Does Virtuality Really Matter? Studying Virtuality, Socio-technical Readiness, and Shared Understanding in Virtual Collaborations

Abstract

Business organizations are increasingly relying on virtual work environments as they provide access to global talent pool, reduce costs, and support business agility and scalability. Development of shared understanding is key to the success of teams engaged in virtual work. Prior research suggests that being virtual reduces shared understanding in virtual work environment. Given that considerable progress has been made in collaboration technology and virtual work has become quite common in recent times, some of the earlier challenges of virtual teams may not be relevant now. We conducted a study to capture the perception of the employees engaged in virtual work environments. Our findings suggest that socio-technical preparedness for virtual collaboration influences shared understanding in virtual work environments. We did not find any effect virtuality on shared understanding. Consistent with prior research, we found that shared understanding has a positive influence on the performance in virtual work.