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AWARENESS IN GLOBAL VIRTUAL TEAMS:
ITS ANTECEDENTS AND IMPLICATIONS

presented by

Chyng—Yang Jang

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AWARENESS IN GLOBAL VIRTUAL TEAMS:
ITS ANTECEDENTS AND IMPLICATIONS

By

Chyng-Yang Jang

A DISSERTATION

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulﬁllment of the requirements
for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
Department of Telecommunication, Information Studies and Media

2003

ABSTRACT

AWARENESS IN GLOBAL VIRTUAL TEAMS:
ITS ANTECEDENTS AND IMPLICATIONS

By

Chyng-Yang Jang

This study investigated the antecedents and impacts of awareness in
global virtual teams. Awareness is a broad construct that reﬂects the extent to
which people participating in a collaborative activity possess relevant information
about aspects of their teammates or teammates’ work. The purpose of this study
was to integrate the concept of awareness into the literature of work group study.
Speciﬁcally, the effects of perceived task structure, communication frequency
and groupware usage on perceived awareness were examined. In addition, the
effects of awareness, along with task interdependence, on trust and solution
agreement were also explored. Participants were recruited from universities in
the United States, Mexico, and Russia to form 7 distributed engineering design
teams. Each team consisted of students from 2 locations and was offered a set
of communication tools, including an lSDN-based video conferencing system
(VT EL), Microsoft Netmeeting, telephone, fax, a project-speciﬁc email account,
and a web-based groupware tool known as TeamSCOPE.

The results showed that perceived task interdependence and
communication frequency had positive effects on perceived level of awareness.

Additionally, the effect of communication frequency on perceived awareness was

moderated by perceived task interdependence. Results also showed that
participants’ reliance on real-time meetings with distant teammates for
awareness was positively associated with increased perceived task
interdependence and contributed to a higher level of perceived awareness.
However, no effect of TeamSCOPE usage on perceived awareness was found.
Further discussion on awareness demands is provided.

Both perceived task interdependence and awareness were positively
associated with trust. Multiple regression analysis showed that perceived
awareness was the more signiﬁcant predictor of trust. No effect was found
between awareness and solution agreement.

These results suggest that awareness is an important group process variable. It
provides a link between task interdependence and trust. To stay updated with
their distant teammates, virtual team participants need adequate media support
to match their awareness demand. Organizations should reduce the barriers of
using synchronous communication channels for virtual teams, especially for

those working on high interdependent tasks.

To my parents and my wife,

whose love and support made this work possible.

iv

ACKNOWLEDGENTS

To be able to complete this journey, I have many people to thank. First, I
would like to express my sincere appreciation to my advisor and mentor,
Professor Charles Steinﬁeld who guided and supported me throughout the
process. In addition, special thanks are due to my dissertation committee
members, Professor Brian Pentland, Pam Whitten, and Dan Kim for their advises
and encouragement. I would also like to thank Professor Frank Biocca, Brian
Pentland, and Pam Whitten for their guidance support during my years in East
Lansing. Finally, I would like to thank colleagues in the INTEnD project: Erik
Goodman, John Lloyd, Tim Hind, Ken David, and Ben Pfaff.

This project was supported by a grant from the National Science
Foundation, IlS-9811568, to Professor Charles Steinﬁeld, Erik Goodman, John

Lloyd, Tim Hind, Ken David.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

LIST OF TABLES .............................................................................. viii
LIST OF FIGURES ............................................................................. ix
CHAPTER 1.

INTRODUCTION ............................................................................... 1

CHAPTER 2.

LITERATURE REVIEW AND RESEARCH HYPOTHESES 8
The Rise of Virtual Teams ............................................................ 10

Deﬁning Virtual Teams ................................................... 11
Advantages of Virtual Teams .......................................... 13
Communication Barriers of Virtual Teams .......................... 14
Understanding Awareness ........................................................... 17
Types of Awareness Information ...................................... 20
Awareness and Collaborative Work .................................. 22
Mediated Communication .............................................................. 26
Task Interdependence .................................................................. 27
Task Interdependence, Awareness, and Media Behaviors ................... 28
Media Behavior and Awareness .................................................... 32
Task Interdependence, Media Usage and Awareness ........................ 33
Trust ....................................................................................... 33
Task Interdependence and Trust ................................................... 36
Awareness and Trust .................................................................. 36
Solution Agreement .................................................................... 37 .
Task interdependence and Solution Agreement ................................ 38
Awareness and Solution Agreement ............................................... 39

CHAPTER 3.

METHODOLOGY ............................................................................. 41
Team composition and Design Projects .......................................... 42
Overview of TeamSCOPE ............................................................ 44
Data Collection ........................................................................... 46
Measurement ............................................................................. 47

CHAPTER 4.

RESULTS ........................................................................................ 52

CHAPTER 5.

DISCUSSION AND CONLUSION ......................................................... 73

The Effects of Task Interdependence on Media Behaviors .................. 73

vi

The Effects of Task Interdependence and Media behavior on Awareness 76

The Effects of Task Interdependence and Awareness on Trust ............ 79

The Effects of Task Interdependence and Awareness on Solution
Agreement ............................................................................... 81
Limitations, Implications and Suggestions for Future Research ............ 82
Limitations ..................................................................... 82
Implications for Theories and Future Research ...................... 85
Implications for Groupware Design ...................................... 86
Implications for Practice .................................................... 87
Conclusion ..................................................................... 88
REFERENCES ................................................................................. 98

vii

LIST OF TABLES

Table 1: Principle Component Analysis: Perceived Awareness ................... 53
Table 2: Principle Component Analysis: Latent variables ........................... 54
Table 3: Descriptive Statistics of Measures Used in the Study .................... 56
Table 4: Bivariate Correlation Matrix .............................. i ........................ 57
Table 5: Bivariate Correlation Matrix (Group Level) .................................. 58

Table 6: Regression Analysis: Predicting Perceived Awareness by Perceived
Task Interdependence, Communication Frequency, and TeamSCOPE
Usage .................................................................................. 63

Table 7: Regression Analysis: Predicting Perceived Awareness by Perceived
Task Interdependence, Communication Frequency, and TeamSCOPE
Usage (Group Level) .............................................................. 64

Table 8: Regression Analysis: Predicting Trust by Perceived Awareness and
Perceived Task Interdependence .............................................. 69

Table 9. Regression Analysis: Predicting Trust by Perceived Awareness and
Perceived Task Interdependence (Group Level) ........................... 70

Table 10. Summary of Hypotheses and Results ...................................... 72

viii

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1. Proposed Research Model ...................................................... 40
Figure 2. TeamSCOPE: Activity Summary Screen ................................... 92
Figure 3. TeamSCOPE: File Activity History ........................................... 93
Figure 4. TeamSCOPE: Message Board ................................................ 94

Figure 5. TeamSCOPE: Login Status, Login Record and Usage Pattern 95
Figure 6. Research Model with Results .................................................. 96

Figure 7. Revised Research Model ....................................................... 97

ix

CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

Recent development of information and communication technology has
enabled organizations to pull resources from all over the world via virtual teams.
In virtual teams, people collaborate with each other without physically gathering
in the same place as in traditional co-located teams (Lipnack 8 Stamps, 2000).
Freeing from geographic limitation, virtual teams offer ﬂexibility and agility that
are much needed for businesses to cope with the fierce competition in a global
market (Applegate, 1999; Davidow & Malone, 1992; Wigand, Picot, & Reichwald,
1997). However, physical dispersion also brings severe communication and
information barriers. One speciﬁc challenge that virtual team participants face is
awareness deﬁcit - the lack of knowledge about the current state of distant
teammates’ work related to the group project. Awareness deﬁcit makes it difﬁcult
to coordinate with remote partners and may result in process loss. With the
increasing popularity of virtual teams in organizations (Townsend, DeMarie, &
Hendrickson, 1998), it is important to further our understanding of awareness in
the context of distributed collaboration. The purpose of this study is to
investigate the factors that have impacts on awareness as well as the effects of
awareness on group outcomes in virtual teams. Speciﬁcally, this study aims to

examine the inﬂuences of task interdependence and media use on perceived

awareness level as well as the effects of awareness on trust and solution
agreement.

Awareness is essential for collaborative work. Ethnographical research on
workplace found that collaborators constantly keep each other updated on task-
related activities (Richard H.R. Harper, Hughes, 8 Shapiro, 1989; C. C. Heath &
Luff, 1991 ). By staying aware of the current state of the project and the activities
of coworkers, people are able to adjust and orient their own and their partners”
work toward a common goal. In a traditional co-located work setting, it is
relatively easy for people to stay updated due to physical proximity. However,
when people collaborating from different places, such as in virtual teams,
maintaining awareness presents a severe challenge.

Traditionally, a project team is brought together in a central location. The
close association between physical proximity and awareness can be illustrated
by the following quotes from the interview with participants in this study. When
asked about how they stay updated with the project progress made by their local
teammates, American participants in one of the project teams study answered:

G: “It’s not a problem at all. We see each other all the time.”

8: “Yeah, we are practically in the building 20 hours a day.”

J: “Yes, us three have a class together, and G, S and T have the same
class. Plus, if we don’t meet in the class, we will see each other in the hallway.”

S: “Or downstairs."

J: “Yes, downstairs, in the workshop.”

Meeting in the hallway, workshop, or other shared public areas, was part
of their daily routine and workday activities. These gatherings allow team
members to easily provide and receive updates regarding the project status. In
turn, they can make necessary adjustments and respond to the latest
development.

Work place studies found that these hallway encounters, coffee room or
copy room chats, white board discussions, paper strips, are all commonly used
channels that allow people to gather what is happening around them (Richard
H.R. Harper et al., 1989; C. C. Heath 8 Luff, 1991). However, these
spontaneous connections, informal encounters and peripheral observations,
taken for granted in traditional co-located teams, are difﬁcult, if at all possible,
when collaborating partners are in different places in a virtual team. Moreover,
the locations of virtual team members may span across several time zones.
Scheduling meetings can be extremely difﬁcult (Cramton, 1997; Charles
Steinﬁeld, Jang, 8 Pfaff. 1999). As a result, unlike traditional co-located teams,
virtual teams are short of those genuine channels to stay aware of each others
progress or problems. It may further prevent them from responding to those
internal issues in a timely fashion. This problem of lack of awareness presents a
big challenge of coordination in virtual teams.

The issue of awareness in distributed collaboration was ﬁrst recognized by
CSCW, human computer interaction, and groupware research communities. It is
perhaps not surprising because, when people begin to work closely from apart, it

becomes obvious that they are in danger of awareness deﬁcit. A number of

CSCW tools have been designed to address this problem of lack of awareness
for distributed teams from different perspectives. Some examples of such tools
include Porthole (Dourish 8 Bly, 1992), TeamSCOPE (Charles Steinﬂeld et al.,
1999), and Awareness Monitor (Fussell et al., 1998). Providing various types of
awareness information, these tools aim to facilitate distant collaboration without
requiring extra communication or cognitive efforts from virtual team participants.
However, the current studies in the computer-supported cooperative work and
groupware ﬁelds are mostly focused on the design issues, such as how to
represent different types of awareness information and how to minimize cognitive
loads for the users (Schmidt, 2002) The relationships between awareness and
other group structural or outcome variables are not investigated.

On the other hand, little attention is paid to the issue of awareness in the
literature on teams and work groups. It is because, perhaps, previous studies
have been focused on co-Iocated work groups. The different ways that people
use to maintain awareness are often taken for granted in traditional teams.
Mutual awareness is presumed among team members physically working
together. However, the setting of virtual teams renders the presumption of
mutual awareness no longer feasible.

This study aims to inquire about the relationship of awareness and other
important team research constructs. Literatures from work group study, group
communication, and social psychology help to orient the investigation on the
impacts of awareness on group outcomes, especially those deemed important to

virtual teams, such as trust and solution agreement. In addition, it costs time and

efforts to stay updated particularly in the context of geographically distributed
teams.

In order to better manage awareness needs, it is helpful to understand the
factors that inﬂuence the supply and demand of awareness so organizations can
anticipate and provide suitable awareness support. Particularly, task
interdependence is regarded as a group design parameter that dictates group
interaction . The impacts of task interdependence on awareness are studied.
Moreover, the role of media in awareness support is also investigated since all
communication and information exchanges in virtual teams occur through
electronic media. These results help to further our understanding of distributed
collaboration and contribute to the management of virtual teams as well as
design of collaborative tools.

The research questions guiding this study are:

- What are the effects of task structure on awareness?

- Does media use affect awareness level in virtual teams?

- What are the impacts of awareness on trust and solution agreement?

The subjects of this study were undergraduate engineering students
participating in INTEnD project. INTEnD, standing for International Networked
Teams for Engineering Design, was a multi-national research consortium. It was
partially funded by National Science Foundation (Charles Steinﬁeld, Goodman,
Lloyd, David, 8 Hinds, 1998). This research was part of the INTEnD project and

conducted in the fall semester of 2000. Seven virtual engineering design teams

participated in the study. Students were recruited from the United States,
Russia, and Mexico. These teams were assembled at the beginning of the
semester and told to collaboratively complete a 13-week design project. To
simulate a real industrial task team, each team worked on a real-world
engineering design problem provided by an industry partner. In addition, all
teams were also provided with a range of communication tools, including ISDN-
and IP-based video conferencing, telephone, fax, email, and TeamSCOPE,
which was a web-based groupware developed earlier by INTEnD. Data was
collected via survey instrument, user diary, as well as system logs.

Multiple regression analysis was applied to the survey data. The results of
these analyses suggest that perceived task interdependence and communication
frequency had positive effects on perceived level of awareness. Additionally, the
effect of communication frequency on perceived awareness was moderated by
perceived task interdependence. The results also showed that participants who
worked on high interdependent tasks relied more on real-time meetings with
distant teammates for awareness. This reliance on synchronous communication
channels had positive effects on perceived awareness. Moreover, both
perceived task interdependence and awareness were positively associated to
trust. Multiple regression analysis showed that perceived awareness was the
signiﬁcant predictor of trust. These results suggest a number of implications for
groupware development, virtual team management, and future research.

