Abstract

The emergence of online tools supporting collaboration has allowed more people to work together online. Virtual team members are expected to collaborate in order to solve predefined problems. Several factors influence a virtual team member intention to collaborate. In this paper, a conceptual model and a measurement scale are derived from previous literature on online collaboration and virtual teams and have been pretested to refine the derived scale items. The scale under development makes important contributions to both research and practice. For research, it will provide a validated scale to measure intention to collaborate, which will support further research in this field. For practice, it will help identify what contributes to a team member's intention to collaborate; this can assist practitioners in establishing virtual teams within their organizations.

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Intention to Collaborate: Investigating Online Collaboration in Virtual Teams

The emergence of online tools supporting collaboration has allowed more people to work together online. Virtual team members are expected to collaborate in order to solve predefined problems. Several factors influence a virtual team member intention to collaborate. In this paper, a conceptual model and a measurement scale are derived from previous literature on online collaboration and virtual teams and have been pretested to refine the derived scale items. The scale under development makes important contributions to both research and practice. For research, it will provide a validated scale to measure intention to collaborate, which will support further research in this field. For practice, it will help identify what contributes to a team member's intention to collaborate; this can assist practitioners in establishing virtual teams within their organizations.