3D Collaborative Virtual Environments: Exploring the Link between Collaborative Behaviors and Team Performance

Decision Sciences

Volumn 42, Issue 2, 2011, Pages 451-476

  Montoya, Mitzi M ^a   Massey, Anne P ^b   Lockwood, Nicholas S ^b  

^a ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

^b INDIANA UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

3D Collaborative Virtual Environments; Cluster Analysis; Collaborative Technologies; Mediated Communication; Virtual Teams

Indexed keywords

EID: 79955379533     PISSN: 00117315     EISSN: 15405915     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1540-5915.2011.00318.x     Document Type: Article

References (89)

1. Albanese, R., & van Fleet, D. D. (1985). Rational behavior in groups: The free-riding tendency. Academy of Management Review, 10(2), 244-255.
2. Allen, D. G., & Griffeth, R. W. (1997). Vertical and lateral information processing: The effects of gender, employee classification level, and media richness on communication and work outcomes. Human Relations, 50(10), 1239-1260.
3. Andersen, P. (2007). Nonverbal communication: Forms and functions (2nd ed.). Long Grove, IL: Waveland Press.
4. Bailenson, J. N., Beall, A. C., Loomis, J., & Blascovich, J. (2002). Gaze and task performance in shared virtual environments. The Journal of Visualization and Computer Animation, 13(5), 313-320.
5. Bainbridge, W.S. (2007). The scientific research potential of virtual worlds. Science, 317(5837), 472-476.
6. Barrick, M. R., Stewart, G. L., Neubert, M. J., & Mount, M. K. (1998). Relating member ability and personality to work-team processes and team effectiveness. Journal of Applied Psychology, 83(3), 377-391.
7. Bartle, R.A. (2004). Designing virtual worlds. Berkeley, CA: New Riders.
8. Becker-Beck, U., Wintermantel, M., & Borg, A. (2005). Principles of regulating interaction in teams practicing face-to-face communication versus teams practicing computer-mediated communication. Small Group Research, 36(4), 499-536.
9. Benford, S., Bowers, J., Fahlén, L. E., Greenhalgh, C., & Snowdon, D. (1997). Embodiments, avatars, clones and agents for multi-user, multi-sensory virtual worlds. Multimedia Systems, 5(2), 93-104.
10. Billinghurst, M., & Kato, H. (2002). Collaborative augmented reality. Communications of the ACM, 45(7), 64-70.
11. Boland, R. J., Tenkasi, R. V., Te'eni, D. (1994). Designing information technology to support distributed cognition. Organization Science, 5(3), 456-475.
12. Boudreau, M. C., Loch, K. D., Robey, D., & Straub, D. (1998). Going global: Using information technology to advance the competitiveness of the virtual transnational organization. Academy of Management Executive, 12(4), 120-128.
13. Campion, M. A., Medsker, G. J., & Higgs, A. C. (1993). Relations between work group characteristics and effectiveness: Implications for designing effective work groups. Personnel Psychology, 46(4), 823-850.
14. Campion, M. A., Papper, E. M., & Medsker, G. J. (1996). Relations between work team characteristics and effectiveness: A replication and extension. Personnel Psychology, 49(2), 429-452.
15. Cannon-Bowers, J. A., Tannenbaum, S. I., Salas, E., & Volpe, C. E. (1995). Defining competencies and establishing team training requirements. In R. A. Guzzo & E. Salas (Eds.), Team effectiveness and decision making in organizations. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 333-380.
16. Carlson, J. R., & Zmud, R. W. (1999). Channel expansion theory and the experiential nature of media richness perceptions. Academy of Management Journal, 42(2), 153-170.
17. Churchill, E. F., & Snowdon, D. (1998). Collaborative virtual environments: An introductory review of issues and systems. Virtual Reality, 3(1), 3-15.
18. Crampton, C. D. (2001). The mutual knowledge problem and its consequences for dispersed collaboration. Organization Science, 12(3), 346-371.
19. Dennis, A. R., & Valacich, J. S. (1999). Rethinking media richness: Towards a theory of media synchronicity. Proceedings of the Thirty-Second Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (CD-ROM), Maui, Hawaii: Computer Society Press (10 pages).