The remaining chapters are organized as following. Chapter 2 provides

literature review and research hypotheses. From the systems perspective

(McGrath, 1964), awareness can be viewed as a group process variable that
links group input and output. Speciﬁcally, the concept of awareness and its
relationship with other group input and outcome variables will be discussed and
hypotheses will be derived. Chapter 3 offers discussion on methodology,
including details on the INTEnD project, team composition, data collection and
measurements. Results of the study are presented in Chapter 4 and discussed
in Chapter 5. In addition, the limitation of the study as well as the implications to
future research, virtual team management, and groupware design will also be

discussed in Chapter 5.

CHAPTER 2
LITERATURE REVIEW AND HYPOTHSES

In an attempt to integrate the concept of awareness into the extensive
body of literature in work group research, this study applies a systems
perspective, which understands group dynamic in terms of input, process, and
output. The systems perspective was originated form the early work of McGrath
(1964) and Hackman and Morris (1975) in their pursuit of group effectiveness
and further developed and adopted by many researchers (Campion, Medsker, 8
Higgs, 1993; Gladstein, 1984; Guzzo 8 Shea, 1992; Hackman, 1987; Pearce 8
Ravlin, 1987; Tannenbaum, Beard, 8 Salas, 1992; Tubbs, 1983). It was
regarded as the dominant view of groups historically (Guzzo 8 Shea, 1992).

The systems perspective pays special attention to group processes.
Group processes describe what happens during group interaction (Hightower 8
Hagmann, 1995). They can be maintenance-oriented that offer social supports
(Bales, 1958; Gladstein, 1984), or task-oriented that allow the group to carry out
their mission (Campion et al., 1993; Philip 8 Dunphy, 1959). Group processes
are posited as linkages between group input, such as group composition, task,
and organizational context, and group outcomes, such as task performance,
member satisfaction, and other social and psychological output. The basic
premises are that group input inﬂuences group processes, which, in turn, lead to

group outcomes (Tubbs, 1983). Many studies also found that group input,

especially task characteristics, moderates the effects of group processes on
group outcomes (Gladstein, 1984; Goodman, Ravlin, 8 Argote, 1986; Langfred,
2000).

From the systems perspective, awareness is a perfect candidate for a
group process variable. Awareness is often referred to as an “understanding of
the activities of others” (Dourish 8 Bellotti, 1992)--an essential part of
coordination and collaboration. This understanding is important for team
coordination because it provides the basis for each member to adjust their action
to ﬁt the group. As an integral part of group processes, awareness should be
inﬂuenced by group input variables and have effects on group outcomes.
Speciﬁcally, the effects of task interdependence, as a group input variable, on
awareness will be examined. Task interdependence dictates the ways team
members coordinate with each other. The coordination requirements should
produce different demands on awareness. For group outcomes, trust and
solution agreement will be discussed. Trust is pivotal in a global virtual team in
order to cope with the volatility of the global environment (Sirkka L Jarvenpaa,
Knoll, 8 Leidner, 1998). Agreement on team decisions is important for group
support in implementing solutions (Castore 8 Murnighan, 1978; Donellon, Gray,
8 Bougon, 1986). Both trust and agreement are challenging for global virtual
teams with diverse cultural backgrounds.

Awareness as a group process construct is especially important to virtual
teams because of the geographic dispersion. In virtual teams, team members

have to rely on electronic media for communication and information exchange

(Lipnack 8 Stamps, 2000; Townsend et al., 1998). Seeking and presenting
project updates or other awareness functions are also conducted via various
communication tools and groupware systems. How people use different media
for awareness purposes becomes an integral part of group process of virtual
teams and will also be investigated.

In this chapter, the special characteristics of virtual teams and the
communication barriers they bring will be discussed ﬁrst. The concept of
awareness and its impacts on cooperative work will then be reviewed. Following,
group input and output variables, task interdependence, trust, and solution
agreement, will be introduced. Their relationships with awareness will be

discussed in turn and research hypotheses will be proposed.

The Rise of Virtual Teams

In response to competitive pressures in the global market and to work
effectively and efﬁciently in an international setting, companies have increasingly
adopted virtual teams (Boutellier, Gassmann, Macho, 8 Roux;, 1998; Lipnack 8
Stamps, 2000). The fast pace of globalization requires organizations to be more
ﬂexible and to utilize their resources more efficiently. Costs of communication for
coordinating activities have long been recognized as among the highest in
organizations . Organizations traditionally tend to concentrate their personnel in
different functional departments at the same location. The rapid development of
communication technology, widespread deployment of computer networks, and

severe competition in the telecommunication market have greatly reduced the

10

cost of communication and, therefore, enabled companies and ﬁrms to structure
themselves in different ways (Davidow 8 Malone, 1992; Lucas 8 Baroudi, 1994;
Mowshowitz, 1997). One of the popular new organization forms is the virtual
team.

Deﬁning Virtual Teams

A frequently cited deﬁnition of a virtual team provided by Lipnack and
Stamps (1997) describes virtual teams as “a group of people who interact
through interdependent tasks guided by common purpose” and work “across
space, time, and organizational boundaries with links strengthened by webs of
communication technologies.” Similarly, Benson-Armer and Hsieh (1997)
deﬁned a virtual team as a group of geographically dispersed workers brought
together to accomplish a speciﬁc organizational task using information and
communication technologies. Both deﬁnitions emphasize the similarity and
differences between traditional teams and virtual teams. Virtual teams are
similar to traditional teams in the sense that all members work together to
achieve a shared goal.

However, virtual teams differ from traditional teams in several major
aspects. First, members in a virtual team are geographically distributed while
traditional teams are gathered in one location. Second, because of spatial
separation, virtual team members rely on electronic media for communication.
Many other researchers have recognized these two characteristics (Lucas 8
Baroudi, 1994; Maznevski 8 Chudoba, 2000; Sarker, Valacich, 8 Sarker, 2003;

Suchan 8 Hayzak, 2001; Townsend et al., 1998). The third major difference,

11

regarded as one of the special properties of virtual teams, is its diversity or
boundary-spanning capability. For example, DeSanctis and Monge (1999)
deﬁned virtual organization as “a collection of geographically distributed,
functionally and/or culturally diverse entities, that are linked by electronic forms of
communication and rely on lateral, dynamic relationship for coordination” (p.
693). Suchan and Hayzak (2001) described virtual teams as “collections of
geographically dispersed individuals from different functions, specialties, or even
organizations” (p. 175). Other research also noted the cultural diversity in virtual
teams (Pauleen, 2003; Rutkowski, Vogel, van Genuchten, Bemelmans, 8 Favier,
2002). The ﬂexibility of virtual teams with respect to physical location enables
them to include members from different professions, functions, organizations,
and countries. As a result, members of virtual teams may bring in the diversity of
national cultures, professional trainings, and organizational routines. Suchan
and szzak (2001) even suggested that virtual team members have little in
common except shared task and interdependence among them.

Scholars with different research focuses have noted additional
characteristics. For example, virtual teams are thought to be of ad-hoc
congregation (Suchan 8 Hayzak, 2001 ). They are called upon for a speciﬁc
project and dissembled after the mission is accomplished. Sarker, Valacich, and
Sarker (2003) deﬁned a virtual team as “a temporary collection of individuals
linked primarily through computer and communication technologies working
across space and time to complete a speciﬁc project” (p.35). Lucas and Baroudi

(1994) also characterized virtual teams as temporary groups. In many cases,

12

there is no prior history among virtual team members and no expectation to work
together again (S.L. Jarvenpaa 8 Ives, 1994; Lipnack 8 Stamps, 2000). In
addition, the membership of a virtual team is ﬂuid, with people joining and leaving
during the life of the team according to organizational needs (Lipnack 8 Stamps,
2000)

Advantages of Virtual Teams

Organizations are driven to search for new structures by the need to
leverage knowledge and resources that are inefﬁciently utilized under traditional
structures and also to cope with increasing market competition, product
development pressure, and environmental ﬂuctuation (Davidow 8 Malone, 1992;
Monge 8 Fulk, 1999; Wigand et al., 1997). Virtual teams, with their agility,
ﬂexibility, and cross-boundary capability, provide several distinct advantages
attractive to organizations. First, virtual teams free businesses from geographical
limitation in assembling project teams. Traditionally, team member selection is
conﬁned in a certain area due to the high interaction demands in teamwork.
Communication and information technology allow ﬁrms to overcome geographic
barriers to choose personnel with the best suitable skills and expertise for the
task (Bell 8 Kozlowski, 2002; Karolak, 1998; Lipnack 8 Stamps, 2000). This is
particularly important in a global market where local expertise holds the key to
success (Zirger 8 Maidique, 1990). Second, virtual teams enable companies to
access complementary resources, especially in terms of knowledge and
expertise. The increasing complexity of product development requires

companies to simultaneously work in several knowledge domains (Granstrand,

13

Bohlin, Oskarsson, 8 Sjoberg, 1992; Hagedoom, 1993; Starbuck, 1992). This
boundary-spanning capability enables virtual teams to integrate knowledge and
expertise from different function areas and organizations. The variety of
expertise that members bring in allows organizations to tap a broad array of
external information, new knowledge, and expand their capacity for learning and
innovating (W. M. Cohen 8 Levinthal, 1990). Third, in a global virtual team,
members may all work in different time zones. As a result, the group project can
be worked on around the clock. It enables companies to streamline product
development process to meet market pressures (Ciborra, 1993). Finally, virtual
teams can help organizations cut costs via reduced travel, hiring from low-wage
areas, and shortened product development time (Wigand et al., 1997).

Communication Barriers of Virtual Teams

While virtual teams provide those promising beneﬁts, the special
characteristics of virtual teams also bring many challenges. For example, ﬂuid
membership may create problems for leadership (Bell 8 Kozlowski, 2002),
organization memory, team identity, and cohesion (Kristof, Brown, Henry P.
Sims, 8 Smith, 1995). Lack of prior history may contribute to fragile trust among
distant teammates (Sirkka L. Jarvenpaa 8 Leidner, 1998). Particularty, virtual
teams face many communication and information challenges, including
awareness deﬁcits, due to geographical dispersion, cultural diversity, and limited
communication modalities.

Communication is important to team functions and performance (Simon,

1969). However, team members’ geographical dispersion has negative effects

14

on interaction among teammates. Early study in R8D groups found that the
probability of communication between two colleagues dropped with increased
physical distance (Allen, 1977). The farther it is between collaborators, the more
difﬁcult it becomes to arrange formal meetings and to have spontaneous
encounters. Global virtual teams are perfect manifestations of these problems.
The difference in cultural backgrounds also adds to difﬁculties in
communication among virtual team members (Pauleen, 2003). Cultural diversity
is sourced not only from nationality or ethnicity. Various professional disciplines
as well as organizational settings also contribute to it. These different cultures
bring in multiple, and possibly incompatible, mindsets, priorities, norms, and
values. Working toward mutual understanding can be difﬁcult in this context.
Knoll and Jarvenpaa (1998) reported that virtual team participants found it
difﬁcult to “predict how others would react and were not always sure what to do
about reactions” (p. 10). It typiﬁes the situation when there is no common ground
due to cultural diversity. In a review, Bettenhausen (1991) also concluded that
the advantages provided by multiple perspectives are often offset by problems in
achieving consensus. Without a common ground, it becomes difﬁcult to interpret
and respond to messages from distant teammates. Cohen and Mankin (2002)
noted similar ﬁndings based on their ﬁeld study of multinational project teams.
They also observed that team members learned to consciously avoid slang,
colloquialisms, and obscure, culturally based references. It is evident that
communication across cultures requires extra cognitive efforts and adds to

communication costs for global virtual teams.

15

Adoption of electronic media and software tools is another concern since
virtual teams rely on these electronic links. In order to be effective, these
networking technologies must be used by a number of people that constitute a
critical mass (Markus, 1990). The more users there are the more beneﬁt each
user may receive from using the technology. However, to take full advantage of
these networking tools, virtual teams face two constraints. First, the technology
infrastructures in different locations may not be compatible with each other.
Incompatibility will make some of the tools difﬁcult to adopt, or render them to
sub-par performance. Both may lead to lower adoption rates and, therefore,
reduced overall utility of this tool for the group. In a worse case scenario, it may
cause a site to be isolated from the rest of the team due to incompatible systems
. System designers have recognized this problem and have begun to set
universal accessibility and interoperability as design priorities (Richard Bentley,
Horstmann, 8 Trevor, 1997; Charles Steinﬁeld et al., 1999). Second, the diverse
cultural contexts of virtual team members may also hinder the adoption and use
of new information technologies. For example, in their ﬁeld study of the adoption
of Lotus Notes, Ciborra and Patriatta (1996) found that people at headquarters
and remote locations viewed the software as democratic and authoritative
respectively. They concluded that pre-existing organizational settings and
established work routines have implications on people’s perception and attitude
toward groupware tools offered to them.

These communication and information deﬁciencies may harm the

teamwork and introduce process loss, including increased time of

16

correspondence (Suchan 8 Hayzak, 2001), slower decision making (N. J. Adler,
1991), and reduced participation (N. J. Adler, 1991). Johnson (1999) noted in his
study of partially distributed teams, team members and clients were often
tempted to distribute work to the nearby team member instead of the most
appropriate person. The higher cost of coordinating and communicating with
distant members may drive the team to adopt sub-optimal work arrangements.
As a result, the team cannot reach its highest level of performance. One
particular coordination issue arising from these communication and information

barriers is the problem of awareness deficit.

