Work Processes in Virtual Teams: A Matching Algorithm for Their

Technological Facilitation

Birgit Großer and Ulrike Baumöl

Chair of Information Management, FernUniversität Hagen, Universitätsstraße 41, 58097 Hagen, Germany

Keywords: Virtual Teams, New Technology, Work Process, Technology Choice, New Work.

Abstract: Virtual teams have almost become normality, especially in larger organizations. Often globally dispersed

project teams work together in a virtual setting, but we also find organizations that are fully organized

following a virtual design. New technology facilitates the implementation of virtual teamwork into the

organization. However, new technology steadily evolves and adaptations by organizations are not always

considered as successful. We therefore propose an algorithm for matching technology to work processes of

virtual teams. The results are evaluated through interviews and derived on a generalizable level, making them

transferrable to changing work environments and also to technologies yet to be innovated.

1 VIRTUAL TEAMS IN THE

CONTEXT OF NEW WORK

“New work” as a buzzword and manifestation of

various concepts has been discussed since the early

80s (Väth, 2016). The discourse predominantly

approached organizational development from a

philosophical perspective and focused on individual

freedom regarding goals and means of work.

Discussions in the context of new work shifted over

the years and nowadays mainly address “the three

Ds”: democratization, decentralization and digitali-

zation (Väth, 2016). Whereas democratization

reflects, e.g., the ways work conditions are

negotiated, decentralization and digitalization impact

the ways people work and their organizational

integration.

We focus on the second and third “Ds” for this

study addressing knowledge work. Working in a

decentralized way is manifested in, e.g., virtual

teamwork. Digitalization of organizations and

people’s private lives is facilitated by innovative

technologies and by the intensity and ways these

technologies are demanded and used.

Organizations adapt to the requirements of new

work in order to acquire and retain workforce, to be

competitive on their market, and based on ethical

motivations (Gajendran and Harrison, 2007).

Implementing virtual teamwork is one eligible way

for focusing these goals. Most virtual teams work

decentralized in various ways, e.g. geographically,

and work digitally, relying on technological support

for work processes. This technological support and

the facilitated work processes are elements of the

organization’s knowledge system (Fang, Kwok and

Schroeder, 2014). Innovative technologies for

communication and management, e.g. three-

dimensional virtual environments (3DVE), can thus

be crucial for serving the goals of new work and

support virtual teams in their business goals (Powell,

Piccoli and Ives, 2004).

3DVE are considered a popular research object,

whereas other new technologies in the context of

virtual teamwork are not as intensely analyzed

(Gilson et al., 2015). Yet, established and partly

already replaced technologies, e.g. email, are still

researched regarding the use and benefit for virtual

teams (Gilson et al., 2015; Dubé and Robey, 2009).

Furthermore, insights on technology choice and

performance are contradictive. The endeavor to

categorize and analyze new technologies serving as

reference for future technology design and

technology choice is thus relevant for research, even

more, as the development of technological solutions

and of society are not static but keep evolving

dynamically.

The goal of this study is thus to present an

algorithm that serves as reference for matching

technological solutions to work processes. This

allows enhancing technological innovations that meet

current and future requirements. The algorithm is

Großer, B. and Baumöl, U.

Work Processes in Virtual Teams: A Matching Algorithm for Their Technological Facilitation.

DOI: 10.5220/0007672400730083

In Proceedings of the 21st International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems (ICEIS 2019), pages 73-83

ISBN: 978-989-758-372-8

 2019 by SCITEPRESS – Science and Technology Publications, Lda. All rights reser ved

designed on an abstract level supporting the analysis

of new technologies that are already in use and those

yet to come. The proposed algorithm does not replace

decisions of tech-savvy humans or individual choices.

But the algorithm can serve as guidance for a more

objective technology choice as well as tool for

analyzing technology choice and its link to work

performance. The results also provide guidance for

technology choice in practice and furthermore serve

as a link for subsequent research in this area. The

following research questions (RQ) direct the process

of this study in order to achieve these goals.

RQ1: What are the requirements of work

processes by virtual teams with respect to

technological facilitation?

RQ2: Which technological capabilities support

specific work processes for virtual teams?

