INTRODUCTION
The traditional organizational workplace is dramatically changing. An increasing number of organizations are employing workers who are physically and geographically dispersed and electronically dependent on each other to accomplish work (Gibson & Cohen, 2003; Griffith, Sawyer, & Neale, 2003). Recent technological advances, combined with more flexible job design, have helped increase the number of people working in distributed environments. Hence, more employees are working individually and on teams that seldom, if ever, meet face to face. These virtual employees have the same work responsibilities as traditional employees in addition to the challenge of operating within the dynamics of these newly designed mediated workplaces.
Rapid developments in communication technology and the increasing influence of globalization and efficiency on organizations have significantly accelerated the growth and importance of virtual teams in contemporary workplaces. Virtual teams are becoming more commonplace because of the possibilities of a more efficient, less expensive, and more productive workplace. Additionally, distributed teams are less difficult to organize temporal organizational members than traditional co-located teams (Larsen & McInerney, 2002; Lurey & Raisinghani, 2001; Piccoli & Ives, 2003).
Although there are apparent advantages of organizing work virtually, the challenge for new member integration lies in the fact that team members must communicate primarily through communication technology such as electronic mail, telephone, and videoconferencing or computer conferencing. This increased dependence on technology as a medium of communication significantly alters the way new members are socialized to work teams. Additionally, team members’ ability to use complex communication technologies varies across individuals. This variation potentially may lead to inter- and intra-group conflict, as well as creating organizational work ambiguity, which refers to the existence of conflicting and multiple interpretations of a work issue (Miller, 2006). This article addresses the challenges of virtual team socialization with regard to newcomer assimilation and how newcomer encounter is an embedded process of virtual team assimilation.
BACKGROUND
Effective communication is central to organizational and team socialization. The way individuals are socialized in a team may determine his or her success within the team and the successful achievement of organizational and team goals. Team socialization and the communication practices associated with newcomer integration have been researched extensively (e.g., Brockmann, & Anthony, 2002; Lagerstrom & Anderson, 2003) since Jablin (1982) first explored this multilayered process. Socialization occurs when a newcomer of a team acquires the knowledge, behavior, and attitudes needed to participate fully as a member of that team. Jablin (1987) framed the stages of socialization as anticipatory socialization, organizational assimilation (encounter and metamorphosis), and organizational exit. Although there is an abundance of literature on traditional organizational socialization, research onvirtual team socialization is beginning to emerge (Ahuja & Galvin, 2003; Picherit-Duthler, Long, & Kohut, 2004; Long, Kohut, & Picherit-Duthler, 2004).
NEWCOMER ASSIMILATION IN VIRTUAL TEAMS
Organizational assimilation is perhaps the most important, yet complicated, stage of virtual team socialization. Assimilation concerns the ongoing behavioral and cognitive processes of integrating individuals into the culture of an organization (Jablin, 1982). Assimilation is a dual-action process that consists of planned and unintentional efforts by the organization to “socialize” employees, while at the same time the organizational members attempt to modify their work roles and environment to coincide with their own individual values, attitudes, and needs. Jablin (1987) suggests that organizational roles are negotiated and socially constructed by actively and reactively communicating role expectations by both the organization and its members. Newcomers typically enact this negotiation through information-seeking tactics.
Organizational culture also informs how newcomers are assimilated in virtual teams. Socialization is one of the most important processes by which organizations communicate their culture (Cheney, Christensen, Zorn, & Ganesh, 2004). While each member entering the organization learns the values, beliefs, and practices of the organization, they simultaneously shape the organization through their “reading” of those values. Because the spirit of virtual teams focuses on innovation, change, dynamic structure, and participant diversity, we should expect newcomers to be able to do more to shape the culture of their virtual team with their own values, beliefs, and practices than in the traditional team structure.
Organizational encounter as a phase of socialization is a time for newcomers to learn behaviors, values, and beliefs associated with their jobs and organizations (Schein, 1988). By entering a new situation, newcomers want to clarify their situational identity through their work roles (Berlew & Hall, 1966; Feldman, 1976), or through securing approval of others (Graen & Ginsburgh, 1977; Katz, 1978; Wanous, 1980). To reduce uncertainty, newcomers often search for information that allows them to adjust by defining the expectations of others and orienting their behavior to the behavior of others.
The speed that virtual teams form demands that workers deal with change rapidly. Although research on teamwork suggests that teams function optimally after they have worked together for a period of time, virtual teams may not have the luxury of establishing working relationships over an extended period oftime (e.g., Furst, Blackburn, & Rosen, 1999; Mark, 2001). Hence, it is vital for newcomers to quickly establish and develop relationships with others in the work setting, especially with peers and supervisors (Jablin, 2001).