Understanding Awareness

The issue of awareness is mostly recognized in the computer-supported
cooperative work (CSCW) and groupware research communities. At the early
stage of CSCW development, researchers undertook ethnographic studies to
further understand work practice in the real world (Richard H.R. Harper et al.,
1989; C. C. Heath 8 Luff, 1991). One of the profound contributions of these
ethnographic studies is their recognition of how people “seamlessly” align their
work with each other via different awareness mechanisms, such as observable
actions and shared artifacts.

Hughes and his colleagues conducted a series of studies on air trafﬁc
controllers (R Bentley et al., 1992; R. H. R. Harper 8 Hughes, 1993; J. Hughes,
King, Rodden, 8 Andersen, 1994; John A. Hughes, Randall, 8 Shapiro, 1992; J.

A. Hughes, Randall, 8 Shapiro, 1993). They found that air trafﬁc controllers

17

relied on active monitoring of their colleagues' actions and publicly available
artifacts, such as the ﬂight strips, to coordinate with their fellow controllers.

Health and Luff provided detailed accounts of work practice in the control room of
the London Underground (C. Heath 8 Luff, 1992; C. C. Heath 8 Luff, 1991; Luff,
Heath, 8 Greatbatch, 1992). They found that the timetable is the primary means
by which controllers and signalmen coordinate trafﬁc ﬂow and passenger
movement. When making a change on the timetable, controllers will deliberately
talk out loudly regarding the change and the rationales for it. This allows the
signalmen to be aware of the change without stopping their work on hand.

These ﬁndings highlighted two important dimensions in discussing
awareness. First, awareness as a cognitive state, it refers to having information
about a certain set of people, events and objects. For example, Dourish and Bly
(1992) referred to awareness as knowing “who is around, what activities are
occurring, [and] who is talking with whom.” Similarly, Gutwin, Greenberg and
Roseman (1996) deﬁned workspace awareness as the “up-to-the minute
knowledge a person holds about another’s interaction with the workspace.” From
this cognitive perspective, one central question in designing awareness support
in CSCW tools is “what to be aware of.” Researchers have been trying to identify
the right types of information to foster desired social exchange or task-related
action (Dourish 8 Bly, 1992; Gutwin 8 Greenberg, 1997; Konrad Tollmar,
Sandor, 8 Schomer, 1996). A review of ﬁve different types of awareness

information and correspondent groupware support is provided in the next section.

18

The second dimension, awareness as an action, concerns how people
gather and disseminate awareness information. When engaging in collaborative
work, people actively monitor activities of their colleagues and changes in shared
artifacts. For example, air controllers constantly keep track of the paper strips
posted by co-workers containing ﬂight information. At the same time, people also
deliberately make their part of the work observable (raising voice, for instance) to
help their co-workers stay updated (C. Heath, Svensson, Hindmarsh, Luff, 8 Vom
Lehn, 2002). Both gathering and presenting information of work activities is
necessary for collaborative partners to maintain awareness. If no one is
watching, observable activities will not facilitate awareness. By the same token,
if no activity or object is publicly displayed, no awareness information can be
attained. This highlights the cooperative nature of awareness conduct. Also it
indicates a medium dependence of awareness conduct. It is necessary to have
a medium in between, a shared workplace, or a publicly viewable paper strip, so
people can obtain and present awareness information.

In this study, awareness is considered as a cognitive state. Awareness is
deﬁned as possessing “knowledge about the current status and actions of the
various components in a collaborative system,” including people, tasks, shared
objects, communication media, collaborative software tools, and the work
environments (Charles Steinﬁeld et al., 1999). In the context of distributed work,
both collecting and delivering awareness information are challenging to
collaborative partners. Due to geographical dispersion, virtual team members no

longer physically share a workspace. Direct observation is not possible. Sharing

19

artifacts is also impractical unless they are in electronic forms. For virtual teams,
all work exchanges will be carried out using electronic media. It is then important
to explore the impact of media characteristics on awareness and awareness
conduct. A discussion in this regard will be provided in a later section.

Types of Awareness Information

As discussed above, one central issue of awareness related research is
what aspects of the work environment should be represented and monitored in
an awareness support system. Five different types of awareness support are
found in the literature; they are as follows:

1. Activity awareness

Knowledge about projected related activities of other group members is a
basic type of awareness information. During real-time collaboration, this may
simply mean knowing what actions others are taking at any given moment. Most
synchronous collaboration tools thus focus upon on-going activities (eg. Gutwin,
Roseman, 8 Greenberg, 1996). However, much group-related activity, such as
editing documents, occurs outside synchronous meetings. Asynchronous
groupware, such as BSCW (R. Bentley et al., 1997) and most software
development tools, often provide awareness of past events by making their log
ﬁles available. It is especially helpful for group members to be cognizant of any
modiﬁcations to shared objects such as documents or designs.

2. Availability awareness
Many groupware applications monitor the availability of people in order to

facilitate informal encounters or social interaction. These include Cruiser (Cool,

20

Fish, Kraut, 8 Lowery, 1992), Portholes (Dourish 8 Bly, 1992), VENUS
(Matsuura, Fujino, Okada, 8 Matsushita, 1996), @Work (Konrad Tollmar et al.,
1996) and ICQ. Researchers have learned from system trials that in order for
social interaction to take place, people need to decide what kind of interaction is
appropriate to involve the target party. Therefore, knowing the physical
availability of your colleagues is necessary but not sufﬁcient. People also need
to know what Tollmar, Sandor and Schomer (1996) called 'social awareness,’
such as whether the target party is busy at the moment. Consequently, he may
be unwilling to accept an interaction request despite his presence in the system.
In the case of @Work and ICQ, users indicate their physical availability and
willingness to interact by selecting from a preset list or inputting text, which also
provides information about future availability.
3. Process awareness

Process awareness is often found in workﬂow management systems (eg.
(Medina-Mora, Winograd, Flores, 8 Flores, 1992)), where the tasks are usually
well deﬁned and represented by a series of sub-tasks. Workﬂow systems
generally assert more control in information ﬂow and in the order in which tasks
are completed (Prinz, Rodden, Syri, 8 Trevor, 1996). In order to follow preset
procedures, it is useful to provide process awareness, which gives people a
sense of where their piece ﬁt into the whole picture, what the next step is, and

what needs to be done to move the process along.

21

4. Perspective awareness

Anticipation of others' action is important in the coordination of
collaborative work (Boland, Schwartz, 8 Tenkasi, 1992; Gutwin et al., 1996). In
order to better predict others' actions, people not only need information about
others' past actions, but also information on how particular actions emerged.
More speciﬁcally, this implies giving group member information helpful for making
sense of others' actions, such as background on team member’s beliefs and
knowledge. This is why Boland et al. (1992) suggested that sharing perspective
is required for distributed decision makers.

5. Environmental awareness

Environmental awareness focuses on events occurring outside of the
immediate workspace that may have implications for group activity. Fussell and
colleagues (Fussell et al., 1998), for example, describe a system that tracks
important environmental indicators that a business team might use to make
decisions.

Awareness and Collaborative Work

By drawing from the literature of social psychology, social cognition, and
CSCW, this section examines how awareness supports collaborative work. It
helps us to further understand the impact of awareness and awareness conduct
on group processes. Speciﬁcally, awareness conduct facilitates collaborative
work in three different ways. First, it assists work-related exchange and

coordination among members. Second, it motivates people to make positive

22

contribution. Third, it helps to maintain a collaborative mindset. These three
aspects will be discussed below.

First, awareness supports coordination by triggering interaction among
collaborative partners as well as providing a context for individual work.
Awareness serves a practical function in enabling social interaction and work
exchange. For example, spotting a colleague coming down the hallway allows
one to initiate a conversation with him or her. This conversation may involve
work-related matters. It may, in turn, lead to further work-related exchanges and
adjustments, such as acquiring a new document and rescheduling a meeting.
Moreover, by staying aware of what is happening around the workplace, people
are able to construct a “view of one another in the daily work environments”
(Dourish 8 Bellotti, 1992, p.541 ). This view helps people to see where their
individual work ﬁts in the whole picture. As Gutwin, Roseman and Greenberg
(1996) pointed out, workspace awareness “provides a context in which to
interpret utterances, and allows anticipation of others’ actions” (p.258). The
better understanding and anticipation of collaborators” activities will greatly
contribute to better coordination.

Second, awareness promotes members’ contribution via reducing social
loaﬁng or free riding as well as encouraging accountability. Social physiology
scholars have long found that people spend less effort when their work is not
observed, a phenomena referred to as social loaﬁng (Latane, Williams, 8
Harkins, 1979). Social loaﬁng has been reported in groups carrying out physical

tasks (Huddleston, Doody, 8 Ruder, 1985; Swain, 1996; K. D. Williams, Nida,

23

Baca, 8 Latane, 1989) or cognitive tasks (Harkins 8 Petty, 1982; N. Kerr, 1983;
N. L. Kerr 8 Bruun, 1983). When the contribution from different members cannot
be distinguished, Kerr and Bruun (1981) argued that the anonymity provides the
cover necessary for social loaﬁng. However, when individual performance is
observable, participants are subject to possible evaluation by co-workers or
supervisors. In fact, group members are motivated to observe each other’s work.
As Kandel and Lazeer (1992) argued, because a member's reward is often a
function of the performance of the whole group, the member has an incentive to
monitor other members in the team. The incentive to monitor, together with
observable individual actions, creates “evaluation apprehension,” which serves
as a performance motivator for team members (Geen, 1991). Studies in work
groups found that when the contribution of individual group members can be
identiﬁed, social loaﬁng is greatly reduced (Price, 1987; Swain, 1996; K.
Williams, Harkins, 8 Latane, 1981; K. D. Williams et al., 1989), and the quality of
work improves signiﬁcantly (Szymanski 8 Harkins, 1987; K. Williams et al.,
1981)

In other words, when individual work is observable, people will be held
responsible for their behavior. In this sense, awareness will promote
accountability. Literature suggests that people who are held accountable are
more likely to perform better and be more attentive to the needs of others than
those who are not held accountable for their decisions (Fandt, 1991). In short, as

a result of making individual inputs observable, awareness promotes positive and

24

quality contribution to group goals. It also encourages socially amenable
behaviors such as being responsible and dependable.

Finally, awareness also aids in sustaining a collaborative frame among
team members. Frames were deﬁned as “deﬁnitions of organizational reality that
serve as vehicles for understanding and action” (Gioia, 1986, p.50). From a
social cognitive point of view, people act on the basis of their interpretations of
the wor1d (Berger 8 Luckmann, 1967; K. E. Weick, 1995). Frames are sets of
assumptions, expectations, and knowledge that provide people with references
to assign meaning to what happens around them as well as guidelines to take
action (Orlikowski 8 Gash, 1994). Lindenberg (1997) applied frame theory in
discussing collaboration in work groups. He suggested that in order to have
successful teamwork, team members needed to adopt a collaborative frame,
which encourages commitments to collective goods and common goals.
However, working toward individual gains is always a tempting alternative.
Therefore, Lindenberg argued “the salience of cooperative frames will erode
unless it is periodically renewed” (Siegwart Lindenberg, 1997, p. 318).

Awareness conducts can play a role in conﬁrming the collaborative
expectation and, therefore, help to maintain the collaborative frame. As
discussed above, publicly perceptible activities and artifacts are important to
obtain awareness. To aid and orient the action of fellow collaborators, people
may explicitly make their own activities visible, audible, or tractable. This act of
serving awareness information indicates an understanding of the task

relationship with co-workers as well as co-workers’ information needs resulted

25

from that relationship. By providing the information and/or directing partners’
attention to that information, people at the same time conﬁrm to their fellow group
members their commitment to the teamwork. Awareness conduct, In this

respect, will serve to maintain the collaborative frame.

Mediated Communication

Since all communication and information exchanges in virtual teams occur
via electronic media, the properties of different media should be examined.
Particularly, media richness theory was applied in structuring media
characteristics. Media richness theory compares the different media in terms of
their capability to convey equivocal information (Daft 8 Lengel, 1984, Trevino,
Daft 8 Lengel, 1990) and develops a principle of media choice. From this
perspective, media are different in four aspects: speed of feedback, types of
sensory channels, degree of social presence, and richness of language carried.
With faster feedback, more sensory channels, greater social presence, and richer
language, a medium poses higher capacity or is deemed richer. According to
these criteria, a richness hierarchy was thus proposed. The level of richness is
highest with face-to-face, followed by the telephone, electronic mail, personal
documents, such as letters, notes and memos, and impersonal documents, such
as ﬂiers, bulletin and report (Trevino, Daft 8 Lengel, 1990). For virtual teams, in
general, synchronous channels, such as video conferencing, audio conferencing,
text-based chat, should be richer than asynchronous channels, such as emails

and groupware.

26

From the viewpoint of media richness theory, a successful communication
will be a match between the message and the medium. An equivocal message
should be conveyed in a rich media. A mismatch, rich message conveyed in a
lean medium or vice versa, will lead to communication failure. In support of this,
Daft, Lengel and Trevino (1987) found a strong relationship between managerial

performance and manager's capability to communicate effectively.

Task Interdependence

Interdependence has long been regarded as the essential aspect of a
team (Mintzberg, 1979; Salas, Dickinson, Converse, 8 Tannenbaum, 1992; Wall,
Kemp, Jackson, 8 Clegg, 1986). It is the “fate of interdependence,” as Lewin
argued, that distinguishes a work group from an aggregation of individuals
(Lewin, 1951 ). “One person’s experiences, actions and outcomes are linked in
some way to the experiences, actions and outcomes of the others in the group”
(Brown, 2000, p. 35). Organization research literature suggests many different
sources of interdependence in work groups, including the differentiation of roles,
the distribution of skills and resources, the manner in which goals are deﬁned
and achieved, and the manner in which performance is reviewed and rewarded
(for a review, see Wageman, 1995). One of the most important group variables
is task interdependence. Particularly, task interdependence is regarded as a
dominant factor that dictates how collaborators interact with each other .