The study is divided into three main sections. The

conceptual design presents the fundamental ideas

regarding, e.g., the applied media synchronicity

theory (MST) (section 2). Matching capabilities and

requirements is then performed in three steps (section

3). The proposed results are validated by performing

expert interviews (section 4). Main contributions and

links for future research are presented (section 5).

2 CONCEPTUAL DESIGN

Conceptualizations for new technology, for current

types of workplaces and for virtual teams are

proposed subsequently. The MST is introduced

serving as main theoretical approach for the

subsequent analysis of new technology. MST

supports a structured decomposition of technology

for specific work processes (DeLuca and Valacich,

2006; Hassell and Limayem, 2011) and allows

insights into how technology can support team

processes (Maruping and Agarwal, 2004). It is thus

used as theoretical lens for this study and introduced

in the following (section 2.1). An overview of related

work shows how to embed this study into current

research (section 2.2).

2.1 Relevant Elements

Technologies in general are “manufactured objects”

that “enhance human capabilities” or “enable humans

to perform tasks they could not perform otherwise”

(Grübler, 2003). This basic definition suits the

context of virtual teamwork as it stresses the

relevance of technology for virtual teams to be able

to exist. Evolving technology is usually described as

“new” at a certain moment in time. Technology is

regarded as “new” for this study if it is still emerging

or is already diffused for established use throughout

recent years. New technologies analyzed in this study

include soft- and hardware (Grübler, 2003) that

facilitate virtual teamwork through remote access but

also allow performing individual work processes that

do not require communication. We exclude

technologies that are either replaced by current

solutions or have been used and analyzed for decades,

e.g. offline mail services, email, fax and phone calls.

We propose five categories of new technologies for

our study that are used in practice by virtual teams

and analyzed in the context of teamwork in literature

(Gilson et al., 2015). Technologies are discussed in

scientific literature on different levels of abstraction.

We focus on technological core functions instead of

taking combined features and specific tools, such as

Skype or Trello, into account, resulting in five

categories. This level of abstraction allows for the

proposed algorithm to be still applicable for

upcoming technological solutions instead of solely

addressing technologies that are currently in use. The

categories for our analysis are video conferencing,

3DVE, chat, document sharing tools and management

systems.

Video conferences are video calls with two or

more participants. Spoken words and facial

expressions are transmitted (Dennis, Fuller and

Valacich, 2008). Some video conference systems also

support parallel written chat and document sharing.

For our study we address these features separately as

described above. 3DVE can be deployed for

conferencing through avatars, for observation, e.g. for

customers during the planning phase of architectural

ideas as well as for design (Gilson et al., 2015). 3DVE

differ from augmented reality by not requiring

physical representations of objects. Chat tools for

written messages have been in use for several

decades. As they have not been replaced and new chat

software solutions on new devices still emerge, they

are categorized as new technology. Document

sharing tools, also referred to as virtual file systems,

are often integrated into work platforms among other

functionalities, e.g. calendars. Still, several tools exist

and are deployed that provide the core function of

document sharing. These tools often provide standard

folder structures facilitating consistent storing of

work artefacts. With that virtual teams are not

required to, e.g., send updated artefacts per email but

can store and access them in a central database, either

hosted by their organizations or as cloud service

(Gilson et al., 2015). Management systems support

the organizational aspects of teamwork and include

tools for project management (Seerat, Samad and

ICEIS 2019 - 21st International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems

Abbas, 2013), process management and workflow

automation (Dustdar, 2004).

We deploy the concept of capabilities from the

MST in order to structure the observed technologies

and allow a precise matching to the requirements of

work processes in section 3. Any technology can be

classified regarding the five capabilities: feedback,

parallelism, rehearsability, reprocessability and

symbol set (Dennis and Valacich, 1999; Dennis,

Fuller and Valacich, 2008; Powell, Piccoli and Ives,

2004). The facilitation of feedback, in terms of

immediate response, also referred to as transmission

velocity (Dennis, Fuller and Valacich, 2008), is a

capability that highly distinguishes technological

solutions. Most new technologies allow feedback to

some extent, but the velocity of feedback varies

significantly. 3DVE and conference tools support

real-time feedback and thus synchronous

communication. Parallelism describes if and to what

extent a technology supports processing several tasks

simultaneously. Asynchronous technologies, e.g. chat

tools, provide more support for parallelism than, e.g.

video calls. Rehearsability characterizes if

technologies allow checking and reworking content

before sharing it with team members. Most features

in management and document sharing tools support

repeated rehearsability. If technologies support

reprocessability the produced content can be re-used.

