Investigating the interaction of team virtuality, cultural diversity and team member adaptivity in relation to perceived subgroup formation and how it affects team p formation and how it affects team

Abstract

This study aims to examine the interaction of virtuality, cultural diversity, and team member adaptivity in relating to team effectiveness, and the role that perceived subgroup formation plays in mediating these relationships. We propose that perceived subgroup formation is negatively associated with team effectiveness and that, virtuality as measured by working virtually (proportion of time spent working face to face vs. other media), working asynchronously (proportion of time spent working through non-simultaneous communication), and member virtuality (dispersion of members across different locations) is positively associated with perceived subgroup formation. Further, we propose that cultural diversity, as measured by differences in individualism scores between team members, interacts with virtuality in a way where perceptions of subgroup formation are strengthened, and thus has a negative influence of team effectiveness. On the other hand, we propose that team member’s interpersonal adaptivity are negatively associated with perceived subgroup formation and interact with cultural diversity and virtuality as well in relation to perceived subgroup formation. Regression analysis on a sample consisting of 174 employees engaged in virtual teams was conducted. The results show that there is a positive relationship between virtuality and perceived subgroup formation, but we found no significant relationship between perceived subgroup formation and team effectiveness. Furthermore, cultural diversity did not amplify the positive relationship between virtuality and perceived subgroup formation, nor did interpersonal adaptivity weaken the relationship. The result, however, did show that team member interpersonal adaptivity has a positive relationship with team effectiveness. Implications and suggestions for future research are also discussed.