Document Type

Article

Abstract

One of the major areas of E-Business applications is the sourcing of expert human resources globally with the help of virtual teams operating in various parts of the world. Major corporations are increasingly using e-Collaboration technologies to make the functioning of these teams economical and effective. The tasks performed by these teams can vary from software design and development to providing back office services like call center support, technical support, transcription services etc. Additionally, after 9/11 corporations have embarked on major initiatives to implement e-Collaboration technologies at the global level to help reduce travel.

Extensive work has been done to study the decision-making performance of face-to-face and virtual teams. However, previous studies have found conflicting results regarding the impact of media richness on decision-making performances of teams. This paper posits the significant role of media type on the communication richness when team members have low commitment to the collaborative team projects. A conceptual model that depicts the influence of media type on satisfaction, team conflict, social influence, and supportiveness that influences the team commitment has been developed. The influence of team commitment on communication richness is also examined. A controlled lab experiment is designed to test the research model.

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