Collective efficacy in virtual teams: Emergence, trajectory, and effectiveness implications.

Use of virtual teams in workplace environments is common, and in this study, we investigated the emergence of collective efficacy in virtual teams. Collective efficacy—a team’s shared confidence in their ability to meet its goals—is an emergent state that has consistently been found to positively relate to team effectiveness. However, much of the past research on collective efficacy has focused on static approaches, ignoring the inherently dynamic nature of the construct. Thus, the past research has neglected to fully address the emergent nature of collective efficacy, which involves consensus (i.e., sharedness or agreement) and a trajectory (i.e., growth or change in level) over time. These issues are addressed in the current investigation. Longitudinal data were collected from 3,644 individuals, comprising 665 virtual teams, that were participating in a 10-week business simulation activity. Using consensus emergence modeling and multilevel latent growth modeling, we examined the dynamic nature of the emergence and trajectory of collective efficacy over three time points during project completion. Overall, we found that both consensus and the level of collective efficacy decreased over time, but teams that demonstrated smaller decreases over time had stronger effectiveness. These findings suggest that collective efficacy is a key resource in virtual teams that needs to be managed over time in order for teams to have optimal effectiveness. Implications for theory, futur...
Source: Canadian Journal of Behavioural Science - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research