Are Virtual Teams More Just? An Investigation of How Reducing Social Categorization Can Increase Female Participation in Male-Dominated Teams.

摘要

Organizations use work teams to solve complex problems in innovative ways.As such, an abundance of diverse ideas, suggestions, and information should helporganizations generate quality products and remain competitive. Yet, there is researchwhich shows that women do not participate as much as men in face-to-face teaminteractions. Women often get fewer speaking turns than men, they speak for shorterlengths of time, and they are interrupted more often than men. As a result, women?sideas may often be overlooked in work settings. This is problematic, because womenmake up 46 percent of the United States workforce, and not being active participants inmeetings could results in underutilization of roughly half of the firm?s human capital.This study investigated whether the order of face-to-face and virtualcommunication used by virtual teams could be used as one means of increasing inclusionand participation of women in male-dominated teams. Results from 82 teams confirmedthat women felt more included in the team when they communicated virtually first andthen face-to-face as opposed to face-to-face first and then virtually. Findings supporteda four-stage model where the medium of communication influences feelings of inclusionwhich influences participation (both self-reported and objective). Participation, in turn, influences perceptions of interpersonal justice, satisfaction with the team, and ratingsreceived from team members. An objective measure of participation and teamperformance ratings from five independent raters also show that the more equally teammembers participate and the higher the team?s total communication volume, in both totalspeaking turns and words spoken, the higher the team?s ratings and the more creative theteam?s output was judged to be.