Geographically distributed teams are increasingly prevalent in the workplace, and research on distributed teams is ever more available. Despite this increased attention, we still know surprisingly little about how the dynamics of distributed teams differ from those of their collocated counterparts and how existing models of teams apply to this new form of work. For example, although it has been argued that distributed as compared with collocated teams have more severe conflicts that fester longer and resist resolution, few comparative studies investigate dynamics such as conflict in both distributed and collocated teams. In this study, we examine conflict, its antecedents, and its effects on performance in distributed as compared with collocated teams. Our goal is to understand how conflict plays out in distributed and collocated teams, thus providing insight into how existing models of conflict must be augmented to reflect the trend toward distributed work. We report the results of a field study of 43 teams, 22 collocated and 21 distributed, from a large multinational company. As expected, the distributed teams reported more task and interpersonal conflict than did the collocated teams. We found evidence that shared identity moderated the effect of distribution on interpersonal conflict and that shared context moderated the effect of distribution on task conflict. Finally, we found that spontaneous communication played a pivotal role in the relationship between distribution and conflict. First, spontaneous communication was associated with a stronger shared identity and more shared context, our moderating variables. Second, spontaneous communication had a direct moderating effect on the distribution-conflict relationship, mitigating the effect of distribution on both types of conflict. We argue that this effect reflects the role of spontaneous communication in facilitating conflict identification and conflict handling.

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The bulk of our understanding of teams is based on traditional teams in which all members are collocated and communicate face to face. However, geographically distributed teams, whose members are not collocated and must often communicate via technology, are growing in prevalence. Studies from the field are beginning to suggest that geographically distributed teams operate differently and experience different outcomes than traditional teams. For example, empirical studies suggest that distributed teams experience high levels of conflict. These empirical studies offer rich and valuable descriptions of this conflict, but they do not systematically identify the mechanisms by which conflict is engendered in distributed teams. In this paper, we develop a theory-based explanation of how geographical distribution provokes team-level conflict. We do so by considering the two characteristics that distinguish distributed teams from traditional ones: Namely, we examine how being distant from one's team members and relying on technology to mediate communication and collaborative work impacts team members. Our analysis identifies antecedents to conflict that are unique to distributed teams. We predict that conflict of all types (task, affective, and process) will be detrimental to the performance of distributed teams, a result that is contrary to much research on traditional teams. We also investigate conflict as a dynamic process to determine how teams might mitigate these negative impacts over time. (Distributed Work; Distributed Teams; Virtual Teams; Conflict) In response to a variety of factors that characterize the modern economy-including the global expansion of the marketplace and the businesses that serve it, the rise in mergers and acquisitions, and heightened competitive pressures to reduce the time to develop productsorganizations increasingly are assembling teams whose members are drawn from sites far and near. Geographically distributed teams face a number of unique challenges, including being coached from a distance, coping with the cost and stress of frequent travel, and dealing with repeated delays (Armstrong and Cole 2002). Many scholars and practitioners have noted and expressed concern about one such challenge facing these teams: the prevalence and severity of conflict. Justifying their concern, reports from the field indicate that conflict is disruptive to performance in distributed teams.Field studies further indicate that geographically distributed teams may experience conflict as a result of two factors: The distance that separates team members and their reliance on technology to communicate and work with one another. Distance and technology mediation have gone unexplored in existing models of conflict and performance in teams because their authors, for the most part, assumed that team members were collocated and communicating face to face. As a result, whether these two factors spur new antecedents of conflict is not known, nor is it clear how conflict in distributed teams might be reduced. ...