At the group level, task interdependence is viewed as the extent to which

group members are dependent upon one another to perform their individual tasks

27

due to the structural relationship between team members and the nature of the
task (Campion et al., 1993; Cummings, 1978; Marvin E. Shaw, 1976; Shea 8
Guzzo, 1987). Task interdependence has been identiﬁed to be a key to several
group outcome variables, such as group effectiveness (Goodman et al., 1986;
Saavedra, Earley, 8 Van Dyne, 1993; Marvin E. Shaw, 1976; Wageman, 1995);
job satisfaction (Campion, Pepper, 8 Medsker, 1996); motivation (Hirst, 1988; M.
N Kiggundu, 1983; Wong 8 Campion, 1991); and group norm (Wageman, 1995).
Most importantly, for the current study, task interdependence is one of the group-
design parameters that have predictive power on group communication and
information exchange (Gresov, 1989; Hackman 8 Morris, 1975; Kelly 8 McGrath,
1985; Maznevski 8 Chudoba, 2000; Straus 8 McGrath, 1994; A. Van de Ven et

al., 1976; Vegt, Emans, 8 Vliert, 1999).

Task Interdependence, Awareness, and Media Behavior

Thompson’s (1967) classiﬁcation of task interdependence provides an
account on how it dictates group interaction patterns. He distinguished three
different levels of task interdependence, including pooled, sequential, and
reciprocal interdependence, among work units. Each type of task
interdependence sets a different communication requirement among work units.
In a pooled-interdependence arrangement, work outputs are turned in
independently and aggregated as the group output. There is no need of work
interaction between participants. In a sequential-interdependence arrangement,

the output of one member constitutes the input of another member. They are

28

required to connect with one another in a predetermined order. Finally, when
working on a reciprocal-interdependent task, co-workers are required to
exchange their work output with each other in order to integrate into the group
output—when task structure moves, from pooled and sequential, to reciprocal, the
level of interdependence increases. With increased interdependence,
collaborating parties rely more on each other in order to do their own job. As a
result, the mutual dependence among collaborators requires tighter coordination
and, in turn, posts higher demand for awareness information. The more
collaborative partners depend on each other, the more they need to stay updated
in order to coordinate their works. Task interdependence is, therefore, a
motivator that prompts team members to provide and acquire awareness

information. Accordingly, the following hypothesis is proposed:

H1: Higher level of perceived task interdependence will lead to higher

level of perceived awareness.

In addition, the mutual dependency embedded in the task structure can be
seen as a source of uncertainty and, accordingly, a source of information
demand (Galbraith, 1973; A. H. Van de Ven, A. L. Delbecq, 8 R. J. Koenig,
1976). The greater the degree of task interdependence, the greater the problem-
solving demands and the greater information processing requirements becomes

(March 8 Simon, 1958).

29

Both lead to more frequent and ﬂexible interaction between collaborators.
In support of this, Staples 8 Jarvenpaa (2000) found that, in an organizational
setting, the use of electronic media increased when people perceived a higher
level of task interdependence with one another. In fact, “team,” with all members
gathering in a single location traditionally for easy connection, is regarded as a
special work arrangement to carry out highly interdependent tasks (A. Van de
Ven et al., 1976).

Following the literature, higher level of task interdependence will lead to
more frequent information exchange among team members. In the case of
virtual teams with groupware support, more information exchange should
translate to higher communication frequency and more usage of the groupware.
Speciﬁcally, TeamSCOPE, a web-based groupware, were provided to
participating teams in this study. Details on TeamSCOPE will be provided in the

next chapter. Thus, the following hypothesis is proposed:

H2a: Higher level of perceived task interdependence will lead to higher
communication frequency.
H2b: Higher level of perceived task interdependence will lead to more

TeamSCOPE usage.

In addition, high interdependent task demands constant mutual

adjustment to deal with the uncertainty of a job. Based on media richness

theory, rich media, that conveys more social cues and allows immediate

3O

feedback, is better suited for tasks with high uncertainty. Strauss and McGrath
(1994) found that, when working on a highly interdependent task, the group using
rich media had higher productivity. For awareness purpose, team members
perceiving high task interdependence should prefer using rich media, such as
synchronous channels, so that they can better interpret the awareness signals as
well as offer timely responses. Plus, coordinating team members to set up a
synchronous connection is never easy. It is especially true for global virtual
teams, since they have only a limited time window, if any, to work together
simultaneously. As a result, synchronous work sessions become a luxury to
global virtual teams. Without task requirement, team members perceiving low
task interdependence will be less motivated to use rich media for awareness or
other information purpose. In other words, when perceived task interdependence
decreases, participants will be more likely to rely on lean media to stay updated.
However, the reliance on lean media should be not exclusive. As Adler (1991)
pointed out that the use of more interactive channel does not precludes
simultaneous use of less interactive channels. Due to increased awareness
demand, participants working with high interdependent tasks should also utilize
lean media for awareness purpose.

Accordingly, the following hypotheses are proposed:

H3a: Higher level of perceived task interdependence will lead to greater

perceived reliance on synchronous communication channel for awareness

purpose.

31

H3b: Perceived task interdependence will have no effect on the extent to
which asynchronous communication media is relied upon for awareness

purpose.

Media Behavior and Awareness

Since all interaction among members is carried through electronic media
in virtual teams, awareness information seeking and presenting have to be
conducted via the networking technology. The more frequent participants use
these media, the more opportunities there are for them to gather awareness

information. Thus, the following hypothesis is proposed.

H4a: Higher communication frequency will lead to higher level of
perceived awareness.
H4b: More TeamSCOPE usage will lead to higher level of perceived

awareness.

As discussed above, rich media afford more social cues, multiple sensory
channels, and instant feedback capability. They will be able to better
accommodate the awareness needs of virtual team members. Thus, the

following hypothesis is proposed:

H5: Greater reliance on synchronous communication channel for

awareness purpose will lead to higher level of perceived awareness.

32

Task Interdependence, Media Usage and Awareness

As discussed above, both task interdependence and media usage are
proposed to have positive effects on the perceived level of awareness (H1, H3).
However, the strength of the effects may be different under different
circumstances. The degree of task interdependence dictates the degree of
awareness demand. When participants perceive a higher level of task
interdependence, their needs for awareness information increase. Therefore,
more communication is required to avoid the problem of awareness deﬁcit. By
the same token, group members who perceive a lower level of task
interdependence require less communication to saturate their awareness needs.
In summary, task interdependence will moderate the effects of communication

frequency and groupware use on perceived awareness level.

H6a: The effect of communication frequency on level of awareness will be
weaker for people who perceive higher degree of task interdependence.
H6b: The effect of groupware usage on level of awareness will be weaker

for people who perceive higher degree of task interdependence.

Trust
Trust is an important factor that inﬂuences group processes and group
performance. Literature showed that researchers found trust as a predictor or

moderator for group performance, organizational citizenship behaviors, effort

33

level, job satisfaction, as well as interpersonal relationship within a group (Alge,
Wiethoff, 8 Klein, 2003; Mayer, Davis, 8 Schoorman, 1995; Morris, Marshall, 8
Rainer, 2002). Particularly, trust is regarded as an essential ingredient for
cooperation (Blau, 1964; Coleman, 1988; Hwang 8 Burgers, 1997; Putnam,
2000; Zucker, 1986). The importance of trust in collaborations can be
understood via the concept of risk. For example, Currall and Judge (1995)
deﬁned trust as “an individual’s behavioral reliance on another person under a
condition of risk” (p. 153). This risk is the likelihood of being exploited by a
partner. Without trust, a person is tempted to act opportunisticallyucollect the
short-term gains instead of long-term gains and greater goods (Hwang 8
Burgers, 1997). This risk is also conceived as part of the transaction cost of
exchange, and, without trust, it may make the transaction too costly to be carried
out (Bromiley 8 Cummings, 1995). On the other hand, when engaging in a
trusting relationship, parties are more willing to overlook the risk of being taken
advantage of and act for collective gains. From this perspective, trust is
particularly important to collaboration. As Hwang and Burgers (1997) argued,
trust will facilitate cooperation by reducing the overall opportunistic behaviors
and, therefore, the risk of being exploited, as well as by keeping a trustworthy
partner in the relationship. Empirical research conﬁrmed that mutual trust among
participants is one of the prerequisites for collaboration to happen in a team
(Druskat 8 Wolff, 2001).

It has also been suggested that the development of interpersonal trust has

a cognitive foundation (Lewis 8 Weigert, 1985; McAllister, 1995). Researchers

34

from different ﬁelds agree that trust develops through repeated social interactions
that enable people to update their information about other’s trustworthiness
(Gabarro, 1978; Lewicki 8 Bunker, 1996; Mayer et al., 1995; McAllister, 1995;
Rempel, Holmes, 8 Zanna, 1985). As Lewis and Wiegert (1985) argued, our
decision to trust others is based on “what we take to be ‘good reasons,’
constituting evidence of trustworthiness” (p.970). This evidence or knowledge
about others enables us to develop the schemes upon which we draw our
prediction on others’ behavior (Sarker et al., 2003), and it is our knowledge about
others’ competence (Butler, 1991), reliability (Johnson-George 8 Swap, 1982),
and dependability (Rempel et al., 1985) that forms the basis of trust. Zucker
(1986) also argued that, in a trusting relationship, parties expect their partners to
act in a reliable and dependable fashion. In a team context, Sarker, Valecich,
and Sarker (2003) suggested that “trust develops because team members are
able to gain knowledge about the other collaborators through increased
familiarity, and thus, able to conﬁdently predict their behaviors (Coutu, 1998).
This prediction of behaviors is possible primarily through the exchange of task-
related information in a consistent and reliable manner” (p.38). One study also
found that informal monitoring assists trust building among international partners
(Aulakh, Kotabe, 8 Sahay, 1996). In short, to develop and maintain trust, people
need to be able to examine if their partners meet the expectation of reliability and
dependability. This is especially important in the context of virtual team, where

initial trust can be very fragile (Sirkka L. Jarvenpaa 8 Leidner, 1998).

35

Task Interdependence and Trust

Mutual dependence embedded in group work presumes a degree of risk.
The higher task interdependence, the more collaborative partners relied on each
other to complete the job. Therefore, high interdependence makes it increasingly
dangerous for partners to engage in opportunistic behavior or negative tactics
because all parties have much to lose (Kumar, Scheer, 8 Steenkamp, 1995).
Accordingly, people working in high interdependent task are more motivated to

build trust. Thus, the following hypothesis is proposed:

H7: Higher level of perceived task interdependence will lead to higher

level of trust.

Awareness and Trust

Awareness and awareness conduct may facilitate trust. Awareness
facilitates trust development in two aspects. First, it allows partners to conﬁrm
expectations and predictions on teammates’ behavior. As discussed above,
team members need to acquire knowledge about their collaborators’ action for
trust building and maintenance. Awareness mechanisms provide the necessary
support that allows team members to conﬁrm and reﬁne their expectations on
their distant partners. Second, awareness promotes trusting behaviors. As
discussed above, from a social psychology perspective, mutual awareness may

dissuade opportunistic conducts, and therefore, reduce social loaﬁng. Moreover,

36

by making individual contributions visible, awareness encourages dependable
and reliable conduct of group members, which will lead to positive contribution to

the group project. Thus, the following hypothesis is proposed:

H8: Higher level of perceived awareness will lead to higher level of trust.

Solution Agreement

Members’ agreement on group decision and design solution is a desired
group outcome because it affects members’ support to implement the solution
(Castore 8 Murnighan, 1978). It is especially important for a design project,
since selecting from design alternatives is often only half of the job. Project
teams need to implement their design solution, in the form of a prototype, for
instance, after they make the design choice. Prior research suggests that both
task types and group interaction have implications on group consensus (Argote 8
McGrath, 1993; Hightower 8 Hagmann, 1995; Straus, 1999). Particularly, they
will affect how information exchange as well as normative inﬂuences among
members occurs in the process of reaching a consensus (Siegel, Dubrovsky,
Kiesler, 8 McGuire, 1986).

Information and opinion exchange is essential in discussion and
negotiation toward an agreement among group members (Feldman, 1989; K.
Weick, 1979). Particularly, literature suggests that task-oriented communication
will enhance group consensus (Kahai 8 Cooper, 1999; McGrath 8 Hollingshead,

1993). In support of that, Lam and Schaubroeck (2000) found that groups reach

37

higher consensus on group decision when group members share their task-
related information. In a study on groups supported by audio/video-conferencing
systems, Yoo and Alavi (2001) also found that task participation has positive
relationship with a degree of consensus among members of established groups.
Since the nature of a group’s task may impose different requirements on group
interaction (Hackman 8 Morris, 1975; Kelly 8 McGrath, 1985), it will have
impacts on group consensus.

In addition, participants’ conformation to group goals also contributes to
consensus building. As Souder (1975) pointed out, the recognition and
commitment of a collective goal is one of the prerequisites for reaching a
consensus in an organizational setting. Normative arguments based on shared
group goals can help to win acceptance for a particular design alternative. The
more members are willing to conform to the group, the more effective the
normative inﬂuences are, and the more likely the group will reach their decision

in agreement.

Task interdependence and Solution Agreement

Task interdependence, as discussed above, requires a higher degree of
coordination among members and promotes more frequent task-related
communication. Accordingly, Straus (1999) suggests that the degree of task
interdependence will be positively associated with the amount of group

communication that reﬂects consensus building and coordination processes in

38

groups. The relationship between task interdependence and solution agreement

is proposed as below:

H9: Higher level of perceived task interdependence will lead to higher

level of perceived solution agreement.

