Factors contributing to knowledge sharing and communication in a service oriented virtual organization: Group member Role Based Performance Self-efficacy and effectiveness

Olivia Ernst Neece

Peter F. Drucker School of Management

Claremont Graduate University

18200 Rosita Street, Tarzana, CA 91356

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Factors contributing to knowledge sharing, reuse and communication in virtual teams:

Team member Role Based Performance Self-efficacy and effectiveness

Abstract

This treatise discusses the theory and results of a two-phase case study of one large virtual group at Nortel, Inc. In Phase I, the author developed a process model of virtual teams during the project process that addressed specific issues related to behavioral and technological factors (moderators and resources). In Phase II, these factors were modified into two testable variance models. The first model tested the factors of organizational support, egalitarian structure, team culture & collaboration, people’s capabilities & skills, motivation & rewards and communication processes against the dependent variables of knowledge sharing & reuse, the importance of developing communication tools, and the effectiveness of current communication tools. Findings in Model I included statistically significant relationships between organizational support, egalitarian structure, team culture and communication process and knowledge sharing. There was also a statistically significant relationship between people’s capabilities and communication processes and both the importance and effectiveness of communication tools. The second variance model tested these same factors and added an all communication tool factor and the knowledge sharing & reuse as independent variables. In this model the factors were tested against the dependent variables of the role based performance self-efficacy scale, a self-assessed effectiveness test, and self-assessed creativity. The results of this model had statistically significant relationships between the egalitarian structure and communication process and the Role Based Performance Self-efficacy Scale. Communication process was also positive for effectiveness and creativity of team members. Many of the study’s scales were also positively correlated with one another. Future empirical research in this area should involve a larger number of teams and teams from various types of organizations and disciplines.

1. Introduction

Global virtual teams are those that are primarily non-collocated, in more than one country and communicate through a variety of collaborative technologies (email, both synchronous and asynchronous white boards, teleconferences, videoconferences, virtual chat-rooms, and web meetings). In addition, there may be some face-to-face interaction, although this is often sporadic and the entire group may not meet in a single place simultaneously. Firms have been using virtual team-based structures to reduce costs as well as to share knowledge globally and to unleash innovation and creativity. Our concern here is for the how the firm achieves the goals of knowledge sharing while retaining effectiveness in their completion of task objectives when groups are larger than those of normal team size. Further, it is the goal of this paper to discuss the role based performance self-efficacy of members of virtual group members during the completion of their work duties in relationship to a number of factors that exist within the firm. This paper reviews the literature related to virtual teams, knowledge sharing, communication, and collaborative technologies from the fields of information sciences, technology and innovation, organizational behavior, organizational theory and strategic management. It then reviews the findings of a two-phase case study of one large group of workers at Nortel Inc. While the literature on virtual teams has proliferated, there is little research on these larger hybrid organization types that are termed “teams” by management, but actually function as large work groups. In this type of organizational form, “team” members (actually work group members) may work on their own or in pairs in remote offices. Members of virtual work groups may have little or sporadic contact with other members of the group. There is a gap in the research where this type of relationship exists. The goal of this research was to provide a pilot study for research in this field.

2. Literature Review

Virtual teams and other lateral networks

Cross-functional and cross-domain project and process-oriented teams (Frost, 1996; Galbraith, 1994; Jassawalla & Sashittal, 1999), designed to encourage coordination and innovation, have become an established part of the structure of most firms. Some of these groups are permanent parts of the organization, others are organized for specific projects that may be of long or short duration, and still others come together for a fast paced project. Any team or lateral organization network may be co-located or geographically dispersed. As narrowly defined by Townsend and Marie, virtual teams are groups that are “geographically and/or organizationally dispersed coworkers that are assembled using a combination of telecommunications and information technologies to accomplish an organizational task”. (Townsend & DeMarie, 1998, p.18). The dispersion may be moderate as in teams that are dispersed in several cities in close proximity, or it may be more extreme where teams are in several time zones scattered across the globe (Lipnack et al., 1997; Miles & Snow, 1986). In the most extreme version, team members remain on different continents in different countries, interact primarily through computer-mediated communication and rarely or never see or speak to one another (Knoll & Jarvenpaa, 1995; O'Hara-Devereaux & Johansen, 1994). Some theorists have broadened the definition of virtual teams to include teams that have some individuals who are co-located. Here, members use a combination of face-to-face interaction in addition to communication via telecommunications links and collaborative technologies (Duarte & Snyder, 1999). Virtual teams often require fluid membership for group problem solving and decision-making (Grant, 1995). The task may be temporary and/or adaptive to organizational and environmental change (Townsend et al., 1998, p.18). Inter-communal teams encourage synergistic, collective and coherent knowledge development out of disparate areas of expertise and specialization. This furthers the creation of both organizational “know-what” as well as organizational know-how (Brown & Duguid, 1998). Dorothy Leonard-Barton points out that embracing cross-community organization avoids isolation and furthers the prevention of turning core competencies into core rigidities (Leonard-Barton, 1995).

