Other voices, other rooms: differentiating social identity development in organisational and Pro-Am virtual teams

Abstract

This paper advocates ways to increase our understanding of how virtual team identity is constructed and develops in work settings. Firstly we suggest that a social identity approach might overcome the normative and atheoretical limitations present in existing studies of virtual team identity. Understanding virtual team identity is also seen to be enhanced by comparing organizational and professional amateur virtual work teams. Finally, the importance of technologically mediated dialogues for how members develop virtual team identity points us to Goffman’s (1959) notion of performing identity

New Technology, Work and Employment in the era of COVID‐19: reflecting on legacies of research

“…As the spatial mobility of workers has (temporarily at least) come to a halt for many, (Hislop and Axtell, 2007), one could assume that workers may benefit from no longer travelling to and for work (Wheatley and Bickerton, 2016). Instead however, many now find themselves working as part of multi-locational virtual teams (Hallier and Baralou, 2010), and people's work and working lives are increasingly fragmented as workers struggle to adapt to individualised 'workplaces', which bring with them a distinct lack of mutual support from colleagues, and negative implications for career progression. Many studies in this journal are relevant here, but in particular, attention should be drawn to the work of Natti et al (2011) and Mann and Holdsworth (2003: 208) who 'highlighted the psychological stress of separation from professional colleagues and the social banter and buzz that constitutes an office environment'.…”

“…As workers increasingly find themselves part of virtual teams, using video‐conferencing and social media for work, the technologies employed by those working from home are the focus of the pieces by Hallier and Baralou (2010), Panteli and Dawson (2001) and van Zoonen and Rice (2017). Of course, such technologies increase the prevalence of electronic surveillance, which is the focus of the work of Jeske and Santuzzi (2015) and Kidwell and Sprague (2009).…”

Editorial: chronicling the information revolution

“…It was recognised very early on in the 1980s that the capacity of digital systems to be formed into networks would prove instrumental in breaking the link between function and location: in other words, the performance of work tasks would no longer be confined to the ‘work place’. Recent volumes of NTWE have featured examination of the nature of work and employment in the varying locations where work is now performed: at home through the phenomenon of teleworking ( NTWE Special Issue, 2003), from temporary locations by mobile workers (Hislop and Axtell, 2007), or the creation of multi‐locational virtual teams (Hallier and Baralou, 2010). While offering reduction in overheads, multi‐locational work (Bosch‐Sijtsema et al ., 2010) created two problems for management—how to control the performance of employees that are not present (Valsecchi, 2006; Limburg and Jackson, 2007; Taskin and Edwards, 2007) and how to manage the workspaces whose population may be variable (Halford, 2005).…”

‘It's like, instant respect’: Coworking spaces as identity anchoring environments in the new economy

“…For many freelancers and other independent workers, ‘digital nomadism’ (Aroles et al, 2020; Turkle, 1996), characterised by the ability to work from anywhere with a laptop and wi‐fi connection, became commonplace. Digital nomadism and the general virtualisation of work strip individual workers of the synchronised time and place coordination of an office that help them form a professional identity as a member of a specific team (Hallier & Baralou, 2010), leaving them to wrestle with other possible identity targets (Mattarelli & Tagliaventi, 2010), such as the organisation, profession or work platform.…”