Bridging space over time: Global virtual team dynamics and effectiveness

Global virtual teams are internationally distributed groups of people with an organizational mandate to make or implement decisions with international components and implications. This study built a grounded theory of global virtual team processes and performance over time. We built a template based on Adaptive Structure Theory to guide our research, and we conducted a case study, observing three global virtual teams over a period of 21 months. First, we propose that effective global virtual team interaction comprises a series of communication incidents, each configured by aspects of the team's structural and process elements. Effective outcomes were associated with a fit among an interaction incident's form, decision process and complexity. Second, effective global virtual teams sequence these incidents to generate a deep rhythm of regular face-to-face incidents interspersed with less intensive, shorter incidents using various media.