives with experience in VTs, people with ages between 18 and 29 years (64.98%) and digital migrants between 30 and 39 years (18.93%) with high mastery of information and communication technologies ICTs. In general, they consider that virtual teamwork is an excellent way to develop their work in the world of technology. It is part of their profession. In the worst case, some engineers maintain a neutral stance toward the issue of virtual teamwork. Under normal conditions they have worked in virtual mixed mode and face to face, so under 100% pandemic conditions, they really didn’t have much of an adjustment problem, because they were already doing it before. Even when asked about the future, a high number (68.45%) see themselves working in virtual teams and 28.71% in mixed mode.

– The professionals interviewed in many cases have indicated that communication in virtual teams is a factor that must be improved in frequency and quality because they feel that the initial instructions are not enough. Others take communication as a natural factor, regardless of whether the communication is virtual or face to face. Finally others indicate that communication in the virtual team is better with the good use of collaborative tools.

– Trust is a very important factor in the study, because it allows employees to perform their tasks at a distance in a better way, as long as their tasks are measured by objectives. Too many controls throughout the work process make the virtual collaborator feel watched and that he is being evaluated negatively.

– Regarding the geographical distribution, software engineers agree with professionals from other areas in that it saves them time and money and due to the intensive and natural use of ICT in their profession, the physical distance was not relevant to achieve the objectives.

– Regarding the cultural diversity in this study, being regional, the interviewees gave positive answers because the cultural differences did not influence their performance in the software development projects that have in common in a standardized way the computational language and the technological architectures.

– About the distribution of tasks, to be developed projects with agile methodologies, the specifications of functional and technical requirements are very clear from the beginning and also are clarified or refined in time with the coordination, co-creation and collaborative work, so engineers have clear what their tasks are throughout the process. As for the Interdependence of tasks there was no significant finding at the level of software development operations. It is possible that this is due to the fact that software projects are structured at the level of by-products and tasks in an orderly manner.

– By using agile methodologies to develop work with virtual teams and distributing tasks among members early on, empowering each member individually and in relation to others has been vital in software projects. Depending on the level of experience and individual skills, empowerment is increasingly important in virtuality.

– Leadership is a fundamental issue, which directly influences the confidence of virtual collaborators. In this study the members of the virtual teams gave it a moderate importance because of the work methodology and the mixed experience: virtual and face to face, the works are done in a collaborative and very horizontal way. Additionally, 58.04% indicated that they had already led some software development in this modality in the past.

– The virtual team software development has made the collaborators work longer interacting through the ICTs, fighting to achieve common objectives. This has made that the cohesion between them has increased at work level.

Sample Frame

A random database of 1,000 software engineers graduated in the last 20 years from accredited software engineering or systems engineering careers at universities in Costa Rica, a country with a tradition and recognition of many years of software development for the region of Central and North America (mainly United States), was taken into account.

The survey was applied from May to July 2020, in the midst of the Covid19 pandemic, using an email invitation for respondents to fill out an electronic survey instrument using the Google Forms platform with 65 items.

Limitations

There are many factors previously studied that influence in one way or another the performance of VTs, but at the level of the proposed model they cannot all be included because they have shown that their influence has not been very strong or because the type of population that was chosen for this specific study was not relevant. For example, a limitation of this study is that the dimension of rewards was not considered, since in recent similar studies they have not shown significant relationships ( Tan et al., 2019 ).

A second limitation that could be considered, is related to the fact that, the respondents belong to different institutional environments, regularly projects of 5–10 members, in medium sized software development companies. In this sense, it is common that they use agile methodology as the project organization standard, which compensates for the differences in size of the parent organization, type of products developed, the member’s country of origin and the country of origin of the final client.

The cultural diversity that has been extensively studied in virtual teams, in this study was included in the survey but its results did not show a significant influence because the software development projects were usually regional and associated with the same continent and time zones with few differences.

Analysis of Results

Results for the measurement model.

The measurement model was tested for internal reliability, convergent validity and discriminant validity. The internal reliability was evaluated using Cronbach’s alpha which needs a value of at least 0.70 for acceptable internal consistency ( Hair et al., 2013 ). Causality was analyzed using indicator loadings. Composite reliability was also used to investigate causality ( Werts et al., 1974 ). All the constructs had internal consistency as all the values for Cronbach’s alpha were higher than 0.7 ( Fornell and Larcker, 1981 ; Bagozzi and Yi, 1988 ; Hair et al., 2011 ). Fornell and Larcker (1981) used the Average Variance Extracted (AVE) to assess convergent validity, and stated that an acceptable value for this factor is AVE ≥ 0.50.

