Editing Virtual management (section)

=== Performance management ===
After the launch of a virtual team, work effectiveness and a constructive team climate has to be maintained using performance management strategies. These comprehensive management strategies arise from the agreed upon difficulty of working in virtual teams.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Hoch|first=J. E.|year=2014|title=Leading virtual teams: Hierarchical leadership, structural supports, and shared team leadership|url=http://www.csun.edu/sites/default/files/Hoch_Kozlowski_2014.pdf |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161128195055/http://www.csun.edu/sites/default/files/Hoch_Kozlowski_2014.pdf |archive-date=2016-11-28 |url-status=live|journal=Journal of Applied Psychology|volume=99|issue=3|pages=390–403|doi=10.1037/a0030264|pmid=23205494}}</ref>  Research shows that constructs and expectations of team membership, leadership, goal setting, social loafing and conflict differ in cultural groups and therefore affects team performance a lot. In early team formation process, one thing to agree on within a team is the meaning of leadership and role differentiation for the team leader and other team members. To apply this, the leader must show active leadership to create a shared conceptualization of team meaning, its focus and function.<ref name=":3" />

The following discussion is again restricted to issues on which empirical results are already available. These issues are leadership, communication within virtual teams, team members' motivation, and knowledge management.<ref name=":0" />

Leadership is a central challenge in virtual teams. Particularly, all kinds of direct control are difficult when team managers are not at the same location as the team members. As a consequence, delegative management principles are considered that shift parts of classic managerial functions to the team members. However, team members only accept and fulfill such managerial functions when they are motivated and identify with the team and its goals, which is again more difficult to achieve in virtual teams. Next, empirical results on three leadership approaches are summarized that differ in the degree of autonomy of the team members: Electronic monitoring as an attempt to realize directive leadership over distance, management by objectives (MBO) as an example for delegative leadership principles, and self-managing teams as an example for rather autonomous teamwork.<ref name=":0" />

One way to maintain control over a virtual team is through motivators and incentives. Both are common techniques implemented by managers for collocated teams, but with slight adjustments they can be used effectively for virtual teams as well. A commonly held belief is that working online, is not particularly important or impactful. This belief can be changed by notifying employees that their work is being sent to the managers. This attaches the importance of career prospects to the work, and makes it more meaningful for the workers.<ref name=":1">{{Cite journal|last1=Nunamaker|first1=Jay F. Jr.|last2=Reinig|first2=Bruce A.|last3=Briggs|first3=Robert O.|date=2009-04-01|title=Principles for Effective Virtual Teamwork|journal=Commun. ACM|volume=52|issue=4|pages=113–117|doi=10.1145/1498765.1498797|s2cid=23905817 |issn=0001-0782}}</ref>

Communication processes are perhaps the most frequently investigated variables relevant for the regulation of virtual teamwork. By definition, communication in virtual teams is predominantly based on electronic media such as e-mail, telephone, video-conference, etc. The main concern here is that electronic media reduce the richness of [[information exchange]] compared to [[Face-to-face interaction|face-to-face]] communication.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /> This difference in richness of information is an idea shared by multiple researchers, and there are some methods to move around the drop created by working in a virtual environment. One such method is to use the anonymity provided by working digitally. It lets people share concerns without worrying about being identified.<ref name=":1" /> This serves to over come the lack of richness by providing a safe method to honestly provide feedback and information. Predominant research issues have been conflict escalation and disinhibited communication (“flaming”), the fit between communication media and communication contents, and the role of non-job-related communication.<ref name=":0" /> These research issues revolve around the idea that people become more hostile over a virtual medium making the working environment unhealthy.<ref>{{cite journal | last1 = Kiesler | first1 = S. | last2 = Siegel | first2 = J. | last3 = McGuire | first3 = T. W. | year = 1984 | title = Social psychological aspects of computer-mediated communication | doi = 10.1037/0003-066x.39.10.1123 | journal = American Psychologist | volume = 39 | issue = 10 | pages = 1123–1134 | s2cid = 3896692 }}</ref> These findings were quickly dismissed in the presence of virtual teams due to the fact that virtual teams have the expectation that one will work longer together, and the level of anonymity is different from just a one off online interaction.<ref>{{cite journal | last1 = Reinig | first1 = B. A. | last2 = Briggs | first2 = R. O. | last3 = Nunamaker | first3 = J. F. | year = 1998 | title = Flaming in the electronic classroom | journal = Journal of Management Information Systems | volume = 14 | issue = 3| pages = 45–59 | doi=10.1080/07421222.1997.11518174}}</ref> One of the important needs for successful communication is the ability to have every member of the group together repeatedly over time. Effective dispersed groups show spikes in presence during communication over time, while ineffective groups do not have as dramatic spikes.<ref>{{Cite journal|last1=Maznevski|first1=M|last2=Chudoba|first2=C|year=2000|title=Bridging space over time: Global virtual team dynamics and effectiveness.|url=http://digitalcommons.usu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1008&context=mis_facpubs|journal=Organization Science|volume=11|issue=5|pages=473–492|doi=10.1287/orsc.11.5.473.15200|citeseerx=10.1.1.682.8612|s2cid=13441261|access-date=2016-11-08|archive-date=2016-11-09|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161109025056/http://digitalcommons.usu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1008&context=mis_facpubs|url-status=live}}</ref>

For the management of motivational and emotional processes, three groups of such processes have been addressed in empirical investigations so far: motivation and trust, team identification and cohesion, and satisfaction of the team members. Since most of the variables are originated within the person, they can vary considerably among the members of a team, requiring appropriate aggregation procedures for multilevel analyses (e.g. motivation may be mediated by interpersonal trust <ref>Geister et al. (2006). http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.129.6781&rep=rep1&type=pdf {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150429071200/http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.129.6781&rep=rep1&type=pdf |date=2015-04-29 }}</ref>).<ref name=":0" />

Systematic research is needed on the management of knowledge and the development of shared understanding within the teams, particularly since theoretical analyses sometimes lead to conflicting expectations. The development of such “common ground” might be particularly difficult in virtual teams because sharing of information and the development of a “transactive memory” (i.e., who knows what in the team) is harder due to the reduced amount of face-to-face communication and the reduced information about individual work contexts.<ref name=":0" />