Awareness and Solution Agreement

Awareness will help as groups reach an agreement by facilitating the
information ﬂow as well as establishing collaborative norms. As discussed
above, activity and availability awareness information serve to trigger task—related
interaction and, therefore, increase task-related information exchange. In
addition, awareness and awareness conducts help groups to maintain a
collaborative norm and promote group conformable behaviors. Both should
make positive contribution to group consensus building. Accordingly, the

following hypothesis is proposed:

H10: Higher level of perceived awareness will lead to higher level of

perceived solution agreement.

The proposed research model is presented in Figure 1.

39

Figure 1. Proposed Research Model

 

Perceived Task
Interdependence

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

H7 (+) _
H8 (+) Trust
H6a (-)
H2a (+) CF
H4a (+)
H6b (-)
Perceived
H2b (+) TU r Awareness
H4b (+)
H3a (+) RD H5 (+)
H1 (+)
H10 (+)
Perceived
Solution
H9 (+) Agreement

 

 

 

CF: Communication frequency

TU: TeamSCOPE usage

 

 

RD: Perceived reliance on distant meetings for awareness purposes

40

 

 

CHAPTER 3

METHODOLOGY

This research is based on the International Networked Teams for
Engineering Design (INTEnD) project. INTEnD was initiated by Michigan State
University in fall, 1997 and joined by several universities from the Netherlands,
Russia, China, Spain, and Mexico. The project was aimed to study how to best
support globally distributed engineering design teams. The primary research
objective was to understand the communication and coordination processes in
virtual teams. One speciﬁc research interest, based on CSCW literature and
prior pilot studies, was the provision and consumption of awareness information
in globally distributed teams. To this end, a web-based collaborative system
called TeamSCOPE has been designed with an explicit attempt to fulﬁll the
awareness needs in virtual teams. Research results concerning the media use
patterns, activity awareness, TeamSCOPE evaluation and methodology issues
studying virtual teams have been reported in conferences and journals (see
Huysman et al., forthcoming; Jang, Steinﬁeld, 8 Pfaff. 2000, 2002; C. Steinﬁeld
et al., 2001; Charles Steinﬁeld et al., 1999). TeamSCOPE was also provided to
the participants of this study. A brief overview of features of TeamSCOPE will be
provided in a later section.

The author was a research assistant to the INTEnD project and was

involved in all phases of the research including preparing data collection

41

instruments, administering questionnaires, conducting ﬁeld observation and
interviews, and authoring research papers. One of continuous interests of the
author is to fuse the group research literature with the study of distributed
collaboration. Particularly, the author is interested in the effects of task
interdependence, which, as discussed above, has great impacts on group
processes. Through interviews, ﬁeld observation, and informal contacts with
virtual teams in the INTEnD project, the author found that although all teams
working on engineering design projects, there were different levels of
interdependence among team members which seemed to contribute to the
differences in their communication and coordination behaviors. The author then
proposed to include task interdependence, which is not within the original scope
of the INTEnD investigation, into the ﬁnal phase of the project and formed the

basis of this dissertation.

Team composition and Design Projects

Virtual team formation and engineering design project recruitment were
managed by engineering faculty members in the INTEnD project. At each of the
schools, one or more engineering faculty members recruited students to work on
virtual design teams. Throughout the project, engineering faculty members
worked with the students intensively as design project supervisors, providing
advice, and ﬁnally, evaluated their work. Participants recruited for this study
were all upper-level undergraduate students. They were told they would be

working on an international student team. Team members worked with each

42

other in English, and students had to possess English language skills to work on
the projects.

To simulate a professional environment of engineering design teams,
faculty members recruited industrial partners for real design projects. All
students recruited consented to participate in this study voluntarily. Industry
partners had to agree to be the "client" for the student team and provide contact
persons to interact with the student teams. This meant being available to meet
with team members to describe and discuss their needs and give feedback on
group output.

In the fall semester of 2000, 7 distributed engineering student design
teams were recruited to participate in this study. Students were from Michigan
State University, St. Petersburg State Technical University in Russia, Texas A8M
University, and three campuses of the Monterrey Institute of Technology in
Mexico. Each team was composed of 6 to 10 members, and these members are
from Michigan State University and one other location. They were assembled at
the beginning of the semester and told to collaboratively complete a design
project sponsored by an industry partner. There were 53 total participants. The
design projects lasted about 13 weeks. The projects included design of
automotive air conditioning system reﬁnement, stair—climbing wheelchair, small
animal intensive care unit, end effector storage unit, mechatronics laboratory
demonstration system, CAD modeling of automotive structures, and automotive

thermo electric units.

43

Each team was offered with a set of communication tools, including ISDN-
based video conferencing system (VTEL), Microsoft Netmeeting, telephone, fax,
a project-speciﬁc email account, as well as TeamSCOPE. Training sessions and
instructional materials for the use of video conferencing systems and
TeamSCOPE were provided at the beginning of the design projects. Participants

were also free to use other communication tools, such as ICQ.

Overview of TeamSCOPE

TeamSCOPE was designed to meet the needs of a common information
repository and awareness support for distributed collaborative work (Charles
Steinﬁeld et al., 1999). It features a shared ﬁle space, calendar, message board,
and several awareness related functions. Shared ﬁle space was deemed the
most useful feature by the past users. It allows users to share and manage their
project-related electronic materials. To increase the accessibility and
interoperatability, TeamSCOPE was completely web-based. All functions and
features of TeamSCOPE can be accessed through standard web browsers.

One of the main goals of TeamSCOPE was to provide awareness support
for virtual project teams. To this end, all activities occurred in the shared ﬁle
space and other functional areas were recorded and posted into a database.
These records of activities are then presented in various ways for users to
conveniently acquire awareness information. The awareness functions include

activity summary, ﬁle activity history, viewing records, login status, and login

44

history. For the purpose of this study, the rest of this section focuses on
introducing the awareness supports provided by TeamSCOPE.

The default screen after login is a summary of all recent activities,
including ﬁle uploads, comments and messages posted, calendar entries. User's
accesses to all entries are also recorded and displayed. Objects are provided as
links, so that team members can go immediately to them once they are aware
that something has happened (Figure 2). To avoid information overload,
TeamSCOPE also allows users to set filters for the activity summary screen.
They can request TeamSCOPE to show only information related to certain ﬁles
or users.

Insert Figure 2 about here.

In addition, all ﬁle related activities were tracked and presented to users
when they access a speciﬁc ﬁle. These activities include ﬁle upload, download,
as well as posting and reading comments on the speciﬁc ﬁle (Figure 3).

Similarly, for each calendar and message board entry, TeamSCOPE provides a
list of users who has read it (Figure 4).
Insert Figure 3 and 4 about here.

Moreover, all activity awareness information collected by TeamSCOPE is
also available via email. Users can specify how frequent they want to receive the
awareness notiﬁcation email. They can also apply ﬁlters to focus on activities
related to speciﬁc teammates or ﬁles.

Finally, at the beginning of every page in TeamSCOPE, there is a

notiﬁcation of who else on the team also happens to be logged in within the past

45

5 minutes. It, to some extend, indicates the availability of teammates. Users
may choose to initiate a chat session or use other synchronous tools for contact.
The login record of each team member was also complied to construct a user
information page. It allows team members to review each other's login history
over a speciﬁed time period. It also offering graphical presentation of what times
of day others have connected in the speciﬁed time period. This is displayed in
the querying users local time to help them predict when they might ﬁnd their
teammates online (Figure 5).

Insert Figure 5 about here.

Data Collection

Three sets of data have been collected. First, participants submitted a
weekly communication log. They were asked to report all communication events
with their distant partners every week. For each event, they also reported all the
media they used during the event. The usage of TeamSCOPE was not included
weekly communication reports from participants. Instead, it was based on its
system record of all page requests made to the system. Second, a questionnaire
was administrated at the end of the project to measure participants’ perception
on task interdependence, awareness channel reliance, awareness, trust, as well
as solution agreement. Finally, semi-structured interviews and observations of
cross-location team meetings helped to provide accounts of the nature of group

processes.

46

Measurement

Task interdependence

Task interdependence is conceived as the extent to which group members
are dependent upon one another to perform their individual tasks due to the
structural relationship between team members and the nature of the task
(Campion et al., 1993; Cummings, 1978; Marvin E. Shaw, 1976; Shea 8 Guzzo,
1987). Following previous studies (Campion et al., 1993; Campion et al., 1996;
M. N Kiggundu, 1983; Liden, Wayne, 8 Bradway, 1997; Van der Vegt, Emans, 8
Vande Vliert, 1999; Wageman, 1995), task interdependence was measured as
team members’ perception about the structure of tasks. Nine 5-point items were
adapted from the above-cited literature to form the scale of task

interdependence.

 

IDP1 My local group's performance depends on receiving information and advice
from our distant teammates.

 

IDP2 My distant teammates' performance depends on receiving information and
advice from my local group.

 

IDP3 My local group depends on our distant teammates' work that is needed
before we can do our part of the project.

 

IDP4 My distant teammates depend on my local group's work that is needed
before they can do their part of the project.

 

IDP5 My local group depends on our distant teammates in order to be able to do
our job well.

 

IDP6 My distant teammates depend on my local group in order to be able to do
their job well.

 

IDP7 The outcome of our project is strongly affected by our distant teammates'
performance.

 

IDP8 Our distant teammates have certain knowledge or skill that is critical to our
project.

 

 

IPDQ* My local group can complete the project well enough without contribution
from our distant teammates.

 

 

5-point Likert scale: 1=Strong|y disagree; 5=Strongly Agree

47

 

Awareness channel reliance

Prior studies of the INTEnD project found that three communication
channels were used commonly by virtual design teams. These channels include
emails, TeamSCOPE activity summary, and conversation with distant teammates
in meetings. For each of the above channels, participants were asked to rate
the extent to which, in a ﬁve-point Likert scale (5 = very much, 1 = not at all), they

relied on it to acquire project-related awareness information.

 

To what extend do you rely on the following channels to learn
that your distant teammates did work related to the project?

 

RE Emails from my teammates
RT TeamSCOPE activity summary

 

 

 

 

 

RD Conversation with my distant teammates in our meeting

 

5-point Likert scale: 1 = Not at all; 5 = Very much

Trust

Following (Sirkka L. Jarvenpaa 8 Leidner, 1998), an 8-item scale on trust
was adopted from (Schoorman, Mayer, 8 Davis, 1996) to assess ability,
benevolence, and integrity. Participants were asked about their perceptions of

these attributes of their distant partners.

 

T1 Members of my work group show a great deal of integrity.
T2 I can rely on those with whom I work in this group.
T3 Overall, the people in my group are very trustworthy.

T4 We are usually considerate of one another’s feelings in this
work group.

T5 The people in my group are friendly.
T6 There is no "team spirit" in my group.

T7 There is a noticeable lack of conﬁdence among those with
whom I work.

T8 We have confidence in one another in this group.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

48

Awareness

Awareness is deﬁned as possessing knowledge about the current status
and actions of the various components in a collaborative system. Nine 5-point
items were developed by prior INTEnD studies to measure the different types of

awareness. These nine items were also applied in this study.

 

AW1 I usually had a good idea of what my distant teammates were working
on.

 

AW2 I felt that my distant team members had a good idea of what we were
working on here

 

AW3 I had a good idea of the typical times of the day when my distant
teammates were working on the project

 

AW4 I felt that my distant team members had a good idea of the times of
the day when I was working on the project

 

AW5 I had enough information to know when I could generally contact my
distant teammates for a phone call or computer chat without
scheduling it ahead of time.

 

AW6* During the project, I often felt that I did not know what my distant
teammates were working on

 

AW7 I always knew when the task I was working on needed to be ﬁnished

 

AW8 I felt like I knew my distant teammates pretty well

 

 

AW9* I wish I knew more about my distant teammates backgrounds

 

 

5-point Likert scale: 1 = Not at all; 5 = Very much
* Reverse coded.

49

 

Solution Agreement

Based on (Maier, 1963; Tubbs, 1983), two 5-point items were developed
to measured how group members evaluated the group ﬁnal product. Each
participant was asked to rate the extent to which he or she agreed with the
solution and the extent to which he or she thought the solution addressed the

problem.

 

A1 How much did you agree with the group's solution?

 

 

A2 How well did you feel the group's solution addressed
the problem?

 

 

 

Hypotheses testing strategy

To test the relationships that were proposed in the hypotheses, the
following procedures are applied. First, in order to decrease the likelihood of
multicollinearity in equations having interaction terms, all the data are centered
around variable means -- replacing value by deviations from the means (J.
Cohen 8 Cohen, 1983). This procedure was also suggested for better
interpreting the coefﬁcient of the interaction terms (Jaccard 8 Turrisi, 2003).

For main effect hypotheses, regression analysis is applied. To test
moderator hypotheses, two-step regression models is applied. In step one, the
dependent variable is regressed on the independent variables for main effects.
In step two, the product of the independent variables is added into the model as
the interaction term. The dependent variable was regressed on the independent

variables and the interaction term. The difference in the multiple squared

50

correlation coefﬁcients (Rz’s) between the main effect model and the interaction
effect model were calculated to compare the ﬁt of each model.

In addition, all hypotheses were also tested at the group level for
exploratory purpose. Group average of individual data were used for group level

analysis. Same statistic procedures were applied.

51

CHAPTER 4

RESULTS

Factor Structure and Scale Reliability

All scales used in this study undenivent the following procedures to
determine their dimensionality and ensure internal consistency. First,
conﬁrmatory factor analysis was conducted in each scale to test internal
consistency. Only items with .50 loading or higher are retained. In addition,
each item is examined for face validity based on existing theory and logical
judgment. Furthermore, a coefﬁcient alpha is calculated to test internal
consistency. Due to the small sample size and exploratory nature of this study,
.70 was used for the scale reliability criteria.

