Research Note—A Model of Conflict, Leadership, and Performance in Virtual Teams

Abstract

Organizations in many different industries employ virtual teams in a variety of contexts, including research and development, customer support, software development, and product design. Many virtual teams are geographically and culturally dispersed in order to facilitate around-the-clock work and to allow the most qualified individuals to be assigned to a project team. As such dispersion increases, virtual teams tend to experience greater and more diverse conflict compared to co-located teams. Since the dynamics of virtual team leadership are not yet well understood, research that examines how team leaders alleviate threats to team cohesion and provide strategies for conflict resolution makes significant contributions to the literature. Our study uses a survey-based methodology to examine the perceptions of 159 virtual team members employed by a large U.S. telecommunications corporation and five Korean firms involved in construction, finance, business consulting, sales, and distribution. The study integrates the dynamic model of conflict in distributed teams with the behavioral complexity in leadership theory to investigate the roles that virtual team leaders must effectively employ to reduce various forms of virtual team conflict. Our findings indicate that communication technologies are effective in reducing task conflict; however, the team leader may also mitigate task conflict by assuming the role of monitor. Likewise, process conflict may be abated in the virtual team as the leader performs coordinator activities. An effective virtual team leader exhibits specific roles to manage different types of conflict and the leader's response to conflict plays an important part in virtual team success.

Moderating Effects of Project Management Experience, Project Team Size, Project Duration and Project Value Size on the Relationship between Project Manager’s Leadership Roles and Project Team Effectiveness in Malaysia

“…However, Quinn (1988) model is selected and used in this study because its leadership roles are well-received, well-balanced (i.e. covering flexibility, control, internal and external dimensions) and attracted the most citations (Quinn, 1988;Denison et al, 1995;Chen et al, 2008;Wakefield et al, 2008;Zafft et al, 2009). Quinn (1988) suggested a model of leadership roles that spanned across eight roles namely, mentor, facilitator, innovator, broker, monitor, coordinator, producer and director.…”

“…(Quinn, 1988) effective project manager will demonstrate appropriately in a complex and rapidly changing environment (Denison et al, 1995). There were studies conducted on how BCL theory had influenced Team Conflict and Team Trust (Chen et al, 2008;Wakefield et al, 2008). However, there is still lack of research whether BCL theory will also influence Team Effectiveness.…”

The Effect of Virtual Team Membership Change on Social Identity Development: A Case from Higher Education in Norway

“…It is expected that recently merged virtual teams, that is virtual teams where new team members have been added, may not have had ample time to learn and acclimate to rules of interaction, would have a lower level of shared social identity related perceptions and greater levels of conflict. Perceptions of social identity, similarity of views of the social context in which they work, and different levels of perception on the purpose of the work have been shown to be slow to develop in virtual environments [14]. Similarly, teams with different perceptions of identity, purpose and context have been shown to have greater levels of conflict [15].…”

Virtual teams versus face to face teams: A review of literature

“…One of the benefits of the virtual team environment is its ability to efficiently and effectively connect people, extends resources [1] and enables greater levels of productivity [1,6,8]. Virtual teams operate in a twenty four hour cycle and tap the strength of diversity in terms of skills, experiences and knowledge about customers and business [9,10] save money [6] allows creativity and innovativeness [8,11] and originality among team members, promote equality among employees and discourage race discrimination [11]. Morale development, cost reduction, shorter cycle times, a larger talent pool and work life balance are the by-products of virtual teams [8].…”