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From Virtual Teams to Virtuality in Teams

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 Human Relations http://hum.sagepub.com/

From virtual teams to virtuality in teams

Keith R Dixon and Niki Panteli
Human Relations 2010 63: 1177 originally published online 14 April 2010
DOI: 10.1177/0018726709354784

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 human relations

human relations
63(8) 1177–1197
From virtual teams to virtuality © The Author(s) 2010
Reprints and permission: sagepub.
in teams co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav
DOI: 10.1177/0018726709354784
hum.sagepub.com

Keith R Dixon
University of Bath, UK

Niki Panteli
University of Bath, UK

Abstract
In this article we propose to go beyond the dichotomy of virtual vs collocated teams to look
instead at virtuality in teams. In so doing, we argue that technology-mediated interactions
do not substitute but rather complement face-to-face interactions.We adopt a definition of
virtuality in teams based on discontinuities and pursue an understanding of their dynamics
in an in-depth case study of an inter-organizational virtual centre of excellence.The findings
present evidence suggesting the formation of ‘virtual continuities’ that mitigate the effects
that create discontinuities. This, we argue, enriches our understanding of the complex
dynamics of virtuality. The theoretical implications are discussed.

Keywords
communication, group communication, new technology, virtuality, work environment,
teams

Introduction
Though there has been considerable attention paid to virtual teams in the management
and organizational literatures, research so far has tended to focus on comparisons with
traditional or collocated teams and in particular on the inability of technology-mediated-
communication to transmit the level of richness associated with social interaction (Powell
et al., 2004). We argue that this perspective is constraining as it examines only those

Corresponding author:
Niki Panteli, Centre for Information Management, University of Bath School of Management, Claverton
Down, Bath BA2 7AY, UK.
Email: n.panteli@bath.ac.uk

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1178 Human Relations 63(8)

aspects of virtual teams that are recognizable in traditional teams and not those that are
new or significantly different. Such an aspect is the consideration of the complementary
effects of face-to-face and technology-mediated interactions that, though widely recog-
nized as prevalent within most teams (Griffith et al., 2003), has not been discussed in
these terms within the virtuality literature. As a result, research in this area has lagged
behind in developing generalizable theories that conceptualize this aspect of their effects
in a team environment.
To address this shortcoming and the resulting gap in knowledge requires a wider per-
spective of teamwork and the particular forms that occur in virtual teams. Supported by
recent reviews of virtual team research (Chiasson and Panteli, 2008; Powell et al., 2004)
that argue for such an expanded view, we develop the concept of ‘virtuality in teams’ and
discuss it in terms of the effects that technology-mediated interactions have by not sim-
ply substituting for, but complementing face-to-face interactions. We make a contribu-
tion in this field by developing the concept of ‘virtual continuities’ as a way of enriching
our understanding in this area and thus argue that virtuality in teams is more usefully
conceptualized based on virtual continuities rather than, as is currently the case, on dis-
continuities. This, we believe, will provide future research with a basis for exploring and
improving our understanding of the dynamics within and between modern forms of
teams where a mix of face-to-face and technology-mediated interactions are used.
In what follows, we present our theoretical foundations. The research setting and
approach are then outlined. In particular, we draw on a case study of a UK government-
funded programme aimed at establishing a ‘virtual centre of excellence’. The findings
emerging from the study are discussed, conclusions are drawn and implications for
research are highlighted.

Virtuality and teams

The rapidly improving reach, accessibility and capability of information and communi-
cation technologies (ICTs) has created the possibility of a virtual world in which face-to-
face interactions are replaced by interactions via technology-mediated-communication.
At the same time, organizations have also been increasingly employing team-based orga-
nizational structures to improve performance (Offermann and Spiros, 2001), believing in
the value of teamwork to deliver productivity, flexibility and collaboration. The nexus of
theses two trends is the emergence of the concept of ‘virtual team’.
Harris (2008) posits that the discourse of virtuality, which we adopt here, reflects the use
of ICTs towards more devolved and distributed forms of work. Indeed, most definitions of
virtual teams are built on the definition of the team, adding, that a virtual team ‘relies on
technology-mediated-communication rather than face-to-face interactions to accomplish
[its] tasks’ (Cohen and Gibson, 2003: 4). Such definitions reflect much of the research lit-
erature (Powell et al., 2004) in which technology-mediated-communication has been seen
as a substitute for face-to-face interactions and extended into comparisons between virtual
and ‘traditional’ or collocated teams that have also been couched in similar terms.
By taking such a narrow view of virtuality, the above approaches continue to isolate
the effects of technology-mediated-communication rather than to recognize its role in
conjunction with face-to-face communications. With communication technologies being

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Dixon and Panteli 1179

embedded in business environments, there are calls for research in this field to move on
(Martins et al., 2004) and embrace the emerging nature of virtuality (Panteli and
Chiasson, 2008). Further, ICTs expand the ability of individuals to switch between mul-
tiple tasks and teams with minimal overhead and effort. Even, therefore, where team
members are collocated, increasingly they are also simultaneously members of other
teams with whom they interact using communication technology. This, on the one hand,
reduces the face-to-face interactions with their collocated colleagues but, on the other
hand, increases connectivity and interactivity with geographically dispersed colleagues.
Accordingly, the current situation is one in which it is purely face-to-face teams that are
becoming rare (Griffith et al., 2003; Kirkman and Mathieu, 2005; Martins et al., 2004)
yet the need for virtual teams to meet face-to-face, often at least at the outset, is widely
acknowledged (Duarte and Snyder, 2001). So while juxtaposing virtual and face-to-face
teams as substitutes is valuable in isolating key characteristics of virtual teams (Martins
et al., 2004), such an approach does not allow for the study of the mutually supportive
aspects of face-to-face and technology-mediated interactions that occur in the ‘hybrid’
form (Bell and Kozlowski, 2002; Fiol and O’Connor, 2005; Griffith and Neale, 2001).
The need now, therefore, is to explore and develop an understanding of the effects on
teams where both face-to-face and technology-mediated interactions are combined.
Accordingly, we propose to shift towards a definition of a characteristic of teams that
reflects the effects of the changed nature of the interactions that underpin them – and, we
posit in this article, that there is a need to open up possibilities for a broader perspective
of virtuality as such a team characteristic (Chudoba et al., 2005; Hertel et al., 2004, 2005;
Martins et al., 2004; Watson-Manheim et al., 2002). To do this, we first adopt a definition
of virtuality in teams based on the construct of discontinuity, where a discontinuity
reflects the perception of problems of communicating and interacting across a boundary.
Examples of discontinuities include differences in physical location, time-zone differ-
ence, language and cultural differences, professional and organizational affiliation. In
other words, discontinuities contribute to a decrease in cohesion (Watson-Manheim et
al., 2002). In today’s teams, several inter-related discontinuities may be experienced
simultaneously. A globally dispersed team, for example, is likely to experience cultural,
language and time-zone discontinuities as well as discontinuities owing to the lack of
physical proximity. A globally dispersed inter-organizational team would almost cer-
tainly add to these discontinuities around work practice. Thus, within what has been
described as the virtual work environment the effects of discontinuities have been
expressed as the increased effort to accomplish a task through technology-mediated-
communication (Chudoba and Watson-Manheim, 2008). As they put it:

By effort, we mean the additional difficulty an individual faces in trying to accomplish a given
purpose. As a result, boundaries are objective (i.e., recognizable by all parties, even those not
actually involved in the communication process), and discontinuities are subjective (i.e., rele-
vant only as perceived by those involved in the communication process) . . . (p. 57)

With its effect of looking at virtuality as a perceptual rather than an objective phenom-
enon, the concept of ‘discontinuities’ makes an important contribution in the discourse of
virtuality. Following from this, our position is that virtuality can be interpreted in terms

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1180 Human Relations 63(8)

of different discontinuities, and though these may be subjective in nature, they are impor-
tant as they exercise an influence on communications and interactions in a team setting.
An interpretation of virtuality in teams in terms of discontinuities makes implicit the
assumption of some level of pervasive communication technology creating a degree of
technology continuity (e.g. via the universally accessible telephone and email). This con-
tinuity of accessibility brings into sharper contrast previously imperceptible and blurred
boundaries stemming from differences in, for example, time-zone, culture and work prac-
tices, as well as the more explicit ones of geography and organizations. However, we also
need to be open to the potential of new discontinuities as new boundaries emerge. So, in
contrast to research approaches that by definition focus on specific virtual teams, our
approach highlights the need to question the assumption of the team as a well-bounded
entity and to also explore the dynamics of discontinuities in the broader context of teams.

Research site
This article draws on data collected from an interpretive case study set within a UK
government-funded organization. This organization was set up to conduct research into
a specific area of technology innovation and since it was described by the UK govern-
ment as a ‘virtual centre of excellence’ we will refer to it as ‘the VCE’.
The VCE was part of a programme created by a department of the UK government
(referred to as GOVDEP) in response to a wider, longer term initiative to improve its
exploitation of the broad-based research conducted within academic and commercial
organizations. This programme provided £5 million funding per year, for an initial three-
year period with an option to extend to six years, for the creation of four organizations
that would bring together diverse partners to collaborate on research and technology
development projects. The partnership nature of the programme was emphasized by the
requirement of participants to contribute in kind a value equivalent to the government’s
£5 million funding. Competitions were held to select primary commercial partners who
would establish and operate these organizations. In the case of the VCE, for the last of
the four in the programme, the competition ran from initial announcement in July 2003,
to the selection of the winning consortia bid in late 2004, and the final signing of con-
tracts in January 2005.
The strategy of the winning consortia was to create exploitable knowledge and tech-
nologies by developing a portfolio of research projects aligned within a broad overall
research direction and by both proactively developing formal linkages between projects,
as well as fostering informal collaboration among the projects themselves. The adopted
structure reflected this strategy. The portfolio of research activities were proposed by a
mix of consortium members, academic institutions and commercial organizations, and
were managed in six research teams. An Integration Team then had the task of develop-
ing an understanding of how and where linkages between the research projects could be
encouraged to develop, as well as creating an environment to foster collaboration in
which they could develop naturally.
Each of the seven key organizational members of the consortium that participated in
the bid led one of the seven teams, and the individuals leading each team were also mem-
bers of the VCE’s Management Team. A technical director, who was independent of the

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Dixon and Panteli 1181

organizations making up the consortium, led the Management Team and a programme
manager and administrative staff supported him. The management team, in turn, reported
to a Board, where a senior representative from each consortium members sat alongside
two representatives from GOVDEP.
The VCE was selected as a setting for this research for three primary reasons. First, it
provided the opportunity to examine virtuality in an inter-organizational context. Second,
it was structured in such a way as to offer us the potential for comparative analysis across
a number of teams within the single (VCE) context. Finally, since it was within a few
months of its inception, it presented a unique opportunity to capture evidence during its
formative stages, when growth and development might be expected to be at their peak.
As such, following a brief period during May 2005 when access was negotiated, the
process of data collection began in June 2005 and lasted until July 2006.

Research methods
In this case study, three primary types of data were collected: archive records, whose
sources ranged from formal documentation through to informal working documents,
operational data and email exchanges; direct observation of informal discussions and of
formal meetings, workshops and conferences; and interviews, which included both more
formal semi-structured interviews as well as informal unstructured discussions.
A key archive record was the bid document submitted by the winning consortium.
This represented the primary document that ostensibly defined the strategy, plans and
activities of the VCE at its outset. Similarly, many of the VCE’s primary outputs were
research reports that were also key archive records. Between these formal documents,
which represented start and end-points for the VCE, the activities were driven by face-
to-face and technology-mediated interaction and encapsulated in the form of a variety of
intermediate artifacts. These plans, working documents, management and other reports
formed a secondary, much larger and richer set of informal archive records.
As planned, the archive records that existed at the outset of the research, primarily
relating to the consortia’s bid to run the VCE, were used to create a pre-understanding of
the context and sensitize the strategy for data collection – identifying the structure of the
various teams, their objectives, tasks and roles. However, as the VCE began to develop,
whereas access was gained to directly observe a variety of formal and informal meetings
and workshops, the anticipated widespread adoption of the rich web-based collaboration
tool did not materialize. Instead, its use was limited to just a few aspects of the informal
archive records from some of the VCE teams, along with the storage, management and
dissemination of the more formal archive records such as the Operational Handbook;
Statements of Work; research deliverables; meeting minutes; and external material such
as the research task descriptions, operational policies and so forth. The pervasive and
easy to use nature of email meant that instead this continued to be the predominant form
of technology-mediated interaction. So, because of its peer-to-peer nature, from a data
collection perspective, its direct capture became significantly more problematic.
The constraints placed on data collection and analysis (the resources comprised a
single full-time researcher) coupled with the emergent nature of the VCE’s development,
in its widespread use of email, required a change to the planned data collection. While

