Productive engagement in virtual teams: How team relational climates shape virtual team performance over time

IF 7.6 2区管理学 Q1 BUSINESS

European Management Journal Pub Date : 2026-06-01 Epub Date: 2025-04-16 DOI:10.1016/j.emj.2025.04.004

Kai F. Uhlemann , Andranik Tumasjan , Maria Strobel , M. Audrey Korsgaard , Arnold Picot , Isabell M. Welpe

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引用次数: 0

Abstract

One of the challenges in virtual teams is the struggle to build and maintain effective interpersonal relationships in the context of communication constraints and physical separation. Addressing this challenge, this study examines the influence of four team relational climates – communal sharing, authority ranking, equality matching, and market pricing – on the virtual team performance growth over time. While theory and empirical evidence suggest that relational climates influence outcomes at the organizational level and individual prosocial behaviors, there is a lack of research on how relational climates at the team level affect team performance. Based on longitudinal multilevel analyses of a six-country sample of 291 virtual teams engaged in an online strategy game, we find that communal sharing and authority ranking team relational climates positively influence team performance growth over time. We advance the literature by investigating how team relational climates differentially affect virtual team performance over time. Our findings suggest that organizations should consider designing virtual team tasks, cultures, and authority structures to support the emergence of communal sharing and authority ranking team relational climates.

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虚拟团队中的生产性参与：团队关系气候如何随着时间的推移塑造虚拟团队的绩效

虚拟团队面临的挑战之一是在通信限制和物理分离的背景下努力建立和维持有效的人际关系。针对这一挑战，本研究考察了四种团队关系气候——公共共享、权威排名、平等匹配和市场定价——对虚拟团队绩效增长的影响。虽然理论和经验证据表明关系气候影响组织层面的结果和个体亲社会行为，但缺乏关于团队层面的关系气候如何影响团队绩效的研究。基于对六个国家291个参与网络策略游戏的虚拟团队样本的纵向多层次分析，我们发现，随着时间的推移，公共分享和权威排名团队关系气候对团队绩效增长有积极影响。我们通过研究团队关系气候如何随时间不同地影响虚拟团队绩效来推进文献。我们的研究结果表明，组织应该考虑设计虚拟团队任务、文化和权力结构，以支持公共共享和权力排序团队关系气候的出现。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

European Management Journal Multiple-

CiteScore

12.90

自引率

5.30%

发文量

113

审稿时长

74 days

期刊介绍： The European Management Journal (EMJ) stands as a premier scholarly publication, disseminating cutting-edge research spanning all realms of management. EMJ articles challenge conventional wisdom through rigorously informed empirical and theoretical inquiries, offering fresh insights and innovative perspectives on key management themes while remaining accessible and engaging for a wide readership. EMJ articles embody intellectual curiosity and embrace diverse methodological approaches, yielding contributions that significantly influence both management theory and practice. We actively seek interdisciplinary research that integrates distinct research traditions to illuminate contemporary challenges within the expansive domain of European business and management. We strongly encourage cross-cultural investigations addressing the unique challenges faced by European management scholarship and practice in navigating global issues and contexts.