Team Virtuality and Innovation: A Meta-Analysis of the Moderating Role of Team Design

Abstract

Organizations are dependent on the generation and implementation of new ideas to creatively solve the world's problems with innovative solutions. Simultaneously, organizations are increasingly facing heightened team virtuality, which describes the collaboration of geographically dispersed team members using electronic communication. In this context, prior research highlights both positive and negative consequences of team virtuality but has not come to a consensus on how it affects team innovation. Therefore, this meta-analysis synthesizes 167 effect sizes from 132 independent samples comprising a total of 7004 teams to obtain in-depth insights into the impact of team virtuality on team innovation. Considering the overall assessment of the relationship between team virtuality and team innovation, no significant effect could be revealed. By identifying potential moderators derived from the premises of the team effectiveness model, our results indicate that the relationship between team virtuality and team innovation varies with team composition, task design, and team context. As revealed through meta-analytic regression, the influence between team virtuality and team innovation is significantly moderated by task design (i.e., divergent vs. convergent) and the type of technology utilized by the teams (i.e., text-based vs. audio-based vs. video-based communication).