20. Dennis, A. R., Fuller, R. M., & Valacich, J. S. (2008). Media, tasks, and communication processes: A theory of media synchronicity. MIS Quarterly, 32(3), 575-600.
21. DeSanctis, G., & Monge, P. (1998). Communication processes for virtual organizations. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 3(4). Retrieved December 15, 2008, from
22. DeSanctis, G., & Poole, M. S. (1994). Capturing the complexity in advanced technology use: Adaptive structuration theory. Organization Science, 5(2), 121-147.
23. Diamantopoulos, A., & Winklhofer, H. M. (2001). Index construction with formative indicators: An alternative to scale development. Journal of Marketing Research, 38(2), 269-277.
24. Easley, R. F., Devaraj, S., Crant, J. M. (2003). Relating collaborative technology use to teamwork quality and performance: An empirical analysis. Journal of Management Information Systems, 19(4), 247-268.
25. Erez, A., Lepine, J. A., & Elms, H. (2002). Effects of rotated leadership and peer evaluation on the functioning and effectiveness of self-managed teams: A quasi-experiment. Personnel Psychology, 55(4), 929-948.
26. Foushee, H. C. (1984). Dyads and triads at 35, 000 feet: Factors affecting group process and aircrew performance. American Psychologist, 39(8), 886-893.
27. Fulk, J. (1993). Social construction of communication technology. Academy of Management Journal, 36(5), 921-950.
28. Fulk, J., Steinfield, G. W., Schmitz, J. A., & Power, J. G. (1987). A social information processing model of media use in organizations. Communication Research, 14(5), 542-543.
29. Furst, S., Blackburn, R., & Rosen, B. (1999). Virtual team effectiveness: A proposed research agenda. Information Systems Journal, 9(4), 249-269.
30. Furst, S. A., Reeves, M., Rosen, B., & Blackburn, R. S. (2004). Managing the life cycle of virtual teams. Academy of Management Executive, 18(2), 6-20.
31. Galegher, J., & Kraut, R. E. (1994). Computer-mediated communication for intellectual teamwork: An experiment in group writing. Information Systems Research, 5(2), 110-138.
32. Gerhard, M., Moore, D., & Hobbs, D. (2001). Continuous presence in 3D CVEs: Towards the evaluation of a hybrid avatar-agent model for user representation. Proceedings of the International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents (IVA 2001), Madrid, Spain: Springer-Verlag, 137-155.
33. Gladstein, D. L. (1984). Groups in context: A model of task group effectiveness. Administrative Science Quarterly, 29(4), 499-517.
34. Goodman, P. S., Ravlin, E., & Argote, L. (1986). Current thinking about groups: Setting the stage for new ideas. In P. S. Goodman (ed.), Designing Effective Work Groups. San Francisco, CA: Jossey Bass, 1-33.
35. Griffin, A., & Hauser, J. R. (1996). Integrating R&D and marketing: A review and analysis of the literature. Journal of Product Innovation Management, 13(3), 191-215.
36. Hair, Jr., J. F., Anderson, R. E., Tatham, R. L., & Black, W. C. (1998). Multivariate data analysis (5th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
37. Held, R.M., & Durlach, N.I., (1992). Telepresence. Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments, 1(1), 109-112.
38. Hiltz, S. R., Johnson, K., & Turoff, M. (1986). Experiments in group decision making: Communication process and outcome in face-to-face versus computerized conferences. Human Communication Research, 13(2), 225-252.
39. Hindmarsh, J., Fraser, M., Heath, C., Benford, S., & Greenhalgh, C. (2000). Object-focused interaction in collaborative virtual environments. ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction, 7(4), 477-509.
40. Hindmarsh, J., Heath, C., & Fraser, M. (2006). (Im)materiality, virtual reality and interaction: Grounding the 'virtual' in studies of technology in action. The Sociological Review, 54(4), 795-817.
41. Hoegl, M., & Gemuenden, H. G. (2001). Teamwork quality and the success of innovative projects: A theoretical concept and empirical evidence. Organization Science, 12(4), 435-449.
42. Hoegl, M., & Proserpio, L. (2004). Team member proximity and teamwork in innovative projects. Research Policy, 33(8), 1153-1165.