Among other things, organizational relationships provide newcomers with support that facilitates the learning process and reduces stress and uncertainty associated with adjusting to a new work environment (Jablin, 2001). Much of the research on relationship development in the organizational encounter stage focuses on information seeking and information giving (e.g., Boyd & Taylor, 1998), learning behaviors and attitudes through exchange activities (e.g., Comer, 1991), technical or social information (Comer, 1991; Morrison, 1995), and regulative and normative information (e.g., Galvin & Ahuja, 2001). Evidence suggests that formal and informal socialization practices may affect the level of organizational commitment (Berlew & Hall, 1966; Buchanan, 1974), longevity in the organization (Katz, 1978; Wanous, 1980), and satisfaction and feelings of personal worth (Feld man, 1976). In fact, Gibson and Gibbs (2005) propose that a supportive communication climate, defined as an atmosphere that encourages open, constructive, and honest and effective interaction (p .4), often enables innovation.
The next section examines the three central areas of relationship building in virtual teams: peer relationships, supervisory relationships, and mentoring relationships.
Peer Relationships
Working with others on a team may be problematic. Several questions arise when working with others in this context. Do individuals meet the expectations the team has of them? Are they easy to get along with? Are they competent? Peers help newcomers integrate disjointed pieces of information (Van Maanen, 1984) and communicate subtle values and norms that may not be explicitly expressed by their supervisors. Newcomers have more contact with coworkers, and as a consequence, more opportunities to share information with them and develop relationships (Jablin, 2001; Comer, 1991; Teboul, 1994). Sias and Cahill (1998) proposed a variety of contextual factors, including shared tasks and group cohesion (e.g., Fine, 1986), physical proximity (e.g., Griffin & Sparks, 1990), lack of supervisor consideration (Odden & Sias, 1997), and life events outside the workplace, as well as individual factors, such as perceived similarity in attitudes and beliefs as well as demographic similarity (Adkins, Ravlin, & Meglino, 1996; Duck, 1994; Glaman, Jones, & Rozelle, 1996; Kirchmeyer, 1995), that may affect the development of relationships with peers.
Trust is a key factor in developing close relationships. However, due to the lack of physical proximity and the reliance on communication technologies, our understanding of trust in virtual teams is different from the trust in traditional teams. Piccoli and Ives (2003) define team trust as the belief that an individual or group makes good-faith efforts to behave in accordance with any commitments both explicit and implicit. Cummings and Bromley (1996) further define trust as honesty in whatever negotiations preceded the commitment as well as not taking excessive advantage of another even when the opportunity is available (Cummings and Bromley, 1996). Meyerson, Weick, and Kramer (1996) coined the term “swift trust” to describe how virtual teams develop a different type of trust than in traditional teams. Due to the highly interdependent nature of task orientation of the team, newcomers develop trust more quickly. Team members are able to develop trust in the relationships on the basis of shared tasks rather than on the basis of similar demographics and/or physical proximity found in traditional teams (Jarvenpaa & Leidner, 1999).
However, swift trust is not enough to develop close peer relationships. Team members face a number of challenges including: technological mistrust by both newcomers and established members, intuitive fear of the misuse of archived communication (e.g., e-mail trails), and the difficulty of sharing personal or non-work-related issues. Thus, virtual newcomers may be unable or unwilling to take advantage of the informal organizational development that appears central to organizational socialization in traditional teams. This clearly inhibits the development of close peer relationships in virtual teams, which in turn may inhibit constructive team cohesion. Similarly, opportunities to understand organizational politics are greatly reduced by the inherent dispersed nature of virtual teams. Unless the communication among team members is open, power alliances may form that foster certain behaviors such as social loafing, domination, and the formation of cliques to occur. Groups or individuals are alienated by these behaviors and may differ in their responses based on location or functional role. The outcome is the same—limited effectiveness of the team, low commitment, low loyalty, and mistrust. Other sources of information such as supervisors and mentors may prove more helpful in recognizing and adapting to political nuances.
Supervisor Relationships
Supervisors are important for assimilating newcomers to organizations by helping build a shared interpretive system that is reflective of assimilation (Berlew & Hall, 1966; Feldman, 1976; Graen, 1976; Kozlowski & Doherty, 1989; Ostroff & Kozlowski, 1992; Schein, 1988). Supervisors who frequently communicate with newcomers serve as a role model. These supervisors filter and interpret formal downward-directed management messages, have positional power to administer rewards and punishments, are a central source of information related to job and organizational expectations as well as feedback on task performance, and are pivotal in the newcomer’s ability to negotiate his or her role (Ben-Yoav & Hartman, 1988; Jablin, 2001). According to Staples, Hulland, and Higgins (1998), workers who learn their communication practices by modeling their managers’ behaviors have greater self-efficacy, better performance, and more positive job attitudes.
