Virtual Team Success: Towards a Theory of Performance in Virtual Teams

Virtual team represents an organizational form which can revolutionize the workplace and provide organizations with unprecedented levels of flexibility and responsiveness. Growing inclination of organizations to indulge in virtual teamwork and significant utilization of virtual teams by organizations on a local as well as global basis necessitates investigating how such teams achieve success. As identified by existing reviews on virtual team research, the extant research on virtual teams is largely inconsistent. Furthermore, even after two decades of research in this field, there is still no holistic theory explaining the path of virtual teams to effective performance. This research-in-progress paper advances a theory which identifies determinants of virtual team success and links them to their performance. Along with providing a holistic view of virtual team success, the proposed theory also strives to explain the inconsistencies in previous research.