43. Hoegl, M., Ernst, H., & Proserpio, L. (2007). How teamwork matters more as team member dispersion increases. Journal of Product Innovation Management, 24(1), 156-165.
44. IBM (2010). The academy of the future, accessed April 26, 2010, available at
45. Im, S., & Nakata, C. (2008). Crafting an environment to foster integration in new product teams. International Journal of Research in Marketing, 25(3), 164-172.
46. Jarvis, C. B., MacKenzie, S. B., & Podsakoff, P. M. (2003). A critical review of construct indicators and measurement model misspecification in marketing and consumer research. Journal of Consumer Research, 30(2), 199-218.
47. Johansson, C, Dittrich, Y., & Juustila, A. (1999). Software engineering across boundaries: Student project in distributed collaboration. IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication, 42(4), 286-296.
48. Jonassen, D. H. (Ed). (2004). Handbook of research on educational communications and technology (2nd ed.). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
49. Kan, H. Y., Duffy, V. G., & Su, C. J. (2001). An Internet virtual reality collaborative environment for effective product design. Computers in Industry, 45(2), 197-213.
50. Kayworth, T., & Leidner, D. (2000). The global virtual manager: A prescription for success. European Management Journal, 18(2), 183-194.
51. Kayworth, T., & Leidner, D. (20012002). Leadership effectiveness in global virtual teams. Journal of Management Information Systems, 18(3), 7-40.
52. Latané, B., Williams, K., & Harkins, S. (1979). Many hands make light the work: The causes and consequences of social loafing. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 37(6), 822-832.
53. Leenders, R., van Engelen, J., & Kratzer, J. (2003). Virtuality, communication, and new product team creativity: A social network perspective. Journal of Engineering Technology Management, 20(1), 69-92.
54. Leenders, R., van Engelen, J., & Kratzer, J. (2007). Systematic design methods and the creative performance of new product teams: Do they contradict or complement each other Journal of Product Innovation Management, 24(2), 166-179.
55. Lenovo (2010). Lenovo virtual showroom, accessed April 26, 2010, available at
56. Lix, L. M., Keselman, J. C., & Keselman, H. J. (1996). Consequences of assumption violations revisited: A quantitative review of alternatives to the one-way analysis of variance F test. Review of Educational Research, 66(4), 579-619.
57. Loftin, R. B. (2001). Design engineering in virtual environments. Communications of the ACM, 44(12), 49-50.
58. Massey, A. P., Montoya-Weiss, M. M., & Hung, Y. (2003). Because time matters: Temporal coordination in global virtual project teams. Journal of Management Information Systems, 19(4), 129-155.
59. Maznevski, M. & Chudoba, K. (2000). Bridging space over time: Global virtual team dynamics and effectiveness. Organization Science, 11(5), 473-492.
60. McDonough, E. F. (2000). Investigation of factors contributing to the success of cross-functional teams. Journal of Product Innovation Management, 17(3), 221-235.
61. McDonough, E. F., Kahn, K. B., & Griffin, A. J. (1999). Managing global product development teams: Achieving effective performance by linking communications speed, complexity, and scope. IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management, 46(4), 375-386.
62. McDonough, E. F., Kahn, K. B., & Barczak, G. (2001). An investigation of the use of global, virtual, and collocated new product development teams. The Journal of Product Innovation Management, 18(2), 110-120.
63. McGrath, J.E. (1984). Groups: Interaction and performance. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
64. McGrath, J.E. (1991). Time, interaction, and performance (TIP): A theory of groups. Small Group Research, 22(2), 147-174.
65. Milligan, G. W. (1980). An examination of the effect of six types of error perturbation on fifteen clustering algorithms. Psychometrika, 45(3), 325-342.
66. Moenaert, R.K., & Souder, W.E. (1990). An information transfer model for integrating marketing and R&D personnel in new product development projects. Journal of Product Innovation Management, 7(2), 91-107.