The supervisor-subordinate relationship is more important in virtual teams than in traditional teams due to the dislocated nature of the virtual structure (Long et al., 2005). The supervisor-subordinate relationship is complicated by the absence of a physical communication context that characterizes most traditional teams. The supervisor’s coordination of virtual team activities is more difficult because of the distinct nature of technological feedback (synchronous vs. asynchronous), the lack of robust spontaneous information exchange between supervisor-subordinate, and the obvious reduction of face-to-face verbal and nonverbal communication cues. On the other hand, some findings suggest that assessment of team member contributions may be more accurate in virtual rather than face-to-face environments. For example, Weisband and Atwater (1999) found that ratings of liking contributed less bias to evaluations of contribution for virtual groups than face-to-face groups. Similarly, Hedlund, Ilgen, and Hollenbeck (1998) found that leaders of computer-mediated teams were better able to differentiate quality of decisions compared to leaders in face-to-face teams.
Regardless of whether the supervisor is part of the team or not, the effective supervisor-subordinate relationship depends in large part on whether the organization uses a traditional approach to managing the virtual team. In traditional teams, often supervisor-subordinate relationships are characterized by hierarchical embedded roles in responsibilities, more formalized rules, procedures, and structures (McPhee & Poole, 2001). However, in virtual teams there is a loosening of the rules and responsibilities in the supervisor-subordinate relationship. The virtual setting reduces tangible cues that distinguish the status and/or hierarchy of the team members. Thus, the supervisor-subordinate relationships in a virtual team rely more on co-orientation, which facilitates the socialization process more effectively. Mentoring relationships is also important to newcomers’ adjustment to socialization efforts.
Mentoring Relationships
When discussing relationship building as part of the assimilation process, mentoring relationships is an important aspect. Mentors facilitate newcomer organizational adjustment by offering advice, support, and if appropriate, coaching behaviors to accomplish goals. Wigand and Boster (1991) suggest that “mentoring speeds up socialization into the work role, encourages social interaction, provides an opportunity for high-quality interpersonal interactions, and enhances identification with and commitment to the organization” (p. 16).
Mentoring relationships are formal and informal. Formal mentoring is a “deliberative pairing of a more skilled or experienced person with a lesser skilled or experienced one, with the agreed upon goal of having the lesser skilled or experienced person grow and develop specific competencies” (Murray & Owen, 1991, p. xiv). Several scholars (e.g., Allen, McManus, & Russell, 1999; Heimann & Pittenger, 1996; Seibert, 1999) acknowledge that newcomers who participate in formal mentoring relationships in traditional organizations realize greater benefits than those who do not have formal mentoring. Specifically, participation in formal mentoring increases the newcomers’ understanding of various organizational issues and increases their level of organizational and job satisfaction.
Informal mentoring relationships develop naturally at the discretion of the mentor and protege, and exist as long as the parties involved experience sufficient positive outcomes (Jablin, 2001). Newcomers who are informally mentored are privileged to information not directly associated with the job role or organizational tasks. This indirect communication includes organizational power and politics, involved career-related support, “inside” information about various organizational issues, and increased social interaction outside of the workplace. As trust, commitment, and identification in the virtual team develops for both the newcomer and more experienced workers, informal mentoring will naturally occur. Virtual teams are more effective when communication barriers such as role uncertainty, task ambiguity, and tacit norms of the team are dismantled.
Organizations benefit when they recognize the value of both formal and informal mentoring relationships. Acknowledging the positive impact mentoring has on newcomer assimilation in a traditional team arrangement leads us to assume that mentoring will have similar impact on virtual team assimilation. However, due to the structural challenges of virtual teams, organizations should consider both formal and informal mentoring programs as tools to socialize newcomers to virtual teams.
In summary, virtual teams face an uncertain, but promising future. The socialization process of team members can become an enigma when building virtual teams. The next section outlines future trends in newcomer assimilation in virtual team socialization.