Table 3 shows the element loads, Cronbach’s alpha and AVE which were found for the constructs. Values for Cronbach’s alpha ranged from 0.914 to 0.709, which is higher than the recommended level of 0.70 and therefore indicates strong internal reliability for the constructs. The composite reliability ranged between 0.946 and 0.837 and the AVE ranged between 0.632 and 0.853, which are higher than the recommended levels. The conditions for convergent validity were therefore met. The discriminant validity was calculated with the square root of the AVE and the cross-loading matrix. For satisfactory discriminant validity, the square root of the AVE of a construct should be greater than the correlation with other constructs ( Fornell and Larcker, 1981 ).

Table 3. Reliability, validity of the constructs, Fornell–Larcker criterion and HTMT.

These researchers carried out simulation studies to demonstrate that a lack of discriminant validity is better detected by means of another technique called the heterotrait-monotrait ratio (HTMT), which they had discovered earlier. All the HTMT ratios for each pair of factors was <0.90.

Results for the Structural Models

The structural model was built from the different relationships between the constructs. The hypotheses for the study were tested by analyzing the relationships between the different constructs in the model to see if they were supported ( Chin and Newsted, 1999 ; Reinartz et al., 2009 ).

The variance is found from the values for the reflective indicators of the constructs ( Barclay et al., 1995 ; Chin, 2010 ). This was found numerically by calculating the values of R 2 , which is a measure of the amount of variance for the construct in the model. The bootstrap method was used to test the hypotheses. The detailed results (path coefficient, β, and t -statistic) are summarized in Table 4 and Figure 3 .

Table 4. Results of hypothesis: path coefficients and statistical significance.

Figure 3. Final model. *** p < 0.001 [ t (0.001; 499) = 3.106644601].

The measurements for approximate adjustments of the model ( Henseler et al., 2016 ; Henseler, 2017 ) are given by the Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR) value ( Hu and Bentler, 1998 ) which measures the difference between the observed correlation matrix and the implied correlation matrix of the model. SRMR shows the average magnitude of these differences.

A low value of SRMR means that the fit is better. In our case SRMR = 0.055, which was within the recommendations for a model with a good fit. A good fit is considered to be shown with a value of SRMR < 0.08 ( Hu and Bentler, 1998 ).

The following conclusions were made from the values for R 2 (see Table 5 and Figure 3 ) found in the research by Chin (1998) and show that 0.67 = “Substantial,” 0.33 = “Moderate,” and 0.19 = “Weak.” The result obtained for the main dependent variable of the model, Performance (PER) R 2 = 48.4% was moderate and the rest of constructs, Trust R 2 = 74.2% and Communication (COM) R 2 = 33.3%.

Table 5. R 2 results.

This value shows that this model is “substantially” applicable to the performance of virtual teams. Please note that the variables that are not endogenous do not have a value for R 2 .

The results obtained for the proposed model have found that the performance of virtual teams is moderately justified by the determinants as R 2 = 48.4%. However, the value obtained for Trust ( R 2 = 74.2%) should be noted as it means that the variance of this construct explains to a high percentage, aspects such as the confidence of the virtual team. This is essential to improve the co-creation of software development teams.

This study confirmed that the most significant variable for the performance of the EVT is Trust (H6), since this variable has the strongest influence on the dependent variable Performance. It also has a very high predictive capacity as the determination coefficient is high (β = 0.684; t = 14.281).

These results coincide with other recent findings that confirm that Trust can influence performance by improving member confidence and the subsequent trust ( Crisp and Jarvenpaa, 2013 ). So when everyone’s actions are visible, trust was not a key factor in resource allocation ( Goh and Wasko, 2012 ).

The next most important variable in the model is Task features (H1). Virtual teams rely heavily on communication technologies to coordinate their work, so the relationship between the nature of the task and the effectiveness of communication was studied in order to find its subsequent impact on team performance. Therefore, one of the determinants was the characteristics of the tasks and the positive influence on the communication of the members of the virtual team. The result was positive with a confidence level of 99.9%. Therefore, H1 was supported (β = 0.577; t = 13.842). These results amply confirm that great uncertainty about the requirements and the risk planning, followed by the technological suitability of the projects, are key to communication.

Our study also confirmed that the level of empowerment of the members of the virtual teams was also found to have a significant effect on Trust (H4). This result showed that Empowerment positively promotes and increases the confidence of a virtual team (β = 0.348; t = 7.086).

These results coincide with previous work ( Gondal and Khan, 2008 ) that measured the impact of team empowerment on VT performance and demonstrated that there is a positive relationship between team empowerment and team performance in virtual teams. Our findings go further and state that this is achieved with Trust. As with other studies ( Kirkman et al., 2004 ), empowerment in a virtual team can work as an alternative to leadership. Thus, the activities that are normally done by a team leader can be carried out by the members ( Kerr and Jermier, 1978 ) by contributing with co-creation. This behavior of the team members because of the empowerment of the team members by the leader has a direct and positive relationship with trust. It is considered a confidence-building attribute. In empowerment, commitment is only reached when the team has a shared vision and honest and regular communication with the leader.

