Virtual teams versus face-to-face teams: an exploratory study of a Web-based conference system

Many organizations are forming ‘virtual teams’ of geographically distributed knowledge workers to collaborate on a variety of workplace tasks. But how effective are these virtual teams compared to traditional face-to-face groups? Do they create similar teamwork and is information exchanged as effectively? An exploratory study of a World Wide Web-based asynchronous computer conference system known as Meeting Web™ is presented and discussed. It was found that teams using this computer-mediated communication system could not outperform traditional (face-to-face) teams under otherwise comparable circumstances.