TITLE:
Comparison between Face-to-Face Teams and Virtual Teams with Respect to Compliance with Directives
AUTHORS:
Daphna Shwartz-Asher, Niv Ahituv
KEYWORDS:
HRM, Virtual Team, Compliance, Obedience, Experiment
JOURNAL NAME:
Journal of Service Science and Management,
Vol.12 No.4,
June
30,
2019
ABSTRACT: This article portrays a study where the compliance was measured in virtual vs. face-to-face (FTF) teams1. To measure the influence of the virtuality level on the team members’ reaction to instructions, an experiment was designed, in which a team task with a set of instructions was given to 150 subjects who participated in virtual or non-virtual (FTF) task solving meetings. The study’s main finding indicates that while the virtual team members showed a high degree of compliance with the directive to distribute the labor among themselves and to appoint a chairperson, the non-virtual team members showed a low degree of compliance. It seems that the use of the “formality” variable may explain the compliance of the virtual team members as opposed to the lower level of compliance among members of the non-virtual teams. The knowledge that communication technology influences the compliance atmosphere is a point that deserves further research.