Influence of Digital Communication Configuration in Virtual Teams: A Faultline Perspective

The recent and swift move to virtual working has highlighted a need for greater understanding of how to best communicate remotely for work, how well team members are able to identify the correct communication mediums for their tasks and how team members align on how to complete these tasks. Drawing on Media Synchronicity Theory (MST), we examine communication-based subgroup dynamics in terms of faultline strength-the degree to which a team is hypothetically divided by lines of communication media they use-and subgroup imbalance regarding the influence of communication-based subgroup dynamics on virtual team sociability, and subsequently, team coordination. Results from a field study (Study 1) with 292 team members belonging to 37 virtual teams, and an experiment (Study 2) with 385 participants provided support for the hypotheses. Our findings contribute to existing theory by underscoring the idea that it is not simply virtuality, but the misalignment of the use of communication mediums among team members that plays a key role in the development of communication challenges in virtual teams. The study takes a novel approach by addressing how faultline strength within virtual teams that can cause communication challenges. Consequently, organizations are encouraged to pay attention to guidelines of the use of virtual communication tools and team composition to enhance communication and collaboration within virtual teams.