Work smarter, not harder: Understanding and leveraging individual and collective intelligence in virtual groups

Organizations increasingly use information and communication technologies to enable virtual group work, yet the performance of virtual groups varies widely based on several different factors, and it is unknown how the intelligence of groups or group members affects group performance. Are some virtual groups smarter than others? Can organizations create successful virtual groups by selecting the brightest individuals as group members? How can technology aid in making groups perform more intelligently? The answers to such questions are important in helping organizations create virtual groups and enhance virtual group work. This research addresses two issues of intelligence at the group level, i.e., the effect of individual intelligence on group performance, and the emergence of collective intelligence---the measurable ability of a group as a whole to perform consistently well across tasks. Specifically, this two-study dissertation uses coordination theory and media synchronicity theory to (1) theoretically and empirically examine the conditions under which individual and collective intelligence lead to virtual group performance, and (2) propose a technology-based technique that should allow groups to better leverage individual intelligence and work more consistently across tasks.