E.g. 3DVE applications are enriched with content that

is persistent and is updated for re-use. The symbol set

refers to the repertoire a technology offers. E.g.

spoken words combined with facial expressions in

video calls provide a richer symbol set than chat tools

and thus serve different work process requirements.

The manifestations of these capabilities indicate

which processes a certain technology supports

through synchronous or asynchronous features. The

building of a shared mental model, e.g., requires

convergence of the team members’ ideas and is

supported by technology that allows synchronous

communication (Dennis and Valacich, 1999), like

video conferences. Transferring information to team

members and storing it for mutual use, e.g., is

supported by asynchronous technology (Dennis and

Valacich, 1999), like document sharing tools. The

manifestations of the five capabilities for

synchronous and asynchronous technologies are

shown in table 1.

Table 1: Manifestations of technological capabilities.

synchronous asynchronous

feedback + immediate - slow

parallelism - less + more

rehearsability - no + yes

reprocessability - low + high

symbol set + rich - narrow

MST does not support instant technology choice

but provides the necessary analytical foundations by

focusing communication performance (Dennis,

Fuller and Valacich, 2008). We therefore build our

matching of work process requirements and

technology as additional step based on the introduced

capabilities.

The use of technology by virtual teams for work

processes allows new alternatives of workplaces, with

a workplace being a physical place for value creation.

Regular offices and working hours, even with flexible

hours, do not cover the whole reality of today’s

workplace structures and demands (Gilson et al.,

2015). Some professions require humans or machines

to be at a certain workplace, e.g. for garbage

collection service. Our focus is on professions that are

traditionally associated with offices and working

hours and thus on knowledge work, e.g. researchers

and programmers. Offices in buildings have been

regarded as standard workplace for a long time.

Remote work at home emerged as alternative

workplace. Beyond that, considering work by digital

nomads (Nash et al., 2018) leads to a manifold image

of today’s workplaces. Synthesizing technological

characteristics of these workplaces shows that the

common grounds are a computer and internet

connection. Depending on the tasks that are involved

in the work processes, workers add hardware devices,

e.g. microphones and virtual reality devices. Office

space, desks, nearby colleagues and regular hours are

not generally required amenities.

Organizations adapt to new work requirements

and market conditions in order to remain competitive

by approaching specific customer segments and by

acquiring a qualified workforce (Gajendran and

Harrison, 2007). One way to meet these goals is to

deploy virtual teams as workforce. Costs can be

lowered by saving on real estate and travel expenses

(Gajendran and Harrison, 2007). New customers are

approached and qualified employees are acquired and

retained by creating a work environment that suits

their cultures and choices of how to live (Kane et al.,

2015). Yet, integrating virtual teams also introduces

challenges to the organization, e.g. regarding building

trust (Dubé and Robey, 2009). Thus, the deployment

of virtual teams is a strategic decision that is enabled

Work Processes in Virtual Teams: A Matching Algorithm for Their Technological Facilitation

by new technology but mainly triggered by market

conditions and cultural shifts. Virtual teams can be

defined as group of people working together remotely

or asynchronously with technological support in an

organizational context (Schweitzer and Duxbury,

2010). Virtual teams often include people in various

time zones speaking different native languages. But

even teams that are working in the same city but

remotely or asynchronously require technological

facilitation and can be considered virtual teams.

Currently common implementations of virtual teams

are mainly related to knowledge work. Online and

consulting service providers are well suited areas for

virtual teamwork. Therefore, several companies in

this field even consist solely of virtual teams, e.g.

Zapier and Basecamp (https://zapier.com/about/,

https://base camp.com/about). Taking a look at job

offerings for remote and virtual work (e.g. at

https://www.flexjobs.com/ and https://remote.co/)

supports this assumption, as most careers are in the

fields of knowledge work and online services in

particular. Besides the virtual work in a knowledge

work context, virtual teamwork also emerges in areas

that have been known to require manual operations,

e.g. medical surgeries and manufacturing. Not only

trainings for surgeries are carried out in virtual

environments (Satava, 1993) but also actual surgeries

can be performed with members of the team working

remotely via virtual technologies (Pessa et al., 2015).

