| Virtual teams are extensively used in the workplace. Virtual teams are generally conceptualized as a group of people who are geographically dispersed, perform interdependent tasks, and coordinate their work primarily with various electronic information and communication media (e.g., telephone, fax, e-mail, teleconferencing, videoconferencing; Potter & Balthazard, 2002). Although research on virtual teams is increasing, one area that requires more research concerns virtual team composition and particularly the role of personality in virtual teams (Martins, Gilson, & Maynard, 2004). Indeed, scholars have studied the role of team member personality in traditional face-to-face (FTF) teams, but very few studies have extended this work to virtual teams. The present study sought to investigate the role of personality characteristics in team effectiveness (i.e., team performance, satisfaction, commitment and viability) and how that relationship is influenced by the team's degree of virtualness and the course of time. In this dissertation, theoretically-driven hypotheses made specific predictions about the way in which team-level personality should be operationalized depending on the nature of the trait and the criterion of interest. The study employed a between-subjects design where 161 participants were randomly assigned to 45 teams (17 FTF, 13 hybrid, and 15 virtual) and were asked to work on a task for four consecutive weeks. Team effectiveness criteria were measured both midway through and upon completion of the study. Results showed that mean levels of agreeableness, extraversion, and honesty-humility were related to affective outcomes in FTF teams; mean levels of conscientiousness and emotionality were related to affective outcomes in hybrid teams; virtual teams' mean conscientiousness was inversely related to team effectiveness criteria whereas virtual teams' mean extraversion, emotionality, openness to experience and honesty-humility was related to team effectiveness outcomes. Additionally, support was found for some of the moderating effects of degree of virtualness and time on the relationship between personality and team effectiveness criteria. Results and their implications are discussed.;Keywords. Personality, Teamwork, HEXACO, Virtual Teams, Team Effectiveness, Computer-mediated-communication. |