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1182 Human Relations 63(8)

Table 1  Observations

Type Total number Number recorded Notes

Observations Board meeting  5  0 Quarterly

Management meeting 12 10 Monthly
Research workshops 10  8 Run by each team
Other workshops  7  4 Including links & gaps
Other meetingsa 10  8
Total 44 30
a
Other meetings includes, for example, a small meeting to discuss the use of the collaborative tool, an
informal review of a university’s activity, the whole of the management team planning the annual conference
and the building of demonstrators and the whole of the management team plus additional consortium
member experts discussing how best to develop the systems engineering aspect of the VCE’s work.

Table 2  Interviews

Type Total number Number recorded Notes

Interviews Board  9  7
Management team 16 10 6 interviewed twice
Integration team  6  6 2 interviewed twice
Researchers 33 32 2 interviewed twice
Othera  7  5
Total 71 60
a
Other interviewees included people such as the marketing lead who while contributing to the VCE
had no formal position in its structure and the technical lead of another of the organizations in the
same programme as the VCE who could provide insights into the wider nature of the programme.

the primary collection of data continued through observation at regular and/or formal
meetings (see Table 1), a set of interviews was scheduled (Table 2) in conjunction with
attempts to maximize access to email exchanges.
The extent of the observation and interview data was such that analysis was primarily
based on the written notes. Where possible recordings were made and so the written
notes were supplemented and validated by reference to these. This included the majority
of interviews and the Management Team meetings.
Unstructured, informal discussions have presented invaluable opportunities to sensi-
tize the ongoing data collection process and validate data collected elsewhere in other
formal or informal contexts. Often such discussions, while difficult to attribute, pre-
sented opportunities to probe specific issues and either validated or opened up lines of
evidence from observations and interviews. It was particularly in these contexts that
informal evidence of emerging shared understanding and tasks could be recognized and
more formal evidence sought. Each contributed a perspective of the case study and
enabled cross-referencing for validation purposes.
Semi-structured interviews focused on questions that realized data regarding rela-
tively general aspects of the study (Gillham, 2000), such as on the levels of collaboration
and interactions among VCE members, and provided both a primary source of data and

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Dixon and Panteli 1183

a means of triangulating with data gathered elsewhere. These semi-structured interviews

were also supported by unstructured discussions that enabled contextual data to be gath-
ered in a specific and rich fashion. The majority of such interviews were face-to-face,
with the Board, Management Team members and both commercial and academic
researchers. In addition, a number of other individuals were interviewed because of their
ability to provide an external perspective (Table 2).
Guided by the research aim and conceptual framework, we coded data according to
our theoretical framework. This represented an early stage in the generation of meaning,
‘grouping and then conceptualizing objects that have similar patterns or characteristics’
(Miles and Huberman, 1994: 249). Coding was used as a means of organizing the data
according to the key conceptual aspects of discontinuities, as well as to emerging threads
of evidence. Using Nvivo as the software tool meant that the coded data could be man-
aged and manipulated in support of the analytical process. Retrieval of data outside its
captured context, but contiguous with a meaningful concept, assisted in the identification
and interpretation of representative or discrepant data, supportive and contradictory data,
triangulation points and ideas and explanations (Gillham, 2000).
Following Yin (2003), the first step in analysing the coded data in this research was
pattern matching. The focus was on identifying findings that were consistent with our
theoretical foundations (e.g. discontinuities) and these drove the second step consisting of
the more specialized form of pattern matching, explanation building. This was the heart of
the synthesis part of the analysis process, where a number of key insights emerged (e.g.
continuities), leading to further contributions to understanding in the form of adaptations
and extensions of the definition of virtuality in teams. The third step involved an iterative
process using the multiple available sources of data to develop reliability and internal
validity. We readily acknowledge that by choosing to develop a number of concepts from
the literature with which to bound the research and make it manageable within the avail-
able resources, inevitably shaped the direction it took. This could be seen as limiting the
potential of factors outside this conceptual scope to emerge.

Findings
Based on the number and mix of public (e.g. academic and government) and private
(commercial) organizations within the VCE, it is evident that this setting gives rise to
an environment with a highly complex and inter-dependent set of boundaries and dis-
continuities. Using discontinuities to conceptualize virtuality in teams, our presentation
of findings starts by examining the discontinuities at the formation of the VCE. This is
then followed by an examination of the dynamics of these initial discontinuities during
the functioning of the VCE, as well as both discontinuities and continuities that emerged
through the period of the study. In what follows, we go on to discuss our interpretation
of these findings.

Pre-existing discontinuities
The creation of the VCE and the team structure within it gave rise to a number of teams
that contained individuals from several different organizations, who continued to work

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1184 Human Relations 63(8)

within, what was for them, their ‘home’ organizational environment. By its very nature,
therefore, the VCE encapsulated the types of boundaries on which discontinuities have
been identified as being based. Primary among these were the organizational boundaries.
These tended to be the determining factor in differences in location, work practices and
technology that, by affecting perceptions, gave rise to discontinuities:

. . . it is interesting seeing what goes on in other [Organizations]; the fact that they work very
differently . . . (Researcher [Commercial], interview)

Although distinct from one another, the participating organizations belonged to a number
of sectoral groups, that is, central government, academic and commercial, with recogniz-
able differences in characteristics. Discontinuities based on these sectoral differences
were identifiable in terms of work practices:

. . . academics are exploring problems for the sake of problems, whereas companies are explor-
ing them for the sake of profit . . . there were two types of presentation, one of the types seemed
to be very much from the academics – which was ‘we’ve looked at the problem and here is defi-
nitely the problem we’re trying to solve’. Whereas you’d see some of the other people who had
very much busted a gut to actually get some results and some tangible experiments completed.
(Researcher [Commercial], interview)

A number of the commercial organizations participating in the VCE were interna-

tional, however, the participating parts of these organizations, and the majority of
those that were not international, were based in the UK. Therefore, location played a
more limited role in creating discontinuities as compared with global teams in which
factors such as time-zone differences have an affect. Nevertheless, these organiza-
tional boundaries still meant that there was very limited collocation of the members
of any VCE team and this also still resulted in time-based discontinuities. Such effects
tended to be based on mismatches in cycles of activity (e.g. planning, budgeting or in
the case of academia, the academic year) and arose particularly, as will be discussed
further, as a result of the predominantly part-time nature of the members of the VCE
teams:

Dear All,

Within my meeting with [GOVDEP] . . . the topic of the dates for the second workshop, delayed
from the 9th May was covered . . .
   For the academic parties amongst you, I am not clear as to when ‘end of term’ activity takes
place and/or when you take the opportunity for I am sure a well deserved holiday so this time-
frame may be wholly inappropriate. Please, as with previous date requests can you let [Name]
know asap as to your availability . . .

Regards
Team Leader (email message)

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Dixon and Panteli 1185

Interestingly, however, even close proximity did not necessarily eliminate or mitigate the
effects of discontinuities – that is, the perceptions on which discontinuities are judged to
exist were evident even where individuals could be considered to be physically collo-
cated. For example, in a number of cases collocated individuals working on VCE tasks
within the same organization, either in the same building or on the same site, had had
little or no interaction with each other at the outset of the VCE. Intra-organizational
discontinuities based on departmental boundaries or functional or knowledge-based dif-
ferences, sometimes spanning multiple levels, represented pre-existing discontinuities
with VCE teams. In some cases these derived from the fundamentally different approaches
or work practices associated with different disciplines:

We don’t work with them right now because they are a different type of methodology people
and to assign [technology] to certain activities and how to optimize this, their view of optimiza-
tion . . . is rather pedantic in my view and the hard problems are very difficult to solve . . . (Team
researcher [Academic], interview)

In summary, organizational boundaries and differences in individual’s background and

expertise represented the key driving factors in the existence of the discontinuities within
the VCE at its outset. As such they gave rise to discontinuities in work priorities and
practices, geography and ultimately knowledge and understanding.

Emergent discontinuities
Although the functioning of the VCE had been defined in the bid document of the win-
ning consortium and embodied in contractual terms with GOVDEP, in operation there
were significant further levels of complexity. These stemmed, in part, from the number
and variety of organizations participating in the VCE, but also from other conditions and
factors that only became evident through the practice of individuals and teams interact-
ing on VCE tasks.
First, by its nature, the VCE structure and its associated commercial contracts with
research providers created discontinuities. One team leader commented in answer to ques-
tions regarding the lack of interaction of some researchers within the research teams that: ‘it
is not surprising, they’ve bid a piece of work and they’re focused on delivering it, everything
else is additional’. This was a key concern for the VCE in that while there were contracts that
contained elements of pre-defined interaction between different organizations on specific
tasks (e.g. member A working with member B on task X), the nature of the work meant that
there was considerable uncertainty as to how the tasks and interactions might develop:

There is considerable overlap between teams . . . you look at the definition of the boundary
between [Team A] and [Team B] and it is that [Team A] is concerned with [Research Area A]
and [Team B] is concerned with [Research Area B] but then you look at the research projects
that are funded in [Team A] and quite a few of them are about [Research Area B] . . . and [Team
Leader A] was along here today and he was asking about our work and its impact on his [Team].
(Researcher [Commercial], interview)

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1186 Human Relations 63(8)

Second, for both the consortium members and research providers, there was the need to
internally coordinate and integrate the work being undertaken on behalf of the VCE with
their other tasks and activities both internally as well as on other programmes with other
external partners. Continuing to participate in other teams within their own organization
on other tasks, not only were they multi-tasking, they were also multi-teaming with one
individual simultaneously being a member of multiple teams. It follows, as it was also
indicated in the previous section, that a key feature of almost all of the members involved
was that this represented just one part of their jobs:

I’m lead for about six or seven different projects . . . I’ve basically got three parts to my job,
there’s my project work and of course the amount of project work we have at any one time var-
ies . . . there’s business development which tends to be more demanding when there’s no project
work around but its ongoing . . . and then I have a kind of academic career if you like . . . I go
to international conferences and present papers and try to find time to right journal papers and
that gets squeezed a bit . . . unfortunately you can’t do all of those activities 100%. (Researcher
[Commercial], interview)

Multi-tasking, with potentially conflicting influences from a multi-teaming environ-

ment, was, therefore, a consequence of the complex discontinuities represented by the
level of virtuality in the VCE’s teams. This manifested itself in different ways that
depended largely on the extent to which the VCE was a core task, perhaps among two or
three others; a near-core task, with less demanding time requirements; or a peripheral
task, requiring intermittent or low-levels of activity, for example, mentoring or review-
ing. From a team’s perspective of multi-tasked team members, the question has often
been ‘are we team members or not?’. Thus, multi-tasking and multi-teaming emerge as
additional discontinuities.
Third, discontinuities emerged as VCE team members engaged in VCE tasks that
required them to work not only with other organizations, but also with other disciplines
and as such they were also multi-layered in nature (i.e. with discontinuities between
scientists, technologists, engineers, mathematicians, being recognized at one level and
then, in turn, at the another level, between different engineering disciplines, that is,
mechanical, electrical and systems engineers):

I guess I naturally get on better with Tom from [partner company X] because we’re both
mechanical backgrounds, therefore you don’t get into the techy stuff . . . the high maths stuff so
I think where everyone is very techy you perhaps might relate better to people who have similar
technical knowledge because you can talk at that level and avoid the ones who have very dif-
ferent technical knowledge because they don’t make sense very often. (Integration team mem-
ber, interview)

Finally, at the outset, the VCE planned to use an advanced distributed collaboration
technology to provide individuals from across all of the participating organizations
with effective tools with which to interact with one another, irrespective of geographi-
cal separation, However, despite this intent, a combination of administrative and tech-
nical difficulties restricted its accessibility and, therefore limited its adoption by the

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Dixon and Panteli 1187

participants in the VCE. For example, difficulties in terms of the tools performance
and compatibility with some organizations’ IT policies and technologies meant that the
richer features such as task management, discussion forums and web conferencing
went unused. A discontinuity emerged, as a result, between those using these tools and
those who were not.