Applications for virtual environments and

appropriate hardware, e.g. head-mounted displays,

are used for work processes in manufacturing for

planning, designing and decision making, as another

prominent example of technologically facilitated

virtual teamwork (Berg and Vance, 2017).

Work processes in general include all activities

carried out by humans in a work context in order to

enable or perform value creation (Gilson et al., 2015).

They can be differentiated from business processes

regarding their affiliation to human actors. Actors can

be employees, executives, and also freelance workers.

We focus on team members and team leaders of

virtual teams for our study. Thus, all work processes

performed by them are taken into account.

2.2 Related Work on Technology

Analysis

Researchers are looking for reasons of failed and

successful teamwork processes since teamwork

became a prominent way of organizing tasks.

Especially interrelations of technology choice and

performance are of interest since collaborative

technologies have emerged (Dennis and Valacich,

1999). Models and theories are derived through these

insights, e.g. in the field of collaborative engineering

(Randrup and Briggs, 2017). E.g. the media richness

theory has been established for explaining

technology-task-fit and technology use in teamwork

and was evaluated in many studies (Dennis and

Valacich, 1999). Dennis et al. proposed the MST

based on the media richness theory by focusing on

process outcomes instead of the formally discussed

technology-task-fit (Dennis and Valacich, 1999;

Dennis, Fuller and Valacich, 2008). Supporting a

more dynamic view, adaptive structuration theory

takes a longitude perspective by providing an

approach for analyzing technology use over time and

focus on the actual ways technology is used instead

of how it is intended to be used (Dennis and Valacich,

1999; DeSanctis and Poole, 1994). Today,

technology design, choice and use are analyzed from

various scientific perspectives, e.g. engineering and

psychology, and often prototypes or guidance are

provided for practice. Due to these practical

approaches, the studies are less aimed at proposing

theoretical foundations but shed light on topics on an

application level. Insights provided on an application

level address, e.g., the implementation of avatars for

cultural translation in conferencing (Hasler et al.,

2017) and the use of collaboration systems (Dustdar,

2004).

In order to contribute to this intensely researched

field and also offer benefits for practice, we position

our work as abstract model that delivers an adaptive

algorithm, also deployable for future reference. An

algorithm presents a qualified measure to solve a

problem based on precisely described steps with a

finite amount of time and data (Dale and Lewis,

2007). We therefore conceptualize virtual teams

through their work processes without explicitly

including cultural and behavioristic approaches that

would regard, e.g., motivation in teams and evolution

of technology use during team lifespan. In order to

support future referencing across different industries,

the model abstracts from specific branches and is

built on the equally abstract MST.

3 MATCHING ALGORITHM

In the following sections we derive technological

requirements of work processes by virtual teams

(RQ1) and match these requirements to the

capabilities of new technologies (RQ2). We therefore

derive work processes for virtual teams and their

technological requirements (section 3.1), break down

technologies to the level of capabilities (section 3.2)

ICEIS 2019 - 21st International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems

and match the requirements to the capabilities

(section 3.3). The results of this matching algorithm

can serve virtual teams to optimize their technology

choice and also reveal shortcomings regarding

technology design.

3.1 Work Processes in Virtual

Teamwork

We suggest structuring work processes into two

perspectives, in order to facilitate the allocation of

processes. The administrative view includes

processes that are not directly bound to the content of

work objects. Work processes from a value creation

view present the generation of work results. As in any

team, even more importantly in the context of

virtuality, communication is considered as vital for

successful collaboration on any organizational and

team level (Powell, Piccoli and Ives, 2004). Two

fundamental communication processes exist based on

MST. These are the transfer of information, called

conveyance and the communicative activity to

achieve a shared mental model or to come to an

agreement, the convergence of information (Dennis,

Fuller and Valacich, 2008; Ramesh and Dennis,

2002). Conveyance presents the administrative aspect

of communication, whereas convergence is bound to

the content of information. Coordination, being

another essential administrative work process for

virtual teams can be operationalized through a team

leader, self-coordinating teams or a hybrid

coordination approach (Piccoli, Powell and Ives,

2004; Powell, Piccoli and Ives, 2004). Team

members carry out individual tasks that usually

depend on a certain profession and role. As these

individual tasks are highly diverse across professional

fields, e.g. coding and research, we do not further

specify requirements of individual professions. When

the members carry out tasks together as a team, these

tasks include individual input which is intertwined

due to interdependencies, e.g. in the partly remote

surgery situation described above. Team task

performance is hence regarded as work process which

requires team interaction for achieving mutual goals.

