Guest Editorial

What makes virtual teams effective or ineffective? At the face-to-face level, Hackman's (1983) account of group effectiveness provides a useful model. He proposed three factors that influence the effectiveness of face-to-face groups: whether the group's outputs meet specified standards; whether the group's processes enhance the future interdependence of its members; whether team members experience enhanced personal well-being. But, there are several important dimensions of difference between virtual and collocated teams that suggest that the model needs to be modified for virtual contexts. The paper by Furst et al. (Virtual team effectiveness: a proposed research agenda) suggests that a fourth factor influences the effectiveness of virtual teams Ð the level of recordability of the team's work processes. In addition, they identify several sets of important issues requiring further investigation. These issues relate to how best to design (and to use process criteria to evaluate) the organizational context, how best to design the group itself and the resources to support the team, how best to create and enhance identity and trust, and how to avoid problems such as social loafing and groupthink. Furst et al. argue that, currently, organizations are not managing their virtual teams any differently from their collocated teams, but that significant differences do exist between virtual and collocated teams and that `managers (and researchers) ignore these differences at their peril'. The effectiveness of information exchange in the use of computer-mediated communication systems is increased when there are relational links of trust, commitment and frank expression between members. When these links are developed, they involve performing activities that support team members or establish and reinforce their group status, or that define their task roles or establish group norms. These links can sometimes exist fortuitously or can be designed in, through some form of training programme that enables team members to get to know each other in collocated environments and that emphasizes social rather than technical issues, when the virtual team is formed. The paper by Warkentin et al. (Training to improve virtual team communication) investigates the effect of such training. They find that perceptions of the interaction process in terms of these three variables are improved when training takes place. This is in accordance with social information processing theory, which predicts that the exchange of social information will help teams develop relational links. Warkentin et al. speculate that such effects may also be present when virtual teams have evolved out of collocated ones in which opportunities have been provided naturally for these relational links to be put in place between members. 245 Info Systems J (1999) 9, 245±247