Social Motivation Consequences of Activity Awareness Practices in Virtual Teams: A Case Study and Experimental Confirmation

Abstract

People working in teams must maintain awareness of each other’s activities in order to coordinate their activities and improve team performance. Members of virtual teams find it difficult to develop cohesively because members are unable to directly observe each other. In this paper, we report the results of a case study in which we explored how distributed team members used computer mediated communication to maintain awareness of each other’s activities. The consequences of providing awareness of one’s activities went beyond improving coordination and had effects on connectedness and social motivation. Based on these results, we hypothesized that awareness would have a significant impact on social motivation through feelings of connectedness. This was confirmed via a laboratory experiment. Thus, organizations that implement computer mediated communication technologies are advised to consider the social motivation effects of their use. Designers and users of mediated communication technology are similarly advised to consider latent social motivation effects that might occur in organizational teams as a result of their use in practices for maintaining awareness.