. . . I’m tempted to say we’d just do email and attachment because its easier because it takes
time to go login [into the VCE collaborative tool] and find your away around it, and the skills
of using it are perishable so unless you’re doing it every day you’ll forget it’s a right pain, to go
do it. (Academic, interview)

The analysis in this section highlights discontinuities that emerged within the VCE
beyond those identified by Chudoba et al. (2005) as defining virtuality, including the role
played by the task, and team memberships which themselves created discontinuities ulti-
mately affecting interactions at the team and organizational levels. Importantly, such
discontinuities have not previously been discussed in terms of their dynamics in the vir-
tuality literature (Chudoba and Watson-Manheim, 2008; Chudoba et al., 2005).

The emergence of continuities

Drawing upon Chudoba and Watson-Manheim’s (2008) definition of discontinuities, as
perceptions (of differences) that create problems in interacting across a boundary, and
which hence decrease cohesion and increase the effort needed to accomplish a task, our
analysis revealed a number of boundaries and differences that, because of their percep-
tion at the outset of the VCE, were identified as discontinuities. In addition, through
activities during the operations of the VCE, the perception of existing differences
changed and new differences emerged. Because of the perception of these new differ-
ences some of them created new discontinuities. However, there was also evidence to
suggest that changing perceptions also led to the diminution of some discontinuities or
– from the opposite point of view – the emergence of continuities. This section outlines
evidence of the emergence of such continuities, which are defined here as the corollary
of discontinuities, that is, perceptions of reduced problems of interaction, and hence
increased cohesion, across a boundary.
To capitalize on existing expertise and ongoing research activities in academia and the
public and private sector the aim of the VCE programme as a whole was described in the
official handbook as to create: ‘formal collaborative arrangements between industry and
academic experts jointly funded by . . . [GOVDEP] and participants . . . intended to be
virtual centres of excellence in broad technology areas relevant to [GOVDEP].
To relocate individuals from their ‘home’ organization in order to collocate them in a
‘real’, as opposed to a ‘virtual’ centre of excellence would not only have been a costly
and highly impractical option, but it would have run counter to GOVDEP’s aim by
removing individuals from the very contexts and underpinning work on which the VCE,
and hence GOVDEP, were looking to build. Multi-tasking, and most importantly work-
ing in and drawing from multiple teams (multi-teaming) were therefore not only a given
but fundamental to the success of the VCE.

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Two distinct behaviours were observed within the VCE. On the one hand, a range of
activities and behaviours reflected a focus on ‘getting to grips’ with the formally defined
tasks, largely as defined in the agreed bid document that was the basis of their contracted
work and brought the VCE into being. By contrast, a range of other activities and behav-
iours were less focused on the tight definitions of the contracted task and more in engag-
ing with others to see how and where their efforts fit within the whole programme. These
more explorative activities and behaviours resulted in often informal adaptation and re-
definition of tasks which subtly reflected and refined the direction of the VCE as the
complexity and uncertainty inherent in such research tasks began to be addressed. For
example, as researchers developed their understanding of their research space, linkages
with other research activities in the VCE were identified and informal interactions then
resulted in a sharing of mutual interest, recognition of overlap or the emergence of new
tasks. In some cases, these involved a number of researchers and resulted in the emer-
gence of cohesion spanning VCE team boundaries:

. . . still have to figure out how to collaborate with everybody in each of the themes . . . we’ve
had a couple of sets of meetings where we’ve sort of figured out vaguely what everyone’s doing
. . . and we’ve all recognized, and the thing I’ve been shouting for is let’s get some joint dem-
onstrations set up because that’s the thing that focuses everybody’s mind because until you start
having to plug stuff together you’re not really going to establish a common language set of
interfaces . . . collaboration . . . to have a collaboration you need to have a common purpose.
(Academic, interview)

Further, the boundaries of the VCE, though they contributed to discontinuities as found
earlier, themselves gave rise to the development of continuities. One example of this
stemmed from the lack of formal provision made within the VCE consortium’s bid for
the widespread marketing-type communication of the VCE’s activities and successes
either to GOVDEP or the wider market as a whole. As a result, through engagement
between marketing departments within each of the participating organizations, a team
emerged that, while acting on behalf of the VCE and its participants, did not formally
exist within the defined VCE structure. This marketing-type team, which became a sub-
set of the Management Team, developed knowledge and integrated working practices
relating to the dissemination of VCE communications. It also went a step further with the
decision to hold a joint annual conference with another previously established virtual
centre of excellence created as part of the same GOVDEP programme. This drew on, and
shared resources with, the other virtual centre of excellence and had the benefit of shar-
ing costs and resources, but also meant being able to draw on the other centre’s experi-
ence of having run such a conference before.
It follows from this example that, as an inter-organizational entity, the VCE and the
teams it created within it cut across existing teams within its member organizations.
Individuals, far from being members of pure face-to-face or traditional teams, found
themselves not only to be members of one or more teams within their employer organiza-
tion, but in some cases also members of one or more teams within the VCE. To support
this multi-teaming, they used communication technology to enable them to switch rap-
idly from face-to-face interactions with one team, to technology-mediated interactions

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Dixon and Panteli 1189

with others – whether this was simply in an office environment or, as it was frequently
observed by the researchers using email and telephone, in coffee breaks and even during
face-to-face meetings, presentations and discussions. This multi-teaming can, in addition
to affecting the team membership boundary at a given time, also affect the temporal
scope of the team. Hence, whether the team has either numerous shared experiences or
anticipates an extended future, this would affect the nature of its interactions and the
effectiveness of its use of technology-mediated-communications (Alge et al., 2003). This
is also relevant not just to the team as a whole but also to the joining and leaving of indi-
viduals while the team is underway (Gruenfeld et al., 1996, 2000). The many activities
and developments that preceded the official start of the VCE, with contributions from
some who went on to participate in the VCE and others who did not, provide evidence
for such temporal scope. Less vague was the VCE’s future in that while the GOVDEP
initially provided funding for three years with the option to extend this to six, there was
a consensus among all of the stakeholders that a desirable outcome would be one form of
sustainable organization beyond that time.
We now go on to discuss our findings and in particular the evidence of emerging con-
tinuities through interactions, emergent tasks, multi-tasking and multi-teaming.

