DETERMINANTS OF MUTUAL KNOWLEDGE ON VIRTUAL TEAMS WITH RECOMMENDATIONS TO VIRTUAL ENVIRONMENT DESIGNERS

摘要

This research explores the question: what physical or virtual environment constructs influence the attribution accuracy of silence among virtual team members? This research studied virtual teams using an Internet based software tool to collaborate. Half of the teams were given contextual information relating to their team members and the other half were not given these cues. It was found that team members who were given the contextual cues made more accurate attributions as to the meanings of silence than the teams using the software without the cues. With these findings we recommend design criteria for groupware tools. "Silence is to speech as the white of this paper is to print" (Bruneau, 1973).