An overview of the described work processes is

displayed in figure 1.

These work processes require certain

technological support in order to be practicable by

virtual teams. These requirements are analyzed based

on the capabilities proposed by MST (Dennis and

Valacich, 1999; Dennis, Fuller and Valacich, 2008).

The requirements of derived work processes are

shown in table 2.

Figure 1: Work processes in virtual teams.

The manifestations of technological capabilities

are adopted as work process requirements in order to

apply an analytical level similar to MST. “x” marks a

mainly positive and “-“ a mainly negative

manifestation. Cases that are volatile are marked with

“x-“. All five work processes are examined similarly

to the following description for convergence

processes: A virtual team seeks to achieve consensus

regarding an unclear goal description of a new

project. In that case convergence presents the work

process on a value creation level. In order to achieve

consensus, immediate feedback is required in

discussions, parallel tasks impair the focus and thus

the results of convergence. As convergence is

supported by synchronous communication, input is

not rehearsable but happens immediately. As

convergence can be regarded as frequently required

process, arguments as well as resources can be

reprocessed for similar work processes to a certain

extent, e.g. by recording. A rich symbol set is

regarded to facilitate convergence (Dennis, Fuller and

Valacich, 2008) and may include spoken words, tone,

facial expressions and shared written documents and

models in that case.

3.2 Capabilities of New Technologies

The five proposed new technologies are analyzed

regarding their capabilities based on MST in order to

match these technologies to the work processes. The

selected technologies can be positioned along a

continuum between synchronous and asynchronous,

regarding their manifestations of the described

capabilities. The results are displayed in table 3,

based on the cited literature and judgment by the two

authors, corresponding to inter-code-reliability.

Video conferencing is only convenient when the

participants’ internet connections are good enough to

tolerate steady and synchronous communication.

Therefore, the transmission velocity needs to be high

allowing immediate feedback. Parallel conduct of

video conferences is not viable and content once

transmitted via spoken words and mimic cannot be

rehearsed. Video conferences can be recorded and

their content thus be reprocessed, e.g. for protocols.

This

process could be enhanced by implementing

administrat ive view

coordination

conveyance

value creation view

convergence

individual task performance

team task performance

Work Processes in Virtual Teams: A Matching Algorithm for Their Technological Facilitation

Table 2: Technological work process requirements.

work process

requirement

coordination

conveyance

convergence

indiv. task

erformance

team task

erformance

feedback - - x - x

parallelism x x - x -

rehearsability x x - x x-

reprocessability x x x- x x

symbol set - x x x- x-

Table 3: Capabilities of analyzed technologies.

technology

capability

vid.

conf.

3DVE

cha

doc.

shar.

tools

manag.

systems

feedback x x x- - -

parallelism - - X x x

rehearsability - x X x x

reprocessability

x- x- x- x x

symbol set x x- - x- -

synchronous

 

asynchronous

automated transcription. Video conferencing tools

provide a rich symbol set (e.g. speech and mimic).

3DVE facilitate synchronous communication

(Schouten, Hooff and Feldberg, 2016). Analogous to

video conferencing, immediate feedback is supported

and parallel process performance unfavorable. 3DVE

support the rehearsing of interaction. The set-up of

3DVE can be reprocessed and optional recordings of

interactions stored for documentation or re-use.

3DVE can include individualized avatars for

communication that translate cultural differences or

provide images of objects that require discussion

(Hasler et al., 2017). Therefore, the richness of the

symbol set strongly depends on the maturity and

features of the deployed 3DVE.

Feedback in chat systems can be delivered

immediately or slowly. The tool’s velocity does not

only depend on the technology itself but on the way

team members are using it. This use can differ

between teams and between individuals and is related

to organizational culture and communication habits.

Chats support parallel communication tasks which

negatively influences the velocity of feedback. This

as well as the amount of parallel threads is limited due

to human information processing. In cases where chat

bots are implemented, this limitation is softened up to

technological processability. Chat content is

rehearsable and reprocessable due to delayed

transmission until ordered and due to automated

documentation of conversations. Chat tools are most

commonly limited to written and voice messages

presenting a narrow symbol set.