Discussion
This research proposed a shift away from the use of the virtual team concept to the con-
cept of virtuality in teams and in doing so explored the dynamic nature of the disconti-
nuities that have, to date, defined the emergence of virtuality. We have argued that this
provides a more viable perspective for exploring and understanding the effects of com-
bining technology-mediated and face-to-face interactions. This is in contrast to their
treatment as substitutes in the ‘pure’ forms of virtual teams, in which members never
meet face-to-face, or ‘pure’ forms of traditional teams that only have face-to-face inter-
actions (Griffith et al., 2003). Therefore, most teams use technology-mediated-commu-
nications in conjunction with face-to-face communications rather than as substitutes. In
this section, we discuss the findings in terms of their implications for the concept of
virtuality in teams. In particular, we develop the case for virtual continuities and argue
that defining virtuality in teams based on continuities represents a more useful approach
than that provided by a definition based on discontinuities.

From virtual teams to virtuality in teams

The VCE provides evidence to support the view of teams as ‘hybrid’ forms that use
face-to-face and technology-mediated interactions in conjunction with one another.
Individuals recognized as members of teams within the VCE were, almost without
exception, simultaneously members of other teams; some within their employer’s orga-
nizations, but also often within other inter-organizational teams as well. To support their
multi-tasking and multi-teaming, individuals used communication technologies, as
shown in the previous section.
Conceptualizing VCE teams as virtual teams with members working entirely remotely
from one another, would be to ignore the significance of the face-to-face interactions,

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1190 Human Relations 63(8)

that enabled the development of processes, relationships and shared understandings.

Equally, conceptualizing them as traditional teams with well-defined boundaries would
be to ignore both the resource limitations and dependencies created by the part-time
contributions of their members, as well as the value of their contributions based on
knowledge and skills simultaneously being acquired while undertaking other tasks and
participating in multiple teams.
Technology-mediated interactions provided VCE team members with the means to
sustain and develop relationships and processes alongside similar interactions on other
tasks and with other teams when face-to-face interactions were not possible. In principle,
although the members of the VCE teams were clearly defined and documented at a con-
ceptual level, in reality, their contributions could not be compared with those of members
of traditional teams. This was not least because, in substantial part, their contribution was
expected to include knowledge and skills being developed concurrently through associ-
ated activities that often included membership in other teams.
While the concept of the ‘virtual team’ enables researchers to explore the effects of
technology-mediated interactions, by comparing and contrasting them to the effects of
face-to-face interactions, adopting the concept of virtuality as a team characteristic has
enabled us to examine the effects of face-to-face interaction being used in conjunction
with technology-mediated interaction, and to be more representative of the increasingly
hybrid nature of interaction in teams in general.

From discontinuities to virtual continuities

Choosing virtuality in teams over virtual teams as a conceptual approach, we adopted
a definition of it based on discontinuities. In turn, our use of the concept of disconti-
nuity was as a construct that reflects the perception of problems of interaction across
a boundary that results in an increase in the effort needed to accomplish a task
(Chudoba and Watson-Manheim, 2008). Recognizing that discontinuities are unlikely
to remain constant over the life of a team, this article explored their dynamics in a
case study context. The findings revealed a number of new aspects to discontinuities
and hence the nature of virtuality in teams. Here we discuss discontinuities, the
boundaries and differences that give rise to them and the developments that mitigate
their effects. Finally, based on this discussion, we expand our conceptualization of
virtuality in teams. In this we argue, as our key contribution, that virtuality in teams
is more aptly and usefully defined by the use of face-to-face and technology-medi-
ated-communications addressing discontinuities by mitigating the effects of the
boundaries that give rise to them.
The study found a number of discontinuities of the type characterized as defining
virtuality in the model of discontinuities proposed by Chudoba et al. (2005). Among
those identified in the literature the most prominent in our study were the discontinui-
ties that stemmed from organizational boundaries – given that the VCE was an inter-
organizational entity. Pre-existing discontinuities attributable to organizational
boundaries were evident with members of VCE teams tending to be geographically
dispersed, using different work practices and having access to different technologies
from each other primarily as a result of belonging to different organizations. Other

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Dixon and Panteli 1191

discontinuities identified by Chudoba et al. (2005), such as those associated with

national culture and time-zone, were not evident. This was the result of the VCE
largely comprising UK-based organizations. Moreover, the VCE also provided evi-
dence of discontinuities stemming from different sectors (commercial, public and aca-
demic). In this case, the differences were in attitudes and behaviours as well as the
temporal nature of work as dictated by resourcing and budgeting cycles as, for exam-
ple, driven by the academic year.
Further, discontinuities emerged within the VCE sometimes based on pre-existing
differences or boundaries and in others as differences or boundaries themselves emerged.
So, whereas the effects of boundaries between functions within an organization or
between academic departments within universities, often only became apparent over
time, it was the differences themselves, for example, in research targets, approaches,
tools, techniques and technologies, that emerged over time within the VCE. The discon-
tinuities associated with the development of different approaches within and between
teams were most apparent when there were attempts to align or more tightly ‘couple’
their activities (for example, attempts by the VCE to apply the research outputs for com-
parative or collaborative purposes). This brought such discontinuities into clear focus.
The implication for this is on the nature of team membership boundaries as discontinui-
ties and it is argued here that because of their central role in teams, they represent a
unique form of discontinuity that was not previously examined in the literature.
Less evident than the effects where teams were tightly coupled through sharing com-
mon aims were the effects where teams were loosely coupled through the sharing of
common resources. The effects of similar differences in work practices between VCE
teams and other teams within the participating organizations were more embedded at the
individual level. In situations such as this, even though teams are not explicitly collabo-
rating, the differences between them create a discontinuity for the individual, that is, the
fewer the differences in working practices between the teams to which he or she was a
member, the less effort would be required from the individual for either team. Using a
common form of technology-mediated communication such as email across teams would
reduce the effort required to switch between interacting with different teams. However,
if a particular form of technology-mediated communication was adopted for each team,
then just as with the adoption of different work practices, there is more effort for the
individual to switch between different practices and tools in each team. While this extra
effort is representative of a discontinuity, the skills, knowledge and experience that are
acquired have the potential to reduce the effort in one or all teams, not least the effort
required to transfer, translate or transform knowledge across team boundaries (Carlile,
2004), particularly if subsequently two or more teams begin to collaborate or simply
become more closely aligned in their aims.
In such situations of multi-teaming, there were further mitigating effects on discontinuities
that were evident within the VCE. This was, for example, owing to the often temporal-type
boundaries that emerged as team members departed and new team members arrived. Thus,
multi-teaming, formal or informal, supported by technology-mediated communication,
provides the means for departing members to remain ‘in touch’ with activities and accessible,
while new members can ‘tap in’ to communications and become acquainted with activities
before formally joining.

