ECOLOGICAL APPROACH TO VIRTUALTEAM EFFECTIVENESS

This paper attempts to address the need for more research on virtual team effectiveness, and outlines an ecological framework. Prior empirical studies on virtual team effectiveness have used frameworks of traditional team effectiveness and mainly followed Hackman's normative model (input-process-output). We propose an ecological approach for virtual team effectiveness that accounts for team boundaries management, technology use, and external environment, which were previously either non-existent or contextual. The ecological framework suggests that three components reciprocally interact with effectiveness: external environment, internal environment, and boundaries management. The significance of the proposed framework is the holistic perspective that takes into account the complexity of the external and internal environment of the team.

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