Some document sharing tools integrate feedback

features. Yet, most document sharing tools are only

convenient for up- and downloading documents, with

limited comment areas. Document sharing tools are

not restricted regarding parallelism and

rehearsability. Reprocessability is a core function of

document sharing tools. The symbol set of document

sharing tools is as rich as the shared documents, e.g.

if only pictures or written documents are shared.

Management systems allow immediate

conveyance of, e.g., performance indicators or work

instructions. However, most management systems do

not provide bidirectional feedback features. Content

can be rehearsed and reprocessed and parallel projects

and processes be monitored. The symbol set is usually

limited to written text as well as displaying models

and figures.

3.3 Matching Procedure

The matching algorithm of work process

requirements and technological capabilities is

processed by synthesizing tables 1, 2 and 3 and the

results are presented in table 4 below. E.g.

coordination processes require parallelism,

ICEIS 2019 - 21st International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems

Table 4: Matching of new technologies and work processes in virtual teams.

technology

work

process

vid.

conf.

3DVE

cha

doc.

shar.

tools

manag.

systems

coordination 2 2 1

conveyance 3 3 1 3

convergence 1 2 3 3

indiv. task performance 3 3 1 3

team task performance 3 1 3 3

rehearsability and reprocessability. Technologies are

scanned and the ones selected that meet these three

requirements, e.g. management systems (labeled as

choice 1). Technologies which provide additional not

required capabilities are mentioned as second-best

choices (labeled as choice 2). Even though this might

seem counterintuitive, richer technology is not

regarded as better choice than the ones with specific

fit (Dennis, Fuller and Valacich, 2008). Technologies

that lack one required capability are labeled as choice

3. Technology that lacks more than one required

capability is not marked as choice. The matching

results of specific technologies are transferred to five

propositions throughout the matching procedure

generalizing towards synchronous and asynchronous

technology.

The requirements of coordination work processes

are met by management systems (1). Besides this

exact match in all three capabilities (parallelism,

rehearsability, and reprocessability), document

sharing tools (richer symbol set) and chats (more

immediate feedback) are also possible matches (2).

Proposition 1. Asynchronous Technology Facilitates

the Requirements of Coordination Processes for

Virtual Teams.

Conveyance processes can be performed using

asynchronous technology and are facilitated by

document sharing tools (1). 3DVE, chats and

management systems (3) all lack one capability and

thus support conveyance to a certain degree.

Proposition 2. Asynchronous Technology with Rich

Symbol Set Facilitates Conveyance of Information in

Virtual Teams.

Convergence processes require highly

synchronous communication potential. The best

match is to deploy video conferencing (1). 3DVE

adds the capability of rehearsability and varies in

symbol set and is therefore regarded as second best

match (2). Chat and document sharing tools lack at

least one capability and thus serve as third choice for

supporting convergence processes (3).

Proposition 3. Convergence Processes in Virtual

Teams are Facilitated by (Reprocessable)

Synchronous Technology.

Work processes included in individual task

performance have highly unique requirements. The

technological requirements depend on the field of

work, e.g. coding programs, exercising surgery,

training or planning interior design. The common

ground regarding teamwork is that the work results

need to be transmitted, shared or provided for

subsequent tasks. Thus, the matching of individual

task performance requirements and technology shows

an equal result as conveyance processes.

Proposition 4. The Integration of Individual Task

Performance and Derived Results into Teamwork

Processes is Facilitated by Asynchronous

Technology.

The best technological match for team task

performance is 3DVE as all requirements are met (1).

No second choice exists providing additional

capabilities. The three third choices, video

conferencing, chat and document sharing tools (3),

support team task performance to a certain extent.

Proposition 5. Unison Team Task Performance is

Facilitated by Highly Synchronous Technologies that

Additionally Provide Rehearsability and

Reprocessability.

The results are summarized in table 4 above. The

matching shows which technology is assumed to

support which work process best based on the

presented insights following MST. Combining

technologies, even ones that are not considered to

fully support the process requirements, can still

facilitate process performance to a certain extent

(Dennis, Fuller and Valacich, 2008). E.g. using a

document sharing tool to open documents, protocol

results and update content during a meeting in a

3DVE can enhance team task performance compared

to an exclusive deployment of synchronous 3DVE.