The relationship with the next highest confidence level for trust in the virtual teams was H3: the level of cohesion of the members of the virtual teams (β = 0.366; t = 6.725). This finding shows that the ability of the members of a virtual team to get along with each other is critical to the well-being of the group and task performance. These findings are consistent with previous work ( Evans and Dion, 1991 ; Simons and Peterson, 2000 ; Baltes et al., 2002 ; Powell et al., 2004 ; Spector, 2006 ; Lu, 2015 ).

Therefore, it will be very important for software development companies to implement intragroup cohesion measures. These findings are consistent with other work ( Griffin, 1997 ). Similarly, managers could implement economic incentives that support their software developers to be strongly involved with the group’s tasks. Task cohesion will be greater if members identify with the group’s tasks and find them intrinsically rewarding and valuable.

In the current context with the Covid-19 pandemic, this cohesion has been highly questioned. Let’s not forget that the isolation measures decreed by many governments have made it difficult to deal with aspects such as different geographical locations, belonging to different organizations, and different sectors of the economy. This has made effective communication and close coordination difficult. However, the results reaffirm the theories already shown ( Powell et al., 2004 ).

One of the factors is the level of leadership of the members of the virtual teams (H2). The results showed that this had a direct and positive influence on Trust (β = 0.138; t = 3.209). Clearly, leadership in VTs is important. The results obtained coincide with the study by Baard et al. (2014) and show that the role of leaders is important for working in a VT, especially because leaders influence the way a team faces obstacles and the way the team ultimately adapts to such challenges, which is very important for the confidence generated for the future.

Therefore, the leader of a virtual team must use a style that generates Trust as a mediating factor in the indirect effect that this has on Performance.

The Communication between virtual workers has a direct and positive influence on the confidence of the virtual team and was supported (β = 0.160; t = 3.741) with a confidence level of 99.9%. Our study does support this hypothesis and agrees with Peñarroja et al. (2013) , who found that as virtuality increased, team coordination declined, but this relationship was partially mediated by levels of Trust. In addition, as can be seen in the results, it is the least strongly supported hypothesis.

H7, the level of communication between virtual workers has a direct and positive influence on the performance of the virtual team, was not supported (β = 0.019; t = 0.353). This outcome appears to be conditioned by the very high levels of virtuality that have been reached during the containment measures decreed by governments at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic and, as stated above, clearly demonstrate that communication influences trust only through trust.

This result reaffirms the role of trust-building in achieving the highest performance of the virtual team and allows us to conclude that the confidence of all members in the virtual team is key to success in software development.

The proposed model based on the IPO adaptation ( Gilson et al., 2015 ) has been largely validated using a PLS-SEM analysis. Therefore, software companies can use it as a theoretical framework when preparing their human resources and Virtual Teams management policies.

The important role of Trust as a basis for most of the variables of the model shows that it should be considered as one of the most important and relevant variables, especially because of the increase in virtualization and teleworking during the Covid-19 pandemic. Companies must give greater importance to Trust and take into account that all measures which strengthen leadership, communication, cohesion or the configuration of task characteristics must be designed considering the trust generated. It is interesting to note that economic incentives can help with group cohesion and policies improve empowerment. One such incentive could be skills training for group members. These measures may become more important than leadership in the coming years, given the results found during the pandemic.

Finally, this study was completed with software developers who use agile methodologies and who have good IT skills. The results, therefore, show that the increased virtuality brought about by the pandemic can be an opportunity to innovate in communication to influence performance.

Data Availability Statement

The raw data supporting the conclusions of this article will be made available by the authors, without undue reservation.

Author Contributions

VG-A undertook the research, collected the data, and prepared the initial manuscript. PP-S completed, revised, and finalized the manuscript, and participated in the preparation of the manuscript. MA-C provided the intellectual input and analyzed the data. All authors contributed to the article and approved the submitted version.

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

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Keywords : global software development, COVID-19, virtual teams, determinants of performance, PLS-SEM

Citation: Garro-Abarca V, Palos-Sanchez P and Aguayo-Camacho M (2021) Virtual Teams in Times of Pandemic: Factors That Influence Performance. Front. Psychol. 12:624637. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.624637

Received: 31 October 2020; Accepted: 18 January 2021; Published: 17 February 2021.

Reviewed by:

Copyright © 2021 Garro-Abarca, Palos-Sanchez and Aguayo-Camacho. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) . The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

*Correspondence: Pedro Palos-Sanchez, [email protected]

Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

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