| This study investigated the antecedents and impacts of awareness in global virtual teams. Awareness is a broad construct that reflects the extent to which people participating in a collaborative activity possess relevant information about aspects of their teammates or teammates' work. The purpose of this study was to integrate the concept of awareness into the literature of work group study. Specifically, the effects of perceived task structure, communication frequency and groupware usage on perceived awareness were examined. In addition, the effects of awareness, along with task interdependence, on trust and solution agreement were also explored. Participants were recruited from universities in the United States, Mexico, and Russia to form 7 distributed engineering design teams. Each team consisted of students from 2 locations and was offered a set of communication tools, including an ISDN-based video conferencing system (VTEL), Microsoft Netmeeting, telephone, fax, a project-specific email account, and a web-based groupware tool known as TeamSCOPE.; The results showed that perceived task interdependence and communication frequency had positive effects on perceived level of awareness. Additionally, the effect of communication frequency on perceived awareness was moderated by perceived task interdependence. Results also showed that participants' reliance on real-time meetings with distant teammates for awareness was positively associated with increased perceived task interdependence and contributed to a higher level of perceived awareness. However, no effect of TeamSCOPE usage on perceived awareness was found. Further discussion on awareness demands is provided.; Both perceived task interdependence and awareness were positively associated with trust. Multiple regression analysis showed that perceived awareness was the more significant predictor of trust. No effect was found between awareness and solution agreement.; These results suggest that awareness is an important group process variable. It provides a link between task interdependence and trust. To stay updated with their distant teammates, virtual team participants need adequate media support to match their awareness demand. Organizations should reduce the barriers of using synchronous communication channels for virtual teams, especially for those working on high interdependent tasks. |
