Abstract

Virtual teams (VT) have been studied since two decades because of their increasing presence in today’s organizations. To better understand how VTs work, our research tries to address this issue by analysing interpretive frameworks through which students made sense of a VT experience as part of a course taught simultaneously in two distant universities. Using the concepts of sensemaking (Weick, 1995) and sensegiving (Gioia and Chittipeddi, 1991), I ask: how does individual sensemaking contribute to constructing collective sensemaking? I used a narrative approach to study reflective narrations produced by the students and logs they posted on their team’s forum. The findings show how competitive frameworks hinder collective sensemaking; the importance of sensegiving on the development of VTs; and how perceptions of CMC limitations depend on interpretive frameworks.

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