Research On The Affecting Factors Of Engagement And Satisfaction In Virtual Teams

As the economic globalization goes deeper, enterprises are facing increasing competitive pressures. Intense marketplace competition makes continual change necessary.Virtual teams to meet ever-changing task requirements provides the flexibility a business needs to compete effectively. They creates clear competitive advantages for enterprises in the current environment. Numerous enterprises, such as Adobe, IBM, and Sun Microsystems, have been increasingly using collaborative technologies to facilitate collective content building and accomplish tasks. Virtual teams help breathe new life into enterprises, but they also led to a series of management issues. For example, team members become more and more slacking, members’initiatives in participating tasks have been reduced and team members may be dissatisfaction with team collaboration. All of above can influence the team situation and the sustainability of virtual teams. Moreover, those may aggravate the conflict situation, and then influence team performance. Therefore, it is very important to improve team members’ engagement of cooperation and the degree of satisfaction to team experience. This study makes some suggestions to improve the persistence of virtual teams through analyzing the affecting factors of engagement and satisfaction in virtual teams. As a result, managers can improve teams’performance effectively based on these suggestions.Based on literature review including self-verification theory and equity theory, this study comes up with the model of factors influencing members’engagement and satisfaction in virtual teams from the perspective of social cognitive theory. It identifies cognitive factors from two aspects:individual and interactions with the environment. And then we verify the model through questionnaires. In order to avoid the interference of uninterested factors, the model is tested in a controlled quasi-laboratory environment using questionnaires. The experiment was taken among 157 undergraduate students of DLUT, dispersed in 31 teams. The participants were asked to complete a task on a team-specific WIKI platform in two weeks.Results of data analysis shows that knowledge self-efficacy and self-identity verification are positive related to virtual team members’ engagement. At the same time, self-identity verification are positive related to virtual team members’satisfaction. In addition, virtual team members’engagement is significantly negative related to members’ satisfaction, and as peers influence, other members’ engagement negatively moderate the relationship between team members’ engagement and satisfaction. However, the effect of performance expactancy on members’ engagement is not significant. Also, the effect of knowledge self-efficacy on members’ satisfaction is not significant. In the end of the paper, we discuss the research results and provide some advices about team management practices and future research.