Team Development - Essay Example

Through technology, organizations are now able to conduct teamwork and team performance without their team members meeting face-to-face through virtual teams. However, the extent of virtual teams can affect team development positively or negatively. The article by Stark & Bierly (2009) is important in team development because it assesses the effects of team virtualness on team development. Levels of virtualness can affect team functioning, team outcome relationships and team development. The authors studied the effects of team virtualness on the particular predictors of team development such as relationship conflicts, familiarity, and goal clarity and group work preference among the team members.

The study used previously tested five-scale standards and a regression model based on team size as a control to test the constructs under the four hypotheses. The results were such that all four predictors (independent variables) were significantly correlated with team satisfaction. Relationship conflict was negatively correlated with team satisfaction while familiarity, goal clarity, and preference for teamwork were all positively correlated with team satisfaction. The study concluded that relationship conflicts negatively affect team satisfaction because the member lacks the time to resolve their differences.

As virtualness increases, members tend to prefer working in groups while familiarity and goal clarity also affect team satisfaction. Results from this study may help increase awareness that the levels of virtualness among team may have other cascading effects on team development.