Professional status and norm violation in email collaboration

Can performance of modern virtual teams measure up to co-located teams?

Purpose

Global virtual teams are omnipresent entities within the majority of international companies. Ongoing research debate presents multiple open questions on the impact of virtuality. Especially whether virtual teams can be as effective as their co-located counterparts. This paper aims to address the performance aspects of fully and semi-virtual in comparison with co-located teams.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper presents quantitative research based on computer logged data sets tracking the behaviour of individuals in multiple virtual, semi-virtual and co-located teams. The analysis features a comparison of key performance indicators and evaluates teamwork results while putting the observations into the context of virtual organisational behaviour.

Findings

Findings based on a sample of 42,168 work items from 48 teams of various virtuality levels show that co-located teams still outperform the virtual ones despite technological advances. This comes as an important reminder and practical implication during times of rapid shift towards virtual work in recent years.

Originality/value

Drawn conclusions are valuable, mainly due to the nature of data set extraction (unbiased and error-free source) from a real business environment with a unique combination of various cross-cultural compositions. The sample includes teams from the same company working on similar tasks, allowing control for many factors limiting previously published papers on virtual team performance.