Success of Virtual Environments

While work has been conducted across geographical distances as long as humans have been engaged in work, advances in technology as well as changes in the global economy have increased both the requirement and the potential for teams to work together effectively across geographical and organizational boundaries (Hinds & Kiesler, 2002). Research conducted in the 1960s and 1970s on group development process provides a foundation for understanding and supporting the development of high-performance virtual teams (Tuckman, 1965; Tuckman & Jensen, 1977). Coupling group development process with groupware, computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW), and new peer-to-peer technologies, virtual teams have the support to move through the development stages until they become high-performance virtual teams. In fact, a recent benchmarking study determined that virtual teams have the potential to function even more productively than co-located teams (Majchrzak, Malhotra, Stamps, & Lipnack, 2004).