67. Montoya, M. M., Massey, A. P., Hun, Y. C., & Crisp, C. B. (2009). Can you hear me now? Communication in virtual product development teams. Journal of Product Innovation Management, 26(2), 139-155.
68. Moore, R. J., Ducheneaut, N., & Nickell, E. (2007). Doing virtually nothing: Awareness and accountability in massively multiplayer online worlds. Computer Supported Cooperative Work, 16(3), 265-305.
69. Morrison, S. (2009, August 19). A second chance forSecond Life. The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved October 15, 2009, from
70. Mulvey, P. W., & Klein, H. J. (1998). The impact of perceived loafing and collective efficacy on group goal processes and group performance. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 74(1), 62-87.
71. Nash, E. B., Edwards, G. W., Thompson, J. A., & Barfield, W. (2000). A review of presence and performance in virtual environments. International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction, 12(1), 1-41.
72. Pappas, M., Karabatsou, V. Mavrikios, D., & Chryssolouris, G. (2006). Development of a web-based collaboration platform for manufacturing product and process design evaluation using virtual reality techniques. International Journal of Computer Integrated Manufacturing, 19(8), 805-814.
73. Patrashkova-Volzdoska, R. R., McComb, S. A., Green, S. G., & Compton, W. D. (2003). Examining a curvilinear relationship between communication frequency and team performance in cross-functional projects teams. IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management, 50(3), 262-269.
74. Pearce, J. A., & Ravlin, E. C. (1987). The design and activation of self-regulating work groups. Human Relations, 40(11), 751-782.
75. Pinto, M. B., & Pinto, J. K. (1990). Project team communication and cross-functional cooperation in new program development. Journal of Product Innovation Management, 7(3), 200-212.
76. Pinto, M. B., Pinto, J. K., & Prescott, J. E. (1993). Antecedents and consequences of project team cross-functional cooperation. Management Science, 39(10), 1281-1297.
77. Powell, A., Piccoli, G., & Ives, B. (2004). Virtual teams: A review of current literature and directions for future research. The Database for Advances in Information Systems, 35(1), 6-36.
78. ProtonMedia (February, 2009). BP improves online collaboration, reduces costs with Protosphere, accessed April 26, 2010, available at
79. Reeves, B., Malone, T. W., O'Driscoll, T. (2008). Leadership's online labs. Harvard Business Review, 86(5), 58-66.
80. Rousseau, V., Aubé, C., & Savoie, A. (2006). Teamwork behaviors: A review and an integration of frameworks. Small Group Research, 37(5), 540-570.
81. Sproull, L., & Kiesler, S. (1986). Reducing social context cues: Electronic mail in organizational communication. Management Science, 32(11), 1492-1512.
82. Sproull, L., & Kiesler, S. (1991). Connections: New ways of working in the networked organization. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
83. Stewart, G. L., & Barrick, M. R. (2000). Team structure and performance: Assessing the mediating role of intra-team process and the moderating role of task type. Academy of Management Journal, 43(2), 135-148.
84. Stout, R. J., Cannon-Bowers, J. A., Salas, E., & Milanovich, D. M. (1999). Planning, shared mental models, and coordinated performance: An empirical link is established. Human Factors, 41(1), 61-71.
85. Tahmincioglu, E. (2008, August 27). Business and startups inSecond Life. Business Week, Retrieved December 15, 2008, from
86. Wagner, J. A., III. (1995). Studies of individualism-collectivism: Effects on cooperation in groups. Academy of Management Journal, 38(1), 152-172.
87. Walther, J. B. (1995). Relational aspects of computer-mediated communication: Experimental observation over time. Organization Science, 6(2), 186-203.
88. Welch, B. L. (1951). On the comparison of several mean values: An alternative approach. Biometrika, 38(3), 330-336.
89. Zack, M. H. (1993). Interactivity and communication mode choice in ongoing management groups. Information Systems Research, 4(3), 207-239.