Motivating Online Teams: An Investigation on Task Significance, Coordination and Incentive Mechanisms

摘要

Abstract Online teams can help to increase organizational effectiveness, due to their flexibility and facility to gather resources originally dispersed. In order to gather team participation, we need to address team motivation. Belief in task significance has positive effects on moving members to participate. Coordination is a central to a successful collaboration, since it guides members' participation. Incentive mechanisms can be used to foster online participation. We then conducted an experiment to analyze the effects on motivation of task significance, quality of team coordination, and usage of incentive mechanisms. We confirm that the three aspects influence motivation positively. We discuss characteristics that make them contribute to or interfere on online motivation. We also investigate the interplay among the aspects that can increase or reduce the aspects' effect.