Finally, items that remained after the internal consistency test were
appropriately recoded if necessary. A single composite measure for each
variable was then calculated using the average score of the remaining items.
Summated scales were created to provide a means of overcoming to some
extent the measurement error inherent in all measured variables to accurately
provide information. The averaged response to a set of related variables is used

in order to reduce the measurement error that might occur in a single question.

52

Task Interdependence

Nine items were adopted from literature to measure participants’
perception of task interdependence. Principle component analysis with Varimax
rotation was conducted and three components were extracted. After examining
face validity and internal reliability, item IDP7, IDP8, IPD9 was selected to form
the scale of task interdependence.

Awareness

Nine items related to awareness were included in the questionnaire.
Principle component analysis with Varimax rotation was conducted and three
components were extracted (see Table 1). Component 1 and 2 corresponded to
availability and activity awareness respectively. Both scales met the reliability
criteria. Items loaded in component 3 were not conceptually coherent and was
dropped from further analysis. Due to the focus of this study, only activity

awareness was considered in the following hypothesis testing.

Table 1. Principle Component Analysis: Perceived Awareness

 

 

 

Component
1 2 3

AW3 .919

AW4 .920

AW5 .497

AW6 .792

AW1 .739

AW8 .699

AW2 .519

AW9 .881
AW7 .719

 

Rotation Method: Varimax with Kaiser Normalization.

53

Trust Scale

Conﬁrmatory factor analysis was conducted on the trust measurement
adopted from Schoorman, Mayer, and Davis (1996). Six items remained to form

the trust scale. The coefﬁcient alpha for trust scale is .87.

Finally, a principle component analysis performed on all selected items for each

scale showed that all items were loaded highest in their respective scale (see

Table 2).

Table 2. Principle Component Analysis: Latent variables

 

 

Component
Trust Perceived Perceived task
Awareness interdependence
T1 .634
T2 .607
T3 .825
T4 .718
T5 .663
T8 .838
AW1 .682
AW2 .593
AW6 .785
AW8 .555
IDP7 .562
IDP8 .743
IDP9 .882

 

Rotation Method: Varimax with Kaiser Normalization.

Communication Frequency

Communication frequency was the average number of weekly
communication incidents with distant partners. It was based on participants’

weekly communication log. All communication events with distant teammates

54

were counted, including video meetings, audio conferences, text-based chat
sessions, emails and faxes. The average number of communication events per
week was calculated as the communication frequency and used for following

analyses.

TeamSCOPE Usage
TeamSCOPE usage was based on its system log of user page requests.
The average number of page requests per week was calculated to form the

measurement of TeamSCOPE usage.

50 of the 53 participants ﬁlled out the questionnaire. See Table 3 for
descriptive statistics of measures used in the study. The bivariate correlation
matrix for studies variables was presented in Table 4 (individual level) and Table

5 (group level).

55

Table 3. Descriptive Statistics of Measures Used in the Study

 

 

Number of
Standard items Coefﬁcient

Variables Mean Deviation included Alpha
Perceived task
interdependence

3.27 1 .10 3 .73
Distant
dependence 3.69 1.06 3 .81
Awareness 3.53 0.85 4 .74
Trust 4.12 0.72 6 .87
Solution
agreement 4.42 0.59 2 .71
Communication
Frequency 1.46 1.16
TeamSCOPE
Usage 16.96 15.58

 

56

Table 4. Bivariate Correlation Matrix

 

TI

CF

TU

RD

RE

RT

AW

TR

 

Perceived Task
Interdependence
(TD

 

Communication
Frequency (CF)

.283'

 

TeamSCOPE
Usage (TU)

.139

.313'

 

Perceived Reliance
on Distant Meeting
for Awareness (RD)

.566"'

.268T

-.005

 

Perceived Reliance
on Emails for
Awareness (RE)

4343'

4250*

-.104

-.109

 

Perceived Reliance
on TeamSCOPE for
Awareness (RT)

.216

-.028

.248f

.156

-.150

 

Perceived
Awareness (AW)

7"

.473

.299'

-.164

.661"‘

-.196

.015

 

Perceived Trust (TR)

.454"T*

.141

.020

.540"'

4294'

.087

.665"'

 

Perceived Solution
Agreement (SA)

 

 

.097

 

.193

 

.027

 

.284'

 

-.142

 

-.059

 

.055

 

.047

 

N=50

* significant at .05 level, ** signiﬁcant at .01 level, **" signiﬁcant at .001 level

I Moderately significant at .10 level

57

 

Table 5. Bivariate Correlation Matrix (Group Level)

 

Tl

CF

TU

RD

RE

RT

AW

TR

 

Perceived Task
Interdependence
(TD

 

Communication
Frﬂuency (CPL

.637

 

TeamSCOPE
Usage (TU)

.280

.487

 

Perceived
Reliance on
Distant Meeting for
Awareness (RD)

.827'

.718T

.064

 

Perceived
Reliance on
Emails for
Awareness (RE)

a683f

a806'

-.251

-.619

 

Perceived
Reliance on
TeamSCOPE for
Awareness ET)

.223

.429

.679T

.071

-.522

 

Perceived
Awareness (AW)

.734T

.620

-.071

.894"

-.667

-.083

 

Perceived Trust
(TR)

.828'

.529

-.007

.898"

-.632

.008

.960"

 

Perceived Solution
Agreement (SA)

 

 

.495

 

.207

 

.032

 

.221

 

-.133

 

-.024

 

-.046

 

.020

 

N=7

* significant at .05 level, ** significant at .01 level, *** significant at .001 level
I Moderately signiﬁcant at .10 level

58

 

The Effect of Task Interdependence on Communication Frequency and
TeamSCOPE Usage

H2a: Higher level of perceived task interdependence will lead to higher
communication frequency.

H2b: Higher level of perceived task interdependence will lead to more
TeamSCOPE usage.

Results showed that the effect of perceived task interdependence on
communication frequency was positive and signiﬁcant (r = .283, p = .046). H2a
was supported. Participants who perceived higher degree of task
interdependence reported more communication events.

The usage of TeamSCOPE was positively associated with perceived task
interdependence; however, their relationship was not statistically signiﬁcant (r =
.139, p = .363). H2b was not supported.

Group level analysis did not ﬁnd statistically signiﬁcant results, although
both communication frequency and TeamSCOPE usage were positively related

to task interdependence.

The Effects of Perceived Task Interdependence, Communication Frequency
and TeamSCOPE Usage on Perceived Awareness

H1: Higher level of perceived task interdependence will lead to higher level of
perceived awareness.

H4a: Higher communication frequency will lead to higher level of perceived

awareness.

59

H4b: More TeamSCOPE usage will lead to higher level of perceived awareness.
As hypothesized, perceived task interdependence (r = .473, p = .001) was
a signiﬁcant predictor of perceived awareness. H1 was supported. In addition,
this hypothesis was moderately supported at the group level (r = .734, p = .060).
Results also showed that communication frequency has a signiﬁcant and
positive effect on perceived awareness (r = .299, p = .035). The relationship
between TeamSCOPE usage and perceived awareness was not signiﬁcant (r = -

.164, p = .281 ). H4a was supported, but H4b was not.

H6a: The effect of communication frequency on perceived awareness will be
weaker for people who perceive higher degree of task interdependence.

H6b: The effect of TeamSCOPE usage on perceived awareness will be weaker
for people who perceive higher degree of task interdependence.

To test hypotheses 6a and 6b, a series of multiple regression analysis
were conducted (see Table 6). Model 1 and 2 tested the main effects and
interaction effects of perceived task interdependence and communication
frequency on perceived awareness. Model 3 and 4 assessed the main effects
and interaction effects of perceived task interdependence and TeamSCOPE
usage on perceived awareness. Finally, perceived awareness level was
regressed on task interdependence, communication frequency and TeamSCOPE
usage for main effects (Table 6, Model 5) and ﬁrst-order interaction effects (Table
6, Model 6). Similar procedures, excepting Model 6, were also applied to the

group level data, due to limited sample size (Table 7).

6O

Awareness level was ﬁrst regressed on perceived task interdependence
and communication frequency (Table 6, Model 1 and 2). The effect of perceived
task interdependence on perceived awareness was positive and signiﬁcant on
both the main effect model ([3 = .422, p = .002) and interaction model (B = .313,
p = .023). The effect of communication frequency was signiﬁcant in the
interaction model (B = .461, p = .010). The interaction effect (T l x CF) was also
signiﬁcant (8 = -.396, p = .021 ). The negative coefﬁcient indicated that, when
perceived task interdependence increased, the effect of communication
frequency on perceived awareness decreased. H6a was supported in this
model. The interaction model also explained more variance in perceived
awareness level than the main effect model (AR2 = .083). An F test showed that
this difference in R2 was signiﬁcant.

Perceived level of awareness was then regressed on perceived task
interdependence and TeamSCOPE usage (Table 6, Model 3 and 4). Perceived
task interdependence was also found to be positively and signiﬁcantly associated
to perceived awareness in both the main effect model (B = .505, p <.001) and the
interaction model (B = .510, p = .001). The effect of TeamSCOPE usage was
moderately signiﬁcant in both the main effect model (B = -.235, p =.084) and the
interaction model (B = -.239, p =.087) in the main effect model. However, the
negative coefﬁcient of TeamSCOPE usage was in contradiction with H4b. The

interaction term (Tl x TU) was not signiﬁcant. The explaining power of the

61

interaction model was almost identical to that of the main effect model (AR2 =
.001). H6b was not supported.

Finally, awareness level was regressed on perceived task
interdependence, communication frequency and TeamSCOPE usage (Table 6,
Model 5 and 6). To determine if the effects of communication frequency and
TeamSCOPE usage were additive, an interaction term (CF x TU) was added in
the interaction model. Since no second-order moderator effect was proposed,
three-way interaction was not included in the interaction model. On both main
effect and interaction model, perceived task interdependence and communication
frequency were positively contributed to the perceived awareness, while
TeamSCOPE usage was negatively contributed to perceived awareness. The
interaction between perceived task interdependence and communication
frequency was again signiﬁcant and negative as proposed in H6a. The other
interaction terms were not statistically signiﬁcant.

Multiple regress analyses at the group level found similar results (Table 7).
The standardized coefﬁcients in all main effect and interaction models
maintained the same direction as in the individual level analyses, excepting the

one for perceived task interdependence in model 2.

62

Table 6. Regression Analysis: Predicting Perceived Awareness by
Perceived Task Interdependence, Communication Frequency, and
TeamSCOPE Usage

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ezﬁggldeent Perceived Awareness

Independent Model

Variables 1 2 3 4 5 5
Task

lnterdependenc .. . .. .
e (Tl) .422 .313 .505 .510 .431 .329
Communication .. .
Frequency (CF) .179 .461 .260 .518
TeamSCOPE .

Usage (TU) -.235i -.239* -.305 -.257’r
Tl x CF -.396' -.420'
TI x TU -023 .037
CF x TU .044
R2 .253 .335 .277 .273 .333 .412
F 7955'“ 7.765’“ 8.057'" 5.257” 6.824“ 4.431“
AR2 .083 (F=53.77“') .001 (F=.059) .079 (F = 1.739)
N=50 '

* signiﬁcant at .05 level, ** signiﬁcant at .01 level, *** signiﬁcant at .001 level
I Moderately signiﬁcant at .10 level

63

Table 7. Regression Analysis: Predicting Perceived Awareness by
Perceived Task Interdependence, Communication Frequency, and
TeamSCOPE Usage (Group Level)

 

Dependent
Variable
Independent Model

Variables 1 2 3 4 5

Task
lnterdependenc
e (Tl) .570 -273 .313T .970 .545

Communication
Frequency (CF) .257 1.759 .499

TeamSCOPE
Usage (TU) -.300 -.372 -.467

Perceived Awareness

 

 

 

Tl x CF 4220

TI x TU -.139

CF x TU

R2 .573 .713 .321 . 635 .743

F 2.734 2.433 3.279 1.733 2.393

AR2 .135 .014
N = 7

* signiﬁcant at .05 level, ** signiﬁcant at .01 level, *** signiﬁcant at .001 level
1 Moderately signiﬁcant at .10 level

 

 

 

 

64

In summary, perceived task interdependence was a signiﬁcant predictor
for perceived awareness level. H3 was supported.

In accordance with H4a, the effect of communication frequency on
awareness level was positive and signiﬁcant. However, TeamSCOPE usage
was negatively associated with awareness level. Therefore, H4b was not
supponed.

A moderator effect of task structure was found between communication
frequency and perceived awareness. As H6a proposed, the negative sign of the
interaction term (OD x CF) indicated that the effect of communication frequency
on awareness level decreased when perceived task interdependence increased.
The interaction effect between perceived task interdependence and
TeamSCOPE usage was not signiﬁcant. H6b was not supported.

Finally, among the 6 models tested above, the all-inclusive model, which
involved task interdependence, communication frequency, TeamSCOPE usage,
and the three two-way interaction terms (Table 6, Model 6), explained the most
variance of perceived awareness level (R2 = 412). However, in this model, only
three items made statistically signiﬁcant contribution in predicting awareness:
task interdependence, communication frequency, and the interaction between
perceived task interdependence and communication frequency. The model that
contained these three terms (Table 6, Model 2) explained the second most
variance (R2 = .336). An F test was performed to test if the difference of R2
between Model 2 and Model 6 was statistically signiﬁcant. The result showed

that the increase in R2 was not signiﬁcant (F=1.505, p= .230). The addition of

65

TeamSCOPE usage and additional interaction terms did not add to the predicting

power of Model 2.

The Effects of Task interdependence on Awareness Channel Reliance
H3a: Higher level of perceived task interdependence will lead to greater
perceived reliance on synchronous communication channel for awareness
purpose.

H3b: Perceived task interdependence will have no effect on the extent to which
asynchronous communication media is relied upon for awareness purpose.

