Enhancing performance of geographically distributed teams through targeted use of information and communication technologies

Abstract

Increasingly, geographically dispersed teams are relying exclusively on sophisticated information and communication technologies (ICTs) to coordinate their knowledge. Current research argues that the reliance on the technology (versus face-to-face) for communication may inhibit geographically distributed team performance. In contrast, we argue that previous research associates negative performance effects with the level or degree of exclusive reliance on ICT without regard to the specific form or ways in which team members use ICT. We hypothesize that teams will be more successful when they use ICT to specifically facilitate the situational awareness needs created by their teams’ composition and task. We studied 54 geographically dispersed teams that all relied exclusively on ICT (with minimal to no face-to-face interactions) for coordination in order to control for the effect of the level of reliance on ICTs. Our multi-source/multi-method study demonstrates that the form of use can have a positive association with team performance even in teams relying exclusively on ICT depending on the team composition and nature of task being performed. Our findings suggest that, instead of assuming that technology reliance negatively impacts team performance, researchers studying distributed teams should separate the level of reliance (degree of use) from form of reliance (type of use) on ICT.