Virtual Team Efficacy Theory: An Integrative Sociotechnical Understanding of the Emergence and Ramifications of Collective Efficacy in Virtual Teams

Virtual Team Efficacy Theory Digital technologies facilitate interactions among geographically distributed virtual team members. However, some organizations treat communication technologies as passive tools rather than active actors influencing the relationships between collaborative parties. Researchers have encouraged this indifference by applying concepts developed for traditional teams in studies focused on virtual teams facing the unique challenge