This chapter presents a review and critical discussion of the existing literature on virtual teams. Even though I am going to describe and justify my research approach, the grounded theory, in chapter 4, it is necessary to anticipate this decision.
One of the characteristics of the grounded theory method is that there are no pre-formulated hypotheses. Theory building and not theory verification is the main and only aim of grounded theory (Urquhart, Lehmann, & Myers, 2010). Arising from this goal, as pointed out by Suddaby (2006), some researchers have implied that the researcher should not review the existing literature prior to his empirical research. This would ensure that s/he does not impose ideas from literature in his data analysis (coding). Glaser and Strauss (1967, p. 4), however, point out in a footnote that prerequisite knowledge and orientation is necessary:
Of course, the researcher does not approach reality as a tabula rasa. He must have a perspective that will help him to see data and abstract significant categories from his scrutiny of the data.
Discussing this issue, Dey (1999) accentuates the difference between “an open mind and an empty head” and believes that the founder of the grounded theory was inclined to favour the “open mind”. Urquhart et al. (2010) agree with him and Urquhart (2007) sees the “preliminary literature review as orientation not defining framework” as one guideline for the application of grounded theory. Urquhart and Fernandez (2006, p. 461) suggest that a preliminary literature review is done
on the understanding that it is the generated theory that will determine the relevance of the literature.
Further, she emphasizes that the literature should be revisited and even extended after the theory has been developed from the data (Urquhart, 2007). Based on these recommendations and guidelines, my literature review will serve as orientation for furthering my research work. I will extend the literature review by comparing my theory with other qualitative research results and with other theories, in chapter 7. While doing this I will follow the phasing of the literature as recommended by Martin (2006) as well as by Urquhart and Fernandez (2006).
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Especially the weaving in the literature into the findings by not performing an extensive literature review upfront has been pursued by Strong and Volkoff (2010) and is pointed out in the subsequent quote:
As our study leveraged grounded theory procedures, it does not start from the literature, but rather uses it later to compare the results revealed from data with existing theory (Urquhart and Fernandez 2006). Thus, we do not provide an extensive survey of literature on fit or on enterprise systems, but rather weave in the literature related to our findings and theoretical results later (Strong & Volkoff, 2010, p. 733).
As a starting point for my own literature review I used the following literature reviews for an overview of the existing state of the field and of the leading researchers in this field: Connaughton &
Shuffler (2007), Gibbs, Nekrassova, Grushina, & Wahab (2008), Gillam & Oppenheim (2006), Ebrahim, Ahmed, & Taha (2009), Martins, Gilson, & Maynard (2004), Powell, Piccoli, & Ives (2004), and Schiller
& Mandviwalla (2007). Based on these reviews I followed the literature that was referenced. In addition, the most frequently occurring journals were searched to make sure that all relevant literature and research findings had been identified.
As pointed out by Ngwenyama and Bjørn (2008), earlier research into team-based structures and groupware technology attracted wide interest and led to the development of research fields such as Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) and Computer Mediated Collaboration (CMC), which in turn include Group Support Systems (GSS). Research issues in these fields that are relevant to virtual teams will be incorporated into my literature review.
The literature review has been constructed as follows. A general description is given of project team, project management, and project teams in general as well as in an educational environment. The above mentioned research in CSCW, CMC and GSS is described. This is followed by an overview of research in the field of virtual project teams. Diversity in team composition, including cultural background, is one of the key issues in the management of virtual teams and this topic is therefore addressed in a separate section. Further, the factors influencing the outcome and success of virtual project teams are described. Finally, the results of the review are summarized at the end of the chapter.
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2.1 Project Management
Different national and international organizations such as the PMI, the OGC and the IPMA, have set up formalized bodies of project management methods for the planning, monitoring, and controlling of time, quality, cost, and results of projects. Furthermore, frameworks of guidelines such as the PMBOK4 (Project Management Institute, 2004) and PRINCE/PRINCE2 (Office of Government Commerce, 2005) have been developed to support the various tasks in a project.
2.1.1 Project Teams
Since a project is “a temporary endeavour undertaken to create a unique product, service, or result” (Project Management Institute, 2004, p. 368) it is characterized by a definite beginning and a definite end, as well as by the uniqueness of the project deliverables.
A project team is created for the purpose of performing a project. Both a team and a group could be loosely defined as a collection of people at work, but a team is generally regarded as a group5 that has a high level of interdependency and integration among its members as described by (Cohen & Bailey, 1997):
A team is a collection of individuals who are interdependent in their tasks, who share responsibility for outcomes, who see themselves and who are seen by others as an intact social entity embedded in one or more large social systems (for example business unit or the corporation), and who manage their relationships across organizational boundaries.
This stricter definition of a team is widely accepted and applies more appropriately to teams that are set up to conduct projects. I define a project team as a team performing a project according to the PMI definition: it is therefore a group assembled for a certain defined period of time.
4 In the literature review for my thesis I place emphasis on the PMBOK. The selected undergraduate project teams from UCT und BHT Berlin have compulsory courses on PMBOK-based project management.
5 As pointed out in Cohen and Bailey (1997) the academic literature tends to use the word “group” for specific phenomena like group cohesion, group dynamics and group effectiveness while management literature prefers to use the term “team”. As my research places the emphasis on projects I am using the term “team”, but when referring to specific phenomena from group research literature I will use the term from this literature.
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Most software projects in industry are accomplished by teams of professionals rather than by individuals due to the size of these projects. Teams tend to perform better than individuals (Brown & Dobbie, 1999). Katzenbach and Smith (1992) support this view by stating that in teams the complementary skills of the individuals within the team speed up the time to delivery, provide a social framework, and create a pleasant working atmosphere. Taking these definitions into account, project teams are formed and disbanded. Furthermore, teams go through different phases. The team development model (see Figure 1) from Tuckman (1965) defines the following phases:
Forming: The project team is initiated or at least new team members are introduced to an existing team. In this first phase normally little work is achieved.
Storming: Team members often have different opinions of how the team in the project should operate. Hence, there are often conflicts in the project team during this phase, which follows the forming phase.
Norming: In this phase the team develops common working rules. Subsequently, cooperation and collaboration replace the conflict and mistrust of the storming phase.
Performing: The focus of the team is now set on the project tasks. The relationships in the team are settled and team members build loyalty to each other. The team can manage complex tasks and cope with changes.
Adjourning6: This phase describes the break-up of the team after they have