4 EVALUATION AND

DISCUSSION OF RESULTS

We conducted a field study using interviews in order

to evaluate, possibly validate and amplify the insights

Work Processes in Virtual Teams: A Matching Algorithm for Their Technological Facilitation

regarding the matching of technologies and processes

(Yin, 2014). Interviews were chosen for data

collection as they allow assessing actual

implementations of technology with taking individual

interpretations of the actors into account (Schultze

and Avital, 2011). The field study includes five semi-

structured interviews (Myers and Newman, 2007)

with experts from practice (section 4.1). The experts’

judgment on the proposed assumptions and results are

analyzed for potential consensus and discussed

(section 4.2) in order to evaluate and improve our

findings (Frank, 2007). The evaluated matching

algorithm is finally presented as model (section 4.3).

4.1 Interview Method

The field study was intended to evaluate the theory-

based propositions through insights from practice and

interviews were selected as methodical approach.

Interviews are an appropriate approach for deriving

insight for how and why something is done (Yin,

2014). The interviews consisted of open questions.

The questions were based on the assumptions

regarding work processes (section 3.1) and

technological capabilities (section 3.2) as well as the

results of the matching (section 3.3). The interview

script consisted of three blocks. The first block

addressed personal characteristics (see table 5) and

individual hardware use. Questions of the second

block inquired, what technologies are used for which

processes. E.g.: “Coordination: You want to

communicate a planned schedule to your team

members and monitor the compliance with deadlines.

Which technology do you use?”. The third block

addressed technological capabilities based on the five

selected technologies. E.g.: “Chat: Do you use chat

tools? For which processes and tasks are chat tools

convenient? What are, in your opinion, advantages

and disadvantages of chat tools?”. If the interviewees

did not cover all capabilities in their answers for the

third block, these capabilities were explicitly

addressed. E.g. regarding rehearsability: “How

important is it for you to be able to proof-read,

structure and edit content before you transmit the

content using a chat tool?”. The interviewees were

informed about confidentiality of the interviews and

asked to abstain from personal and organizational

data during the interview, before the recording of the

interviews was started. All interviewees were shortly

and equally briefed in order to achieve a mutual

understanding of technology and work processes. All

interviews took about 30 minutes and were recorded.

The answers where analyzed and insights extracted

that are summarized in section 4.2. The interviewer

followed the questions prepared in the script but also

improvised by referring to answers already given to

questions and by asking for more detail, especially

when statements did not adhere to the theoretical

foundation (Myers and Newman, 2007).

Table 5 shows the characteristics of the five

interviewees, regarding the kind of organization they

represent and what role they hold in that organization.

The interviews and the interviewees present the user

perspective as they report on how and what

technologies they actually use or would find

applicable for certain work processes.

The interviewees were selected due to their

different roles in organizations and as they are

working across several industries. This selection was

made in order to provide a certain degree of

transferability of the results and also not limit the

insights to one group of employees which might bias

the results (Myers and Newman, 2007).

Table 5: Characteristics of interviewees.

# organization interviewee

1 market research and

product development

senior consultant

2 digitalization assessment

and consulting

consultant

3 online marketing senior campaign

manager

4 virtual power plant

operator

software coder

5 health consulting and

software systems

CEO

4.2 Analysis of Interview Results

The interviews were analyzed regarding their support

and dissent of the propositions. The results of the

interviews support the five propositions (section 3.3)

to a certain extent as described subsequently.

Ref. prop. 1: The interviewees use a variety of

asynchronous technology for coordination processes.

Spread sheets are used for project and process

management despite their lack of integrability. In

most cases, the solutions are not integrated but consist

of organization-wide project and process

management systems, personal calendars and to-do

applications redundantly combined with email

reminders for delegated tasks.

Ref. prop 2: Document sharing via online tools

and in local databases is a standard procedure for the

interviewees for conveying information. Still, emails

with individual transmissions are widely used in one

international company that does not provide any

internal document sharing platform accessible across

ICEIS 2019 - 21st International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems

locations. This interviewee stated that he has

expected email use would be obsolete by now,

considering all the available tools. Two other

interviewees stated and approved that email was

banned for transmitting content for security and

efficiency reasons by their organization. Especially

the factor “efficiency” validates our theoretical

assumptions.

