Virtual teams versus face to face teams: A review of literature

Abstract

Today, concept of a team transcends the boundaries of distance, time, organizations and cultures. There has been an increasing emphasis on distributed work teams that operate in a virtual environment in a 24 hour cycle and tap the strength of diversity in terms of skills, experience, knowledge and expertise, all round the globe. Globalization and advances in Information and Communication Technology are a direct cause to it. The trend of distributed teams will not go way and will become the permanent work structures of the organizations. These global teams will profoundly reshape our world. But how effective are these teams compared to face to face teams? What are the differences between virtual teams and traditional teams? The paper extends knowledge on the growing importance of dispersed teams. The paper also builds on a comparison between virtual teams and face to face teams on the basis of certain dimensions such as group style, performance, satisfaction, trust, cohesion and conflict.