'Can you hear me now?': Contextual influence on *attribution accuracy in distributed teams

"Can you hear me now?" is the popular slogan of a large wireless communications company. But its very popularity points to the growing problems faced by communicating teams who are geographically distributed. Distributed teams are growing in number and by 2006 80% of knowledge work will be accomplished by distributed teams (Gartner Group, 2003). Distributed teams experience a number of difficulties in establishing and maintaining mutual knowledge. Mutual knowledge is requisite to establishing and accomplishing common goals (the purpose for the team). To establish mutual knowledge members expend effort making sense of others (and their own) behaviors, a natural activity called attribution. Silence (and its meaning) is a significant problem for distributed teams, as is the sharing of context specific information (Cramton, 2001). Making accurate attributions improves goal congruence accuracy that assists in the efficient expenditure of cognitive effort (Briggs, 1994).;This research hypothesizes and tests that increasing the information communicators have about their remote partner's environment (context) will increase the accuracy of their attribution of the meaning of silence. The research introduces the Model of Contextual Influence on Attribution Accuracy (CIAA) which includes three environmental factors: physical access; information access and distraction level. The results support the hypotheses that the presence of cues in general and the presence of cues regarding information access and distraction level increases likelihood of making accurate attributions of the meanings of silence in distributed groups. The hypothesis regarding physical access was not supported (due in large part to a weak cue).