Due to the importance of virtual teams to highly competitive firms, it is important to consider the complexity that these mobile teams add to the firm’s governance issues. Teams in general have a myriad of organizational behavioral issues, which may enhance or reduce effectiveness. Trust and leadership are two major issues confronting teams that affect their dynamics (Katzenbach & Smith, 1999; Lipman-Blumen, 1999; Pfeffer, 1994). These more complex governance forms may encounter greater problems during coordination due to mobility and complexity of communication(Dube' & Pare', 2001). Continual building on previous creative work requires an institutionalization of the knowledge transfer, reuse, and integration process as well as development of a repository for the explicit and tacit knowledge developed by these innovators. Knowledge workers must be able to trust the firm, and must be motivated and rewarded to encourage mentoring, documentation, and collaboration (Leonard-Barton & Deschamps, 1988; Szulanski, 2000).

Virtual teams may have problems beyond those of co-located teams due to dependence upon collaborative technology and the establishment of common ground (Grant, 1996; Majchrzak, Rice, Malhotra, King, & Ba, 2000). Although, the use of an emergent and malleable collaborative technology may lead to enhanced communication within the group, (Majchrzak et al., 2000) issues of trust (Jarvenpaa, Knoll, & al, 1998), collaboration and leadership may be magnified due to communication and distance problems (Jassawalla et al., 1999) or governance issues (Duarte et al., 1999). Further, the organization may have constraints of time and financial resources that inhibit knowledge sharing and communication (Neece, 2002b).

Moderators and Resources

Two types of factors, found in the cross-disciplinary literature on virtual teams, influence the success of the process and the fulfillment of the project objectives. The term “moderators” is used for the first set of factors, grouped into seven (somewhat overlapping) categories. These factors “moderate” by directly or indirectly affecting performance. The eighth category, “resources”, includes both human electronic-based resources.

Organizational support and purpose

Creative virtual teams work better under conditions of ambiguity and are inherently non-hierarchical (Katzenbach et al., 1999; Lipman-Blumen, 1999). Innovative teams, in order to develop into what Lipman-Blumen calls “Hot Groups”, do not prosper in a hierarchical structure but need support from a corporate “patron” will shield the group from the hierarchy. In firms with rigid SBU structure, innovative individuals are “imprisoned resources” since lateral communication is not encouraged. Career path cross-development increases the ability of employees to see these core competencies in a new light.

“Competence carriers should be regularly brought together from across the corporation to trade notes and ideas. The goal is to build a strong feeling of community among these people.” (Prahalad, 1990)

Both formal and informal communication structures and teambuilding interventions that improve the ability of team members to transfer, capture, and combine tacit knowledge into new knowledge forms may be a source of sustained competitive advantage (Bresman et al., 1999; Sherman & Lacey, 1999). Nonaka has stated, “In most companies, the ultimate test for measuring the value of new knowledge is economic—increased efficiency, lower costs, improved ROI. But in the knowledge-creating company, other more qualitative factors are equally important (Nonaka, 1991).” Such factors include the achievement of the firm’s vision, aspirations and strategic long-term goals. Knowledge hoarding, (creating scarcity) is a cultural phenomenon. Downsizing may artificially cause loss of knowledge by losing knowledge from previously unknown sources. Open meetings allow individuals to "invade" one another's boundaries and offer advice about a new perspective, encouraging knowledge creation, the antithesis of monopolistic thinking (Nonaka & Takeuchi, 1995).

