Personality and cognitive style as predictors of preference for working in virtual teams
Highlights
► Look at user preferences for working in virtual teams (VTs). ► Develop and psychometrically validate new measure of preference for working in VTs. ► Investigate impact of user personality and cognitive style on this new construct. ► Personality predicts VT preference over working in face-to-face groups. ► Cognitive style predicts VT preference over working alone.
Introduction
A virtual team is defined as a group of people with unique skills who work interdependently but are separated geographically which necessitates their interacting using technology (Lipnack & Stamps, 2000). Thus, virtual teams allow members to accomplish specific tasks while transcending traditional restrictions of time and proximity (Montoya et al., 2011, Townsend et al., 1998). Consequently, virtual teams differ from face-to-face teams in that members are physically separated from one another and they rely on technological devices for communication and information exchange (D’Souza and Colarelli, 2010). Virtual teams have become commonplace in large organizations, with one study reporting that 50% of all companies with more than 5000 employees incorporate virtual teams as vehicles for conducting work (Martins, Gilson, & Maynard, 2004). Various issues related to virtual teams have been investigated including effectiveness (Furst et al., 1999, Maznevski and Chudoba, 2000), trust (Jarvenpaa et al., 1998, Sarker et al., 2003), and adaptation (Majchrzak, Rice, Malhotra, King, & Ba, 2000).
Recent research has begun to examine issues surrounding the selection of virtual team members. A study by D’Souza and Colarelli (2010) found that the skills one brings to a team are a more important selection criteria for virtual team membership than for face-to-face team membership, but that personal characteristics (attractiveness, race, gender, and attitudinal similarity) are more important criteria for selecting face-to-face teams members, as self-reported by team members. What remain unexplored are the factors that predict why someone would want to be a member of a virtual team. The purpose of this study is to fill this gap in the literature on virtual teams.
The two major differences between virtual and face-to-face teams offer insight into this question. Traditional explanations for why people would want to work in a team focus around personal characteristics. Simply put, we prefer working with those who are physically attractive (Patzer, 2006) and/or who are similar to ourselves in terms of race (Wade & Okesola, 2002), gender (Colarelli, Spranger, & Hechanova, 2006) and attitudes (Byrne, 1971). However, since virtual teams do not meet face-to-face, we must look elsewhere for predictors of virtual team preference. The fact that virtual teams rely on computer mediated communication suggests that how one feels about using technology to communicate may play a role in virtual team preference.
Early research on information systems identified personal factors as important determinants of successful IS implementation and adoption (Lucas, 1981). These personal factors were of a dispositional nature and included personality and decision (cognitive) style. Research has looked at the effects of personality (Landers and Lounsbury, 2006, Zmud, 1979) and cognitive style (see Huber (1983) and Robey (1983), for a debate on the role of cognitive style.) as well as on their comparative effects (McElroy, Hendrickson, Townsend, & DeMarie, 2007) on one form of computer mediated communication, Internet use. We build off of this literature by examining the respective roles played by personality and cognitive style as determinants of preference for working in virtual teams.
Personality and cognitive style have already been shown to be important predictors of team member attitudes within the virtual team environment. For example, personality traits have been argued to affect individual trust among team members and willingness to collaborate in virtual teams (Brown, Poole, & Rodgers, 2004) as well as readiness to adopt collaboration technology (Vreede, Vreede, Ashley, & Reiter-Palmon, 2012). Moreover, cognitive style has also been argued to be a significant predictor of the effectiveness of computer-mediated knowledge sharing among team members (Taylor, 2004).
One avenue which has not yet been explored is the connection between personality and cognitive style, and the relative contribution of both factors towards preference for participating in virtual teams. Our purpose is not to delineate how specific components of personality or cognitive style influence virtual team preference, but rather the collective role played by each of these dispositional factors. Understanding individual preferences for participating in virtual teams is important in that by preemptively selecting or assigning those individuals who prefer working in such teams organizations can minimize resistance and other problems that may occur after virtual team implementation.
Section snippets
Personality
Personality is a stable pattern of psychological processes, characteristics, and tendencies arising from motives, feelings, and cognitions which can be used to determine individual commonalities and differences in thoughts, feelings and actions (Maddi, 1989, Mayer, 2005). One way in which personality has been described is in terms of traits. These traits serve as measures of individual dispositions as well as comparative mechanisms of individual differences (Allport, 1966). Various instruments
Data collection
Participants for this research included 153 business students from a variety of majors. Students received a packet containing the questionnaire and were offered a small amount of extra credit for the completion of the survey. Students were asked to complete the questionnaire on their own time outside of class and return it the next week. Those electing not to participate were simply asked to return the questionnaire blank, and were rewarded the same extra credit as the other students. Of the
Control variable
Given the technological nature of virtual teams, one’s technological background could potentially have a confounding effect on the results of this study. To control for previous individual technological knowledge, a control variable measuring technological background was used. This control variable consisted of one item asking subjects about previous technology courses they had taken, which was used as a proxy for prior technological knowledge.
Personality
Personality was measured in this study using Costa
Measurement model
Given the novelty of the proposed virtual team preference construct and the fact that the preference items contrast preference for working in virtual teams to two different alternatives (i.e., working alone and working in face-to-face teams), a full confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was used to evaluate the psychometric properties of the purported construct. Multiple fit criteria were used to evaluate the measurement model including the comparative fit index (CFI), the Tucker–Lewis index
Discussion
For this research, a theoretical construct of virtual team preference was operationalized based on previous research and accepted measures of face-to-face team research. Two facets of virtual team preference, preference for working in virtual teams over alone and preference for working in virtual teams over face-to-face, were measured. A thorough psychometric analysis indicates that these two facets hold very well and show excellent validity and reliability. In fact, we believe that our virtual
Limitations and future work
This research specifically tests the predictive power of personality and cognitive style on virtual team preference. One limitation of the study is that we focused our work on preference for working in virtual teams rather than what aspects of the virtual team environment potential members might find appealing or repelling. Future research could address the role of personality and cognitive style on individual preferences for specific aspects of the virtual team environment. Because we focused
Conclusion
This research adds to the extant literature in two significant ways. First, we offer a validated operationalization of a construct central to research concerning virtual teamwork, virtual team preference. This two dimensional latent construct should prove valuable to future research that attempts to explain varying levels of performance in virtual team environments. Second, we have shown that two widely used frameworks, personality and cognitive style, have utility in identifying those most
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