In support of H3a, perceived task interdependence was found to positively
contribute to the perceived degree to which distant meetings were relied upon as
awareness channels (r = .566, p < .001). Results of group level analyses also
supported this hypothesis with moderate statistical signiﬁcance (r = .734, p =
.060)

H3b was tested against the perceived reliance on TeamSCOPE and
emails as awareness channels. In support of H3b, no signiﬁcant effect of
perceived task interdependence was found on perceived reliance on
TeamSCOPE for awareness purposes. However, results showed that perceived
task interdependence had a negative effect (r = -.343, p = .015) on the degree to
which participants perceived to rely on emails to stay updated with distant

teammates’ activities. H3b was partially supported.

66

The Effects of Awareness Channel Reliance on Awareness
H5: Greater reliance on synchronous communication channel for awareness
purpose will lead to higher level of perceived awareness.

Results showed that the perceived degree to which synchronous meetings
with distant members were relied upon as an awareness channel was positively _
and signiﬁcantly contributed to perceived level of awareness (r = .661, p < .001).
H5 was supported. Analysis at the group level also supported H5.

Additionally, results showed no statically signiﬁcant relationship between
the perceived level of awareness and the perceived reliance on asynchronous

awareness channels, including email and TeamSCOPE.

The Effect of task interdependence and awareness on Trust
H7: Higher level of perceived task interdependence will lead to higher level of
trust.

Perceived task interdependence was found to contribute positively and
signiﬁcantly to perceived trust on distant teammates (r = .454, p = .001). H7 was
supported. Analysis at the group level also found this effect to be signiﬁcant (r =

.828, p = .021).
H8: Higher level of perceived awareness will lead to higher level of trust.

Results found that the more participants perceived to be aware of distant

partners’ progress, the higher degree of trust they had in them (r = .665, p <

67

.001). H8 was supported. The strong relationship between awareness and
trust was also found at the group level.

Additionally, multiple regression analyses were conducted to test if the
effects of awareness and perceived task interdependence on trust were additive
or interactive (see Table 8). Model 1 in Table 8 assessed the effect of perceived
awareness as the sole predictor of trust. 44.2% of variance of trust could be
explained by perceived awareness (R2 = .442). Model 2 assessed the additive
effects of perceived task interdependence and awareness on trust. The two-term
main effect model was statistically signiﬁcant (F = 19.894, p <.001). However,
while the effect of perceived awareness was still signiﬁcant (8 = .579, p < .001),
the effect of perceived task interdependence was not (B = .186, p = .136). The
two-term main effect model explained 46.9% of the trust variance (R2 = .469).
Comparing Model 2 to Model 1, there was a 2.7% increase in R2. An F test was
conducted to see if the difference was signiﬁcant (von Eye 8 Schuster, 1998).
The F statistic indicated that the difference was not signiﬁcant (F = 2.136, p =
.151 ). In addition, the interaction model (Table 8, Model 3) did not explain more
variance of trust than the main effect model, either (AR2 = 0).

Multiple regression analyses at the group level also found similar results
(Table 9). Awareness was a strong and signiﬁcant predictor of trust ([3 = .764, p
= .008), while the effect of perceived task interdependence was much weaker

and not signiﬁcant ([3 = .268, p = .159).

68

Table 8. Regression Analysis: Predicting Trust by Perceived Awareness

and Perceived Task Interdependence

 

 

 

 

 

Dependent Variable Trust

Model 1 2 3
Independent Standardized Standardized Standardized
Variables Coefﬁcient Coefﬁcient Coefﬁcient
Awareness (AW) 665*“ .579*** .588
Perceived task

interdependence

(Tl) .186 .199
AW x Tl -.019
R2 .442 .459 .459

F 36.458*** 1 9.894*** 12 .968***
N = 50

* signiﬁcant at .05 level, ** signiﬁcant at .01 level, *** signiﬁcant at .001 level

69

Table 9. Regression Analysis: Predicting Trust by Perceived Awareness

and Perceived Task Interdependence (Group Level)

 

 

 

 

 

Dependent Variable Trust

Model 1 2 3
Independent Standardized Standardized Standardized
Variables Coefﬁcient Coefﬁcient Coefﬁcient
Awareness (AW) .960*** .764" .693*
Perceived task

interdependence

(TI) .268 .269
AW x Tl -.113
R2 .922 .955 .953
F 59.461 *** 43.066“ 26.276*
N = 7

* signiﬁcant at .05 level, ** signiﬁcant at .01 level, *** signiﬁcant at .001 level

70

The Effect of Task Interdependence and Awareness on Solution Agreement
H9: Higher level of perceived task interdependence will lead to higher level of
perceived solution agreement.

H10: Higher level of perceived awareness will lead to higher level of perceived
solution agreement.

Results showed no signiﬁcant relationship between perceived solution
agreement and perceived task interdependence (r = .097, p = .503). Also, the
effect of perceived awareness on perceived solution agreement was not
signiﬁcant ([3 = .055, p = .706). Both H9 and H10 were rejected. Results of

analyses at the group level concurred those of individual level analyses.

Research model with results was presented in Figure 6. In addition,

summary of results was provided in Table 10.

Insert Figure 6 about here.

71

Table 10. Summary of Hypotheses and Results

 

 

 

 

 

 

effect on the extent to which asynchronous
communication media is relied upon for awareness
purpose.

Hypotheses Results
H1: Higher level of perceived task interdependence Supported
will lead to higher level of perceived awareness.
H2a: Higher level of perceived task interdependence Supported
will lead to higher communication frequency.
H2b: Higher level of perceived task Not supported
interdependence will lead to more TeamSCOPE
usage.
H3a: Higher level of perceived task interdependence Supported
will lead to greater perceived reliance on
synchronous communication channel for awareness
purpose.
H3b: Perceived task interdependence will have no Supported for

TeamSCOPE, but
rejected for emails.

 

H4a: Higher communication frequency will lead to
higher level of perceived awareness.

Supponed

 

H4b: More TeamSCOPE usage will lead to higher
level of perceived awareness.

Not supported

 

H5: Greater reliance on synchronous
communication Channel for awareness purpose will
lead to higher level of perceived awareness.

Supponed

 

H6a: The effect of communication frequency on
level of awareness will be weaker for people who
perceive higher degree of task interdependence.

Supponed

 

H6b: The effect of TeamSCOPE usage on level of
awareness will be weaker for people who perceive
higher degree of task interdependence.

Not supported

 

H7: Higher level of perceived task interdependence
will lead to higher level of trust.

Supponed

 

H8: Higher level of perceived awareness will lead to
higher level of trust.

Supponed

 

H9: Higher level of perceived task interdependence
will lead to higher level of perceived solution
agreement.

Not supported

 

H10: Higher level of perceived awareness will lead
to higher level of perceived solution agreement.

 

 

Not supported

 

72

 

CHAPTER 5

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION

The results of this study have shed light on the role of awareness in group
processes. Speciﬁcally, they provided insights into the effects of task structure
and media use on the level of awareness, and the effects of awareness on trust
and solution agreement. The limitations of this study as well as the implications

of the results are discussed below.

The Effects of Task Interdependence on Media Behaviors

Task interdependence was hypothesized to have effects on
communication frequency, TeamSCOPE usage, as well as the degrees of
reliance on different channels for awareness purposes. As discussed previously,
communication barriers in virtual teams make interacting among dispersed team
members difﬁcult. The results indicated that perceived task interdependence
was a signiﬁcant factor that motivated virtual team participants to overcome the
communication barriers. The result of the analysis at the group level also found
a positive relationship between perceived task interdependence and
communication frequency.

However, no statistically signiﬁcant relationship was found between
perceived task interdependence and TeamSCOPE usage. Using TeamSCOPE

was relatively low-effort activities. It did not require prior coordination, as in the

73

case of synchronous communication, or extra cognitive efforts, such as crafting
an email message. As a result, there was no barrier that would discriminate
participants with different task requirements to use TeamSCOPE.

The relationship between perceived task interdependence and perceived
reliance on different awareness channels provided useful insights. In this study,
participants were provided a set of communication tools to choose from to carry
out their intra-team interaction. Results found that participants who perceived
higher task interdependence also preferred synchronous meeting with distant
members for their awareness needs. The result was in accordance with media
richness theory. In addition, participants who perceived higher task
interdependence was less likely to rely on emails as their awareness channel.
Together, the results demonstrated that, given the Choices and under high task
demands, people would rely on synchronous tools for updates.

As Olson and Teasley (1996) pointed out that CSCW research was
predominantly populated with one-medium team studies. In those studies, teams
were provided only one type of media and performance of teams using different
media was compared. However, in corporate life, people are often supported
with a variety of communication tools. By simulating a medium-abundance work
environment, this study was able to provide insights on media Choice in virtual
teams.

This ﬁnding is particularty important in a virtual team context because of
the difﬁculty to arrange real-time meetings for distributed group. In addition to

task requirement, cultural factors might also contribute to these results.

74

Particularly, language barrier was an issue. Even though all non-US participants
possessed English language skills, the degrees of proﬁciency were not equal
among members in each subgroup. In three of the seven teams, the one that
had the best English skills was not the most knowledgeable member in his or her
subgroup. As a result, email correspondences between locations were slowed
because they had to be routed through the member with better English skills.
This mismatch of language proﬁciency and professional expertise created an
unnecessary communication bottleneck and rendered asynchronous Channel
inefﬁcient. On the other hand, during real-time meetings, since all members
were presented, the routing time due to language barrier was reduced to
minimal. It was then more efﬁcient to clarify progress and problems between the
two subgroups.

This implication should be taken with cautions. One important factor that
inﬂuenced the feasibility and efﬁciency of real-time meeting was the two-location
team structure. As mentioned before, all teams participated in this study were
composed of students from two sites. It was relatively easy to coordinate
meeting schedule between two subgroups as opposed to three or more sites. In
addition, there were multiple students in each location. If a participant had to
miss a meeting, his or her local teammates could pass along the information.
With this local safety net, it was not necessary for meeting schedules to
accommodate the individual schedules of all team members. Virtual teams with

members distributed in more locations and with less local teammates may ﬁnd it

75

more difﬁcult to arrange real-time meetings and, therefore, rely more on

asynchronous communication channels.

The Effects of Task Interdependence and Media behavior on Awareness

A major focus of this study was to examine the antecedents of awareness.
Task structure, communication frequency, groupware use, and awareness
channel utilization were proposed to affect the perceived level of awareness.
Results showed that perceived task interdependence, communication frequency,
and reliance on cross-location meetings had positive effects on awareness.
TeamSCOPE usage and reliance on emails for awareness were found to be
negatively associated with level of awareness.

Perceived task interdependence was positively associated with
awareness. The more distant partners’ input was needed for the project, the
greater the impact would be if distant partners did not deliver on schedule.
Therefore, virtual team participants were more driven to stay updated on their
distant partners’ progress when they perceived higher degree of task
interdependence. The analysis at the group level concurred with the result.
Again, perceived task interdependence created awareness demands that
prompted virtual team participants to engage in awareness conducts.

Communication frequency was found to positively contribute to
awareness as proposed with moderate signiﬁcance. However, the strength of its
effect was affected by perceived task interdependence. The inﬂuences of

communication frequency on awareness were lower for participants who

76

perceived higher task interdependence. It suggested that more communication
incidents were needed in order to meet increased awareness demands due to
higher perceived task interdependence.

On the other hand, the negative relationship between TeamSCOPE usage
and perceived level of awareness was not expected. In correlation analysis as
well as the multiple regression models with perceived task interdependence, this
negative relationship were at lease moderately signiﬁcant. The same trend was
also found in the regression analyses conducted at the group level.

These results indicated that participants who used TeamSCOPE more
were less aware of distant teammates’ activities. Following the research model,
which implied that awareness is a function of groupware usage, the result may
be explained by tool proﬁciency. TeamSCOPE usage included all page requests
made by users. Participants who knew where to ﬁnd the information in
TeamSCOPE would make fewer requests than those who did not. Therefore,
high TeamSCOPE usage might indicate less effective search and lower
awareness. However, the effect of tool proﬁciency should be mitigated in the
long run. Frustrated users would drop out using TeamSCOPE or learn to use it
efﬁciently. Both should lead to lower page requests over time.

An alternative way to explain the results would be to reverse the implied
causal relationship in the research model. Instead of having perceived
awareness as a function of groupware usage, we could posit groupware usage
as a function of perceived awareness. When members were not able to stay

updated on distant teammates’ progress, they were more likely to initiate

77

awareness conducts via available media and tools. This alternative explanation
made sense especially for TeamSCOPE usage, since TeamSCOPE, as an
awareness channel, required the least amount of effort from users to acquire
information. When awareness needs arose, logging on TeamSCOPE would be
the easiest action to take. It was also unobtrusive to distant partners and,
therefore, a reasonable ﬁrst step to address awareness needs. However, due to
its limitation in interactivity, TeamSCOPE may not be the most effective
awareness channel and, therefore, users’ awareness needs were not necessary
satisﬁed. In other words, the usage of TeamSCOPE was more likely an indicator
for awareness demand rather than awareness supply.

The ambiguity of the relationship between TeamSCOPE usage and
perceived awareness invites further discussion on awareness demand and
satisfaction. The alternative explanation posits that groupware usage was
inﬂuenced by the extent to which awareness demand was satisﬁed. When
awareness supply does not meet the demand, more awareness conducts will be
initiated. In the research model, awareness demand was implied in task
interdependence. It was reasoned that due to increasing coordination needs for
highly interdependent task, virtual team members need more frequent updates
on each other’s progress. The demand for awareness was considered to be
embedded in the task structure. However, other group structural factors may
also inﬂuence awareness demand. For future research, it should help to clarify
the relationship between group structural variables and media behavior by clearly

identifying awareness demand in the model. The addition of awareness demand

78

in the model also ﬁt well with the moderating effect of perceived task
interdependence on the relationship between communication frequency and
perceived awareness. The higher the demand, the more communication events
were needed. A revised research model that includes awareness demand is
presented in Figure 7.