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1192 Human Relations 63(8)

Our findings on multi-teaming provide an additional dynamic in our conceptualization

of virtuality. By affecting the perception of the membership and temporal boundaries of
teams, the effective multi-teaming of individuals was central to the VCE’s success. Thus,
the VCE featured teams of non-collocated individuals who were in most cases simultane-
ously also participating in other teams which might either be made up of collocated or
non-collocated individuals. Multi-teaming, therefore, adds a degree of increased effi-
ciency as it introduces resourcing flexibility that enables teams to achieve robust perfor-
mance in dynamic environments. Equally, of course, it introduces resource dependencies
which can also distort the view of performance of teams separated from their context. For
example, in a study of a virtual team, Panteli (2004) found that all team members inhab-
ited overlapping virtual and non-virtual worlds, potentially affecting their presence in the
project. All members were working from their own homes, sharing their virtual work-
space with their private (e.g. family and social) commitments, and all were involved in at
least one other virtual task or team project. In such cases, because members participate in
various mediated environments they may not be able to respond immediately to others; so
even though for their co-workers one task is immediate, for themselves this may not be
the case. It follows that consideration should be given in studies on virtuality to the nature
of task and team membership as additional, more fundamental discontinuities within
which multi-teaming also plays an important part as a continuity.
The findings from the case study, therefore, show that using a combination of face-to-
face and technology-mediated interaction mitigates the effects of pre-existing discontinui-
ties within a team, as team members develop shared approaches to communication
choices, interaction models, understanding of activities and work practices. Where it is a
given that team members are also multi-teaming, it would appear that the key factor is the
relative benefits of participation in each team (for the individual and the team) compared
with the effort required to switch between them. While discontinuities can exist at the
outset of a team or form as they develop by reducing the team’s cohesion and increasing
the effort required to accomplish tasks, evidence from the VCE case study highlights that
these are not static or irreversible for the life of the team. As tasks are refined, plans devel-
oped and then redefined and redeveloped in light of new evidence during execution, so the
nature of differences and the discontinuities that can emerge from them can also change.
What the evidence points to is that the combined use of face-to-face and technology-
mediated interactions can develop in such a way as to reduce the effort referred to by
Chudoba and Watson-Manheim (2008) to achieve a given purpose.
In the context of the VCE then, interpreting the question of effort from the individu-
al’s perspective, the use of technology-mediated communication reduced the effort to
switch between multiple tasks, often contributing to multiple teams. No matter that from
any one team’s perspective the effort of such switching might be more than if the task
could be completed with less total effort over a shorter period if the appropriate dedi-
cated resources were available – for inter-organizational teams such as the VCE this is
either not a viable alternative or the effect on other tasks and teams reliant on the same
resource would outweigh the benefits of dedicating the resource to one team.
Multi-tasking and multi-teaming also have important effects on temporal boundaries
by affecting perceptions of them, enabling interaction either side of start/end or joining/
leaving boundaries. In the VCE, this extended to instances in which individuals who

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Dixon and Panteli 1193

completed a task and formally left the VCE, later returned to undertake further tasks hav-
ing remained informally ‘in touch’ – primarily, but not exclusively, using technology-
mediated communications. Existing research suggests that where such separation takes
place new knowledge brought back into the team is either less valued (Gruenfelf et al.,
2000) or difficult to ‘reconnect’ (Brown and Duguid, 2000). However, technology-medi-
ated interaction provides the means by which relationships, shared knowledge and
understanding can be maintained in periods during which individuals might formally be
working within a team (Carlson and Zmud, 1999; Yoo and Alavi, 2001). Hence one
aspect of this is continued member familiarity, which as a form of ‘social entrainment’
(McGrath, 1991) could also provide a basis for ‘continuity of practice’ (Brown and
Duguid, 2000; Levina and Vaast, 2005). Thus, when ex-team members maintain relation-
ships with current team members this may represent continuity of practice in the form of
a virtual community of practice (Wenger, 1998).
Shields (2006) points out that boundaries are best understood through their effects
while Chudoba et al. (2005) have defined discontinuities according to the perception of
problems in interaction across a boundary whose effect is to require more effort to
accomplish tasks. By contrast, the findings from the VCE case study show that in com-
parison with alternatives (which do not include collocated or dedicated resources), com-
bining face-to-face and technology-mediated interactions to enable individuals to
multi-task and multi-team reduces the effect of discontinuities and hence that of the
underlying boundaries. For this reason, we choose to use the dictionary definition of
‘virtual’ to denote the nature of these continuities as being continuities ‘in effect, but not
in fact’ – that is, the boundaries still exist, but the effects that were attributable to an
associated discontinuity have been mitigated. Importantly, however, we emphasize that
virtual continuities are underpinned by combining face-to-face and technology-mediated
interactions rather than by technology-mediated interactions alone.
The extent to which a team needs to develop virtual continuities will, of course,
depend on the extent to which it encapsulates discontinuities. In the case of the VCE, all
of the teams had a membership that spanned a number of organizations as well as the
commercial, academic and public sectors. A different structure could have been chosen
in which teams undertaking different types of task, but from within the same organiza-
tion, could have been put together as teams. This would have given rise to fewer discon-
tinuities based on organizational boundaries within each VCE team, but arguably more
discontinuities related to differences in skills, experience and knowledge of the manage-
ment and research being undertaken – as well as, perhaps, much more discontinuities at
the team boundaries given their alignment with each organization’s boundary.
The extent to which discontinuities affect the efforts of teams to achieve their purpose
or individuals to contribute to a number of tasks within or across teams does not recog-
nize the extent to which face-to-face and technology-mediated interactions have been
effective, but rather the theoretical scale of the challenge a team faces in building cohe-
sive teamwork to efficiently accomplish tasks. For this reason, we argue that by defining
the characteristic of virtuality in teams based on virtual continuities reflects a team’s use
of face-to-face and technology-mediated interaction to develop teamwork, rather than, as
at present, reflecting the scale of the challenge posed by discontinuities. As such, it can
be further argued that because teams are now predominantly hybrid in nature, using both