Egalitarian structure

Most theorists have proposed that the structure of a virtual team should be egalitarian in order to provide a more fertile ground for innovative thinking and for open knowledge sharing. Critical competencies required for virtual team leaders including mentoring and coaching, technological skills, encouraging the use of technological tools, networking, building trust, cross-cultural management, career development and development of team process. Team members often take up a spontaneous leadership role at critical junctures in the project (also called shared leadership in the literature). Duarte and Tennant-Snyder suggest, “people who lead and work in virtual teams need to have special skills, including an understanding of human dynamics, knowledge of how to manage across functional areas and national cultures, and the ability to use communication technologies as their primary means of communicating and collaborating.” (Duarte et al., 1999). Establishment of purpose, values, goals and objectives, setting of policies and procedures and clear distribution of workload enable all team members to understand and work toward the same objective (Katzenbach et al., 1999; Lipman-Blumen, 1999). Senge (1990) stresses the fact that a true commitment to a “shared vision” will “bind people together around common identity and sense of destiny (Senge, 1990).”

Team culture: trust and collaboration

Team culture is highly influenced by the frequency of communication (Cyert & Goodman, 1997) as well as quality of communication. Hoopes, (1999) found that teams that fully integrate and collaborate during the project process were found to be more successful than teams that split the workload and integrated the product later in the cycle. Integration is critical to the success of projects, and often results in a decrease in project completion time (Hoopes & Postrel, 1999). Integrated problem-solving is also critical for successful process development.” (Pisano, 1994)

Trust is an issue that has been found to be of major importance in virtual teams [Gibson, 2002 #1766][Jarvenpaa, 1998 #1220]. The global virtual-team context eliminates certain forms of social control such as direct supervision, face-to-face contact during meetings, and close proximity for monitoring work progress (Jarvenpaa et al., 1998). In new organizational structures such as networked organizations and teams, traditional social controls based on authority are traded for governance based on self-direction and self-control (Miles & Snow, 1992). Trust, under this loose form of governance, will promote open and substantive information exchange, increases the influence of communication, and improves confidence in the relationship (Earley, 1986; Yeager, 1978). Thus, trust can reduce transaction costs in the group interrelationships (Cummings & Bromiley, 1996; Handy, 1995). Pare′ and Dube′ (1999) found in interviews with 20 virtual team leaders that early face-to-face meetings were considered essential in building vision, trust and mutual accountability (Pare' & Dube', 1999). However, this early collocation may not always be possible.

All organizations are subject to political maneuvering. That is, they are subject to internal conflicts in relationships between people or groups in social or work situations based upon self-interest (Eisenhardt, 1989; Jensen & Meckling, 1996; Williamson, 1981). Since the introduction of an integrated knowledge management system and knowledge sharing policies and processes will cause major change for many individuals, it is subject to such conflicts. Individuals will be more easily acculturated through the use of a shared language (common language, interpreters, or coding), a shared experience base, or some shared cultural norms (Clark, 1996; Szulanski, 2000).

Time constraints may also complicate communication and cause additional stress due to a limited notion of what is productive work. Some practitioners and academic researchers have suggested setting a time or place for knowledge transfer, knowledge fairs, or chat rooms, to provide inducement to share(Davenport & Prusak, 1998).

People: skills and knowledge

The second moderator is the combination of skills, expertise, knowledge, diversity, and capabilities of the individual team members (Ghoshal & Bartlett, 1997; Pfeffer, 1994). Virtual teams allow firms to build a structurally flat organization with optimized team membership, selecting from the best people regardless of their geographic location. Access to previously unavailable expertise, enhanced learning, enhanced cross-cultural understanding, increased knowledge transfer, reuse and cross-functional/cross-domain interaction all add to the benefits for the firm (Townsend et al., 1998).

Motivation and rewards

Motivation of team members and the rewards structure that encourages or discourages team performance is a issue that has been the subject of debate since the Hawthorne experiments determined that people might be motivated by attention and recognition (Mayo, 1933). Negative motivation can discourage knowledge transfer and reuse (Hayes & Clark, 1985; Katz & Allen, 1982; Zaltman, Duncan, & Holbek, 1973). Szulanski, (2000) notes, "Lack of motivation may result in procrastination, passivity, feigned acceptance, sabotage, or outright rejection in the implementation and use of new knowledge (Szulanski, 2000)". Effort and uncertainty are two major hurtles in locating distant knowledge. Simon and March use the term 'satisficing' to describe the human tendency to settle for the knowledge or information that is adequate, but not ideal, in order to make a decision or for the immediate purpose at hand (March & Simon, 1958). "Localness adds to market inefficiency because it causes people to make do with less than optimal knowledge while a much better 'product' goes unsold or unused. In order to encourage knowledge owners to share, (firm’s should) evaluate their performance and provide incentives based on knowledge sharing (Davenport et al., 1998)."