Out of Sight, Out of Sync: Understanding Conflict in Distributed Teams

Abstract

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. ...

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