Project duration: January 2018 – December 2018
Funding: Deutscher akademischer Austauschdienst in Kooperation mit dem Center for Transformative Work Design, Perth, Australien
This research project examines the growing prevalence of virtual teams in modern, technology-driven work environments. Thanks to digital information and communication technologies, teams today often collaborate across geographical or organizational distances while still working on shared, interdependent tasks. In this context, the project investigates how virtual collaboration and work design are interrelated and what effects they have on team processes and individual work outcomes. In doing so, it examines two previously separate research areas: on the one hand, the focus on the individual level (e.g., workplace characteristics) and, on the other hand, the focus on the team-/group-centered perspective of autonomous (virtual) workgroups as well as socio-technical systems theory. The goal is to develop a better understanding of how working conditions in virtual teams can be designed so that both employees and organizations benefit from modern forms of collaboration in the long term.