How to Develop Effective Virtual Team Working

Physical distance between team members is a key characteristic of virtual teams. Research on proximity demonstrates that distance or proximity affects behaviour in many ways (Kiesler and Cummings, 2002). Proximity is associated with greater liking and better communication. This is at least partly because when people are working together in the same room, they can see each other’s facial expressions, hand gestures, judge their emotions more accurately and look at material on a flip chart. Research comparing co-located and virtual teams reveals that, as a consequence, co-located teams complete twice as much work as virtual teams (Olson and Olson, 2000). Moreover, people are more likely to collaborate with others if they work in close proximi....et al