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1194 Human Relations 63(8)

face-to-face and technology-mediated-communication, developing virtual continuities is

already an important aspect of developing teamwork.

Conclusions
In this article, we have adopted a recently emerging perspective that shifts away from
studying virtual teams through comparison with traditional, collocated teams. Although
the term virtuality is not new, its development as a concept that underpins a team charac-
teristic is relatively recent. The research reported here demonstrates support for this con-
cept and goes on to develop it further. By shifting away from the concept of the virtual
team, and its underpinning perspective of technology-mediated interactions substituting
for face-to-face interactions, we are able to adopt the definition of virtuality in teams in
which we can consider the effects of technology-mediated interactions working in con-
junction with face-to-face interactions. This definition is based on discontinuities in
teams where a discontinuity is a construct that reflects the perception of problems of
interaction across a boundary (Chudoba and Watson-Manheim, 2008).
Framing data gathering from our case study in terms of discontinuities, we have iden-
tified boundaries and resulting discontinuities at the outset and then explored their
dynamics as the teams within the case study developed. Our study contributes to the
development of the concept of ‘virtual continuities’ that describes the continuities that
emerged within the team as face-to-face and technology-mediated interactions worked in
conjunction with one another to mitigate the perceived effects of boundaries. This
extends beyond the concept of ‘bridging boundaries of space and time’ identified and
widely cited in virtual team research (Lipnack and Stamps, 1997) to the socio-cognitive
bridging of the perceived effects of boundaries created by, for example, differences in
knowledge, work practice, etc. Hence, whereas discontinuities represent the perception
of problems of interaction across a boundary, virtual continuities are a construct in which
such interactions are no longer problematic because they are part of a history and ongo-
ing context interactions that are sustained using both face-to-face and technology-medi-
ated communication. In this way, the term ‘virtual’ is used to describe the resulting
continuities to reflect both the technology-mediated aspect of the interactions underpin-
ning them and hence by the dictionary definition of virtual, they are continuities ‘in
effect, but not in fact’.
Overall, building on the construct of virtual continuities in the context of the VCE, we
are able to expand the concept of virtuality in teams to include virtual continuities and
their mitigating effects on discontinuities that pre-exist teams as well as those that can
develop as a result of a team’s own task, membership and temporal boundaries. This re-
conceptualization of virtuality in teams is central to the research aim of this study into the
dynamics of discontinuities in teams and contributes to the field as the basis for further
developments and future research. In particular, there is scope to examine the character-
istics of the underlying concept of virtual continuities, by which virtuality is defined,
drawing on and developing it in conjunction with the extensive literature on boundary-
spanning and the more emergent concept of multi-teaming (both multiple teams working
towards a single goal as well as one individual working in multiple teams). We argue that
this re-conceptualization captures the increasingly important effects of virtuality that

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Dixon and Panteli 1195

would otherwise fall outside the narrow confines of more tight team-bounded perspec-
tives. This is particularly important to the increasingly prevalent activity of inter-team
working that stems from both increasing scale and specialization in many organizations
and that is reflected in the extent to which individuals perform multi-tasking and multi-
teaming using technology-mediated communications.
Linked to the above, it is also important to recognize the limitations of the study. In
particular, the research setting, which was in part selected for the possibilities it pre-
sented for generalizability, could be argued to be imposing limits in this regard. The
study presented here is a complex, multi-party, inter-organizational setting and its char-
acteristics and dynamics may not be consistent with all types of virtual work arrange-
ments. Nevertheless, with the ongoing increase in inter-organizational alliances and new,
related forms such as virtual organizations, this is likely to make the research more
widely relevant with time.

Funding acknowledgement
The financial support of the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council and the
Innovative Manufacturing Research Centre is gratefully acknowledged.

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Keith Dixon is an Associate of the Centre for Information Management at the University of Bath
where he gained his doctorate studying the affects of communication technology on the develop-
ment of teams. His research interests have continued in this field, specifically using intellectual
capital as a lens for studying teamwork and the effects of boundaries. He has presented his work at
conferences in Boston, Toronto and Hawaii as well as being published in a recent book Exploring
Virtuality Within and Beyond Organizations: Social, Global and Local Dimensions (Palgrave,
2008). [Email: k.r.dixon@bath.ac.uk]

Niki Panteli is a Senior Lecturer in Information Systems and Director for the Centre for Information
Management, University of Bath School of Management. She has done extensive research in the
field of virtuality, virtual teams and computer-mediated-communication systems. Within this field,
she has studied issues of trust, identity, conflict and collaborations in virtual, geographically dis-
persed environments. She has served as the Chair of the IFIP – International Federation of
Information Processing – W.G. 9.5 on Virtuality & Society (2006–2009) and organized interna-
tional workshops and conferences on this topic. Her research has appeared in numerous manage-
ment and information systems journals such as Communications of the ACM, Decision Support
Systems, Information and Management and IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication,
among others. She is the co-editor of Exploring the Nature of Virtuality (Palgrave, 2008) and editor
of Virtual Social Networks (Palgrave, 2009). [Email: n.panteli@bath.ac.uk]

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