By Margaret M. Luciano
Pennsylvania State University
Jean B. Leslie
Center for Creative Leadership
John E. Mathieu
University of Connecticut
Emily R. Hoole
Center for Creative Leadership
Rebecca Anderson
Children’s Home Society of North Carolina
Virgil W. Fenters
University of Nevada
Summary
The authors conducted a field experiment with 76 virtual teams from 37 organizations to examine how to improve management of the collaboration paradox in virtual teams. The key findings include:
- Team collaboration paradox management (balancing unified team perspective and diverse individual perspectives) positively related to team performance over time.
- A theory-based intervention with a follow-up session significantly improved teams’ ability to manage the collaboration paradox and subsequently improved team performance, compared to a control group.
- The intervention alone (without follow-up) did not significantly improve paradox management compared to the control group.
- Qualitative data revealed three key themes in how teams improved paradox management: enabling alignment through technology, building commitment through deliberate iterations, and refining efforts through contextualization.
- The study contributes to paradox theory by demonstrating the efficacy of a paradox intervention and providing empirical evidence for a positive paradox-performance relationship over time.
- It also contributes to teams literature by highlighting collaboration paradox management as an important mechanism linking team inputs to outcomes, especially for virtual teams.
The authors argue this study addresses debates about paradox interventions and advances understanding of how to improve virtual team effectiveness through better paradox management. The field experimental design with multiple data sources strengthens the conclusions.
Citation
Luciano, M.M., Leslie, J.B., Mathieu, J.E., Hoole, E.R., Anderson, R., & Fenters, V.W. (2024). Improving Virtual Team Collaboration Through Paradox Management. Organizational Science, Advanced online publication. https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2023.17952