FUTURE TRENDS
Three interrelated relational aspects of virtual team assimilation are important to note when attempting to predict future trends in this emerging field of study. First, growing interest in virtual team socialization will lead to an accelerated interest in how trust is developed and maintained in virtual team relationships. Trust is a major factor influencing the cohesiveness among virtual team members (Sarker, Valacich, & Sarker, 2003). Instrument development and validation is of central concern as virtual teams become a ubiquitous aspect of organizational life. Scholars and practitioners both have a vested interest in fully developing this aspect of virtual team scholarship, as more individuals will work in this new organizational configuration and become more dependent upon the work of others in their virtual team. Working remotely clearly has its benefits, but opportunities will only be maximized when trust is fully realized among all organizational citizens, especially virtual team members.
Second, focused attention should be given to the amount of social contact individuals experience via mediated communication with their peers and supervisors. As workers become increasingly more isolated because of the flexibility technology affords them (e.g., telecommuting, flex hours), managers should be proactive in ensuring that many of the social components characteristic of working in traditional “brick-and-mortaf’ workplaces—the characteristics that keep individuals socially satisfied and committed to the organization—are transferred to the new dislocated work environment. Several scholars have suggested that the informal organization is equally, if not more powerful than the formal organization (e.g., Rogers & Kincaid, 1981; Monge & Contractor, 2001; Monge & Eisenberg, 1987). In order to maintain a consistently committed and talented workforce, deliberate attention should be earmarked to foster the intangible social relational aspect of virtual team functioning.
Finally, managers and scholars should work in tandem to fully realize the opportunities and potential for virtual mentoring. Networking and building informal coalitions and communities with others within and outside of their employing organization is a key strategy for upward mobility for individuals, especially minority organizational members (Bell & Nkomo, 2001; Parker, 2003). As more individuals are hired and socialized to work in more virtual team-based structures, it is critical that organizational leaders leverage the power of mentoring as a means to create a more committed workforce and reduce job transfers and turnover. Establishing a protege and mentor relationship is critical, as technological uncertainty and task ambiguity increase due to the erosion of traditionally rich media forms such as face-to-face communication. Implementing formal and informal mentoring programs is certainly a future trend in virtual team socialization.
CONCLUSION
Organizations are turning to virtual teams as a way to remain competitive in an environment characterized by globalization, mergers, acquisitions, and dependence on information technologies. A great deal of attention is paid to how to provide adequate virtual team infrastructure such as hardware and software components. However, little attention has been devoted to the “human-structure” of virtual team organizing. Future research and organizational attention should focus on the methods of assimilating newcomers in virtual teams. This communication process is as important as the technology selected to accomplish work.
Some aspects of virtual team assimilation are similar to traditional team assimilation, but many are not congruent. Staples and Webster (2007) posit that the distinction between traditional and virtual teams is no longer needed, as all types of teams are characterized by varying degrees of virtuality. The primary difference is that virtual team members are typically more reliant on information technology as the medium for communicating, and virtual team members are more likely to be isolated from the rest of their team — hence, the importance of examining how virtual team members build relationships in this new organizational structure. Communication in peer, supervisor, and mentoring relationships is vital in optimizing organizational functioning, yet little attention is focused on these important relationships in the virtual team environment. In addition to the traditionally studied outcome variables such as costs, productivity, and effectiveness, organizations should also be mindful of the importance of issues related to the internal team and interpersonal communication processes that embody and constitute organizations.
Effective virtual team assimilation, just like traditional team assimilation, fosters loyalty, commitment, trust, and potentially greater cohesiveness with the team. Virtual team socialization is a shared relational responsibility for the newcomer, the supervisor, and the organization. If little concern is given to building the relationships, then the long-term stability of the virtual team may be threatened.
KEY TERMS
Co-Located Team: A traditional team that shares a common goal and works toward that goal in a face-to-face, same-office environment.
Formal Mentoring: A deliberate pairing of a more skilled or experienced person with a lesser skilled or experienced one, with the agreed-upon goal of having the lesser skilled or experienced person grow and develop specific competencies.
Informal Mentoring: The non-assigned pairing of an experienced person who respects, guides, protects, sponsors, promotes, and teaches a younger, less experienced personnel member who develops naturally at the discretion of the mentor and protege, and persists as long as the parties involved experience sufficient positive outcomes.
Organizational Assimilation: The processes by with individuals become integrated into the culture of an organization.
Newcomer Encounter: A time for newcomers to learn behaviors, values, and beliefs associated with their jobs and organizations.
Socialization: The process in which that member of a team acquires the knowledge, behavior, and attitude needed to participate fully as a member of the team.
Swift Trust: A type of trust that develops quickly on the basis of shared tasks rather than on the basis of similar demographics or physical proximity.
Virtual Team: A group of geographically and organizationally dispersed workers brought together across time and space through information and communication technologies.
