A. The Skills Team Experience
First, the Skills Team has been effective in maintaining an
environment that is highly collaborative with strong
relationships. Indeed, a question in the survey that specifically
asked if the members would be willing to embark upon another
virtual team project in the future resulted in a strong positive
response. As well, the interviews were flowing with positive
accounts of the Skills Team, but team members were hardpressed
to identify negative aspects or challenges associated
with the virtual experience. Often the negative aspect were
quickly dismissed by the member as relatively innocuous or a
small by-product of what they found to be outweighed by the
benefits experienced for being part of the Skills Team.
There was a positive relationship (refer to figure 1) found in
individuals that typically find a high degree of satisfaction in
working cooperatively with others and their willingness to
participate again in a virtual team (r =.643 and p ≤ .050). There
was also a significant correlation between members that
reported a high quality of relationships with each other and the
cohesiveness of the team (r =.378 and p < .100). Also found in
the results was that individuals more interested in another
virtual team experience also experienced a highly cohesive
team environment (r =.580 and p ≤ .050) and felt capable of
performing required team activities (r =.432 and p ≤ .050).
While the above results present a positive outcome for the team
dynamics it is limited to the predisposition of members within
the team that have a preference to work cooperatively with
others. So, are there indicators of effectiveness that can be
introduced by actions undertaken within the organization? The
next two conclusions provide answers to this question.