A Study On The Model Of Virtual Team Effectiveness

In order to adapt to ever-changing competitive environment and customer requirements, organizations need more flexible and effective organizational forms. Since 1990s, the rapid development and widely use of information communication technology (ICT) has provided the infrastructure necessary to support the development of virtual teams. Virtual teams combine people across different regions, space and (or) organizations by ICT to accomplish specific tasks, and provide a highly flexible mode for organizations to respond to the ever-changing environment and make full use of resources. Thus, more and more organizations are implementing virtual teams to achieve their goals. How to build effective virtual teams to make sure the task to be completed effectively has become a critical issue for managing virtual teams.Despite the level of research interest in virtual teams, there is still uncertainty in relation to an integrated set of factors that contributes to virtual team effectiveness. The purpose of this study is to build an integrated model of virtual team effectiveness, and validate it through SEM.The article used both qualitative analysis and quantitative analysis to focus on the study, studied the relationship among virtual team input, process and output, revealed the impact path and specific effect of different indicators on virtual team effectiveness, and finally pointed the most critical factors impacting on virtual team effectiveness.Using 306 data collected from IT industries, engineering companies and university virtual scientific research teams, the article got the following conclusions:(1) Input predictor variables including job design, team composition and organizational environment, and task process and socio-emotional process are positively related to virtual team performance and satisfaction. And the input variables indirectly influence virtual team effectiveness through shaping task process and socio-emotional process.(2) Of all predictor variables, socio-emotional process depicted the strongest positive relation to virtual team effectiveness, and was the most critical factor influencing virtual team effectiveness; in the three input predictor variables organizational environment presented the strongest relationships to virtual team effectiveness, and the effect was indirect.(3) Task process and socio-emotional process influenced each other mutually, and the effects were both positive. In addition, virtual team performance was positively related to satisfaction.In the end, there were a brief summary of the conclusions and an explanation of the innovative points of this study. Moreover, research limitations and future research directions were pointed out.