Insert Figure 7 here.

Additionally, results also showed that the degree to which participants
relied on different media for awareness had inﬂuences on perceived level of
awareness. In accordance with hypothesis, the more participants relied on
synchronous meeting with distant partners to stay updated, the more they were
aware of the current state of distant members’ progress. On the other hand, the
effects of asynchronous channels on awareness were not conclusive. Results
showed there was no signiﬁcant relationship between perceived level of
awareness and perceived degree of reliance on email or TeamSCOPE for
awareness purpose. The differences may contribute to the different medium
characteristics. Most importantly, instant feedback capability afforded by
synchronous meeting greatly facilitated team members to satisfy their awareness

needs.

The Effects of Task Interdependence and Awareness on Trust
Both perceived task interdependence and awareness were proposed to
have positive effects on trust. Results of this study supported the hypotheses.

Higher level of perceived task interdependence and perceived awareness led to

79

higher level of trust on distant teammates. However, an F test on R2 of different
regression models showed that perceived task interdependence did not add a
statistically signiﬁcant contribution to trust. It was safe to conclude that there was
no directly effect of perceived task interdependence on trust. Rather, perceived
task interdependence may inﬂuence trust through motivating virtual team
members to engage in awareness conducts. This result implicated that
awareness is a valuable intermediate construct that may provide a link between
group structural variables and group process outcomes.

The relationship between trust and awareness is worthy of further
discussion. As noted previously, awareness may facilitate trust development by
dissuading social loaﬁng, promoting reliable and dependable conducts, and
allowing conﬁrmation on expectations. The implicit assumptions for the above
effects to take place are that awareness is mutual and transparent. When
awareness is mutual, all members have equal resources and authority to monitor
others. Each team member can know as much about the other members as the
other team members can know about him or her. When awareness is
transparent, all team members know what information their partners can have
access to. Both assumptions are important for trust building. When awareness
is unilateral, it exposes the less privileged parties to the risk of being exploited by
the opportunistic behaviors of the privileged members. When awareness is not
transparent, team members do not have a good idea if any or which part of their
work output will be visible. It may encourage social loaﬁng or decrease social

facilitation effect. In this study, a mutual and transparent awareness environment

80

was ensured by (1) the lateral structure of the design teams, which established
equal privileges and, (2) the trainings on media and TeamSCOPE, which
familiarized participants with awareness or track-keeping related features in

various tools.

The Effects of Task Interdependence and Awareness on Solution
Agreement

Task interdependence and awareness were proposed to positively
contribute to solution agreement via increasing task-related communication and
promoting a group conforming behavior. There were no signiﬁcant effect of
perceived task interdependence or awareness on solution agreement was found
at the individual level or the group level. It suggested that the information and
normative inﬂuences that were facilitated by task structure and awareness were
not as strong as proposed in the process of reaching consensus.

However, there were a couple of factors that might prevent the
hypotheses to be tested fairly. First, the scores of solution agreement might be
skewed. This scale asked if the participants thought the team solution addressed
the design problem and if they agree with it. Participants, whose grade
depended on the ﬁnal project outcome, may incline to give high score on both
items based on the suspicion that the grading faculty members may review their
questionnaires. Statistics showed that the mean score of solution agreement
was the highest among all latent variables and the variation of the scale was the

lowest (Mean = 4.42, SD = .59).

81

Second, the temporal dimension of project work was not considered.
Although solution agreement, task structure, and awareness level were all
measured at the end of the project, teams decided on their ﬁnal solution at an
earlier point in the project life. The virtual design teams in this project followed a
general design methodology. They began by deﬁning the problem, followed by
proposing solutions, choosing a solution, and then ﬁnally implementing the
solution. Usually, the decision on ﬁnal solution was made around the mid-point
of the project or even earlier to leave enough time for implementation.
Consequently, solution agreement could not be predicted by task structure and
awareness level measured at the end of the project. Instead, the measured
dependencies and awareness between subgroups may be in part resulted form
the selected solution or the way it was implemented. To better assess the effects
of task structure and awareness, they should be measured at the time when

teams made their decisions on design solutions.

Limitations, Implications and Suggestions for Future Research
Limitations
This research had several limitations. First, although it was intended to
simulate real industrial project environments, these were student teams. Their
risks and rewards were grade-based. Also, they did not have the same
organizational support as professionals. For example, some of them were not
able to have access to the communication facilities whenever they needed. The

generizability of the study is limited.

82

Another issue is the small sample size. There were only 53 subjects in
this study. Due to the limited sample size, more sophisticated analytical tools,
such as structural equation modeling, could not be applied. In addition, there
were only seven design teams participated in the study. The small number of
teams made it impractical to obtain statistic power of analysis at the group level.

In addition, the two-subgroup formation with multiple members in each
subgroup was a speciﬁc team structure. As mentioned above, real-time
meetings that included the whole team were more feasible when scheduling
involved only two sites. Also, the multiple-member subgroup arrangement
allowed one to rely on his or her local teammates for project updates if one
missed a communication event or did not log on to TeamSCOPE. Although it
provided a safety net for virtual team participants to stay in the loop, it also made
it difﬁcult to determine the relationship between media use and awareness. The
group dynamic of this speciﬁc team formation should be different from those
without local subgroups and those with more subgroups.

Moreover, not all teams were created equal despite our efforts. Several
disparities could be found in these teams. The communication infrastructures
each team had to work with were different. It was more difficult to access video
conferencing facilities for some teams than others. It sometimes forced them to
change meeting schedules or opt for other media. The windows of time available
to work synchronously across locations were also different from team to team.
Some teams were not even able to work out a schedule to have all members

present at cross-location meetings due to other obligations, such as Classes.

83

Finally, participants were predominantly male. Only 12 of the 53 participants
were female. Gender balance was difﬁcult to achieve across teams and across
sites. The above disparities all had implications on media use and awareness
conducts.

Furthermore, there were several issues regarding measurements.
Communication frequency was collected from participants’ self-reports. There
was no mechanism to check their reliability. Also, the types of media used in
each communication event were not factored in when calculated the
communication frequency due to the imparity of media accessibility. As
discussed above, not all tools were available at all time to all teams. As a result,
the Choices of media might be affected by the communication infrastructure
rather than perceived task interdependence as presented in the research model.
However, using only the counts of communication incidents prevented analysis
on effects of different media.

Additionally, the internal consistency of scales, tested using coefﬁcient
alpha, was not ideal. It might in part due to the differences in English proﬁciency
of participants. Also, as discussed above, the measurement of solution
agreement might be skewed. Future studies of long-term work teams may take
into account the temporal dimension of project work in administering data
collection.

Overall, the externally validity of the result might suffer from using student
teams and the disparities of the teams. Also, since it was the ﬁrst time that all

students participated in a virtual team, the results of this study might not be

84

applied to virtual teams with experienced participants (Hollingshead, McGrath, 8
O’Connor, 1993). Finally, it should also be cautious when comparing the results

of this study with others that had different types of team formation.

Implications for Theories and Future Research

The purpose of this study is to integrate the research on awareness in the
CSCW and HCI communities with the literature of work group study, social
psychology and computer-mediated communication to further understand group
processes in virtual teams. The results suggested several theoretical
implications. First, awareness can be a valuable intermediary construct in
understanding group processes. As discussed above, awareness provided the
link between perceived task interdependence and trust. Future research may
continue this inquiry to further test the effects of awareness on other group
outcomes, such as job satisfaction and group performance.

In addition, this study expanded the research of awareness to include
social psychological aspects. Particularly, perceived awareness was linked to
reducing social Ioaﬁng and increasing social facilitation. These effects ultimately
led to trust. However, as discussed above, these social psychological
implications were based on the assumptions that awareness was both mutual
and transparent. It is then important to investigate how to meet these
assumptions in terms of group structure, task design, organizational control

mechanism, and media support.

85

Moreover, this study focused only on activity awareness. The effects of
other types of awareness were not investigated. For example, perspective
awareness may be related to establishing group norms and resolving conﬂicts.
There is also a need to development more instruments to measure different
types of awareness.

Finally, future studies on awareness should take into account the temporal
dimension of project development. As discussed above, design teams may go
through different stages during their project life. The interaction among group
members in an earlier stage may inﬂuence how they conduct their work later on.
Especially for zero-history virtual teams, no pre-existing consensual norms or
rules to govern communication and information exchange. Awareness deﬁcit
experienced at the beginning of the project may lead a team to avoid mutual
dependence. It suggests awareness level may have implications on how teams
Choose to divide their work and coordinate their actions. In other words,
coordination mechanism may be a function of awareness level at the early stage

of the project.

Implications for Groupware Design

To offer better awareness service by collaborative tools, this study
suggested that active mechanisms for collecting information on project status
should be considered. As discussed above, the negative relationship between
TeamSCOPE usage and awareness level might indicate TeamSCOPE, as a low-

effort, unobtrusive channel, was the ﬁrst place to go when awareness needs

86

arose. However, the utility of TeamSCOPE as an awareness channel depended
on how actively it was used by the whole group (Jang et al., 2002; Markus,
1990). When there was no new information, participants could not tell if it was
due to lack of progress orjust delayed upload. The differences between the
information available in TeamSCOPE and the current status of project rendered
TeamSCOPE a less effective awareness tool. To improve on the supply of
awareness information, groupware systems need to incorporate tools that can
actively collect project-related information. For example, a survey via emails
regarding the progress of various subtasks can be administered by TeamSCOPE
periodically between cross-location meetings. It should be noted that it was by
design that TeamSCOPE did not actively collect awareness information (Charles
Steinﬁeld et al., 1999). The purpose was to minimize users’ effort and be
unobtrusive. Groupware designers should take into account the tradeoff
between rich information and extra user effort (Konrad Tollmar et al., 1996). It is
suggested to offer some ﬂexibility in the information collecting functions to allow

users to reach the balance between the effort and information themselves.

Implications for Practice

Some practical implications for virtual teams managers and participants
can be drawn from the results. For organizations and practitioners, it is worth
paying attention to the issue of awareness in the context of virtual teams.
Staying updated on remote teammates’ progress signiﬁcantly contributed to trust

development in virtual teams. To enhance awareness, task structure and media

87

use should be considered. The results showed that perceived task
interdependence positively contributed to awareness. Accordingly, to structurally
facilitate awareness, the design of virtual team and their tasks should embed
mutual dependence among team members.

However, high dependence also creates high demand for awareness and
more frequent communication is needed. Virtual team should be provided with
adequate support of communication tools. Speciﬁcally, relying on synchronous
channels was found have positive effects on awareness. Organizational support,
such as easy access to facility and ﬂexible working hours, may greatly reduce the
barriers to use synchronous communication tools and, therefore, facilitate
awareness conducts.

Finally, as discussed above, the positive social psychological effects of
awareness and awareness conducts are based on the assumption that
awareness is mutual and transparent. Tracking and monitoring mechanisms in
virtual teams should be set up carefully. A violation of the assumption may lead

to social loaﬁng, invasion of privacy, or other undesired results.

Conclusion

The focus of this study was to investigate the antecedents and effects of
awareness in geographically dispersed project teams. The results of this
research indicated that task structure signiﬁcantly inﬂuenced the level of
awareness. When the knowledge, skills, and work output from distant partners

were required to accomplish the project, virtual team members were more likely

88

to stay aware of remote partners’ activities. Perceived task interdependence
motivated virtual team participants to overcome various communication barriers
to maintain awareness. However, high perceived task interdependence also
indicated high awareness demands and more effort was required to satisfy those
demands. It was demonstrated by the moderator effect of perceived task
interdependence on the relationship between communication frequency and level
of awareness. The effect size of communication frequency on awareness
decreased when perceived task interdependence increased.

The relationship between media usage and awareness were more
dynamic than the hypothesis indicated. Although communication frequency was
positively contributed to awareness level, usage of TeamSCOPE was negatively
associated with awareness. The casual direction suggested in the research
model, awareness as a function of media usage, could only explain part of the
ﬁndings. The results suggested that lack of awareness would drive virtual team
members to use available media to stay updated. Therefore, low-effort
awareness channels will more likely be associated with unsatisﬁed awareness
demands. On the other hand, although direct contact with distant teammates
often provided more awareness information, it required more coordination or
cognitive efforts. Accordingly, in order to facilitate awareness, it is suggested to
increase the awareness information supply for low-effort channels and to reduce
the barriers of using high-effort channels. Several implications on groupware

design and virtual team management were discussed above.

89

In conclusion, despite its limitation, this study provided several insights on
the relationships between awareness, task structure, media use, and trust in
virtual teams. One purpose of this research is to fuse the concept of awareness
with the extensive body of literature of group study. Results of this project

showed that awareness provided a link between task structure and trust. lt

demonstrated that awareness could be an important variable of group processes.

To further clarify the role of awareness in the context of distributed groups, more
investigations on its relationship with other group structural variables and group

outcome variable are needed.

90

 

ﬁt,

Figures

91

Figure 2. TeamSCOPE: Activity Summary Screen

 

 

   

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0 TeamSCOPE 0.9.1? released by Charles Ste'mﬁeld at Wed Jun 28 07:44:19 2000 EDT
1- Re: TeamSCOPE 0.9.17 releasedjresent for testing] by Ben Pfaft‘ at Thu Jun 29 11:35:42 2000 EDT
- Re; TeamSCOPE 0.9.17 released [works now!] by Ben Pfaff at Thu Jun 29 11:42:24 2000 EDT
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Figure 6. Research Model with Results

 

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* signiﬁcant at .05 level
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regression model #2 in Table 6.

96

 

 

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