Ref. prop. 3: Asking about convergence processes

confirmed that a rich symbol set is required and the

interviewees often referred to the need of seeing

facial expressions as they are used to from face to face

meetings. Immediate feedback presents another

reason to choose video conferencing above other

technology. Lack of technology use skills and

insufficient connection were mentioned as main

downsides impairing video conferencing. Most

interviewees use reprocessability of recorded video

conferences for documentation and sharing with other

team members. This confirms the findings that

reprocessability is, to some extent, relevant in

synchronous technology and provides insights on

actual use and ideas for future design and

implementation of conferencing technology. The

statements regarding video transfer in conferencing

are divergent. Most interviewees mentioned an urge

to see the person they communicate with. Most

statements did not include specific reasons but rather

an emotional drive to see who they are working with,

even if the other person carries out tasks that do not

require interaction. Opposing statements considered

seeing a person as unnecessary for communication

and video transfer even as inconvenient regarding

privacy of workspace.

Ref. prop. 4: The choice of technology for

carrying out individual tasks is as diverse as expected.

This also concerns remote accessibility and mobility

of technology. Interviewees mostly stated that they

hardly ever use mobile devices besides laptops and

only sometimes require remote access to the

organizations databases for their individual tasks.

Re. prop. 5: The selected interviewees stated to be

interested in 3DVE for either direct interaction or for

observing locations without traveling. Rehearsability

and reprocessability are not seen as relevant for team

task performance, thus not confirming the

proposition.

The interview questions did not require any

adaptation of the work processes and technologies.

All interviewees were able to find their own work

processes and tasks as well as technologies they use

in the suggested structure. The overall use of

synchronous and asynchronous technology for

processes proves to be as recommended by the

matching. Yet, the individual manifestations of

technology use vary significantly. The two extremes

are one company with centralized, highly structured

and lean technology use and the other company with

a variety of technologies that are used or not used

based on each employee’s liking.

4.3 Validity of the Proposed Matching

Algorithm

The matching results and derived propositions are

mainly supported by the interviews as described

above. We therefore consider the proposed matching

algorithm as valid method for analyzing and planning

appropriate technology choice and development. The

granularity and structure of work processes as well as

the proposed classes of technologies were confirmed

to model reality throughout the interviews. The

algorithm consists of two initial steps and one

synthesizing step. The two initial steps are (1)

analyzing work process requirements and (2)

analyzing technologies, both on the level of

capabilities. Finally, (3) the manifestations are

matched and the results assessed regarding their

accuracy of fit. The proposed algorithm is modeled

for our use case in figure 2.

Figure 2: Modeled matching algorithm.

5 CONCLUSION

The matching results as well as the insights from

interviews are mostly in line with the hypotheses

from MST regarding the capabilities of synchronous

and asynchronous technologies. Email applications

were not taken into account; still, most interviewees

used email as benchmark for other technologies. This

phenomenon could be interpreted as a transition from

the email era as former main communication tool and

could be an issue for further investigation.

Work Processes in Virtual Teams: A Matching Algorithm for Their Technological Facilitation

The matching algorithm presents the main

contribution of this study. The foundations are closely

based on MST and the proposed results are evaluated

through interviews. The algorithm allows for an

adaption for varieties of technological solutions, e.g.

management systems with discussion sections, due to

its high level of abstraction and with generalizability.

Future research could focus on matching

technological solutions with the needs of certain

professional fields, e.g. for researchers or legal

consultants, as we did not specify the requirements of

certain professions. We assessed the insights of the

evaluation cautiously because of the following weak

points. The number of interviewed experts was

relatively small and thus provides only indicative

results. Insights by expert interviews are known to

tend to rather validate whatever is assumed

beforehand (Kromrey, Roose and Strübing, 2016).

Subsequent studies could provide further insights for

enhancing the matching algorithm, also including

longitude studies analyzing changes of technology

use over time (DeSanctis and Poole, 1994) or

focusing on specific industries or requirements by

diverse user groups. The proposed results of the

matching algorithm can serve virtual teams by

optimizing their technology choice and support future

decisions in technology design.

The current revival of “the three Ds” - the trends

and visions of new work - manifests in deploying

virtual teams, and it is enabled through new

technology and requested by the current and future

workforce. Scientific research is encouraged to

further develop an understanding and moreover

provide guidance for these and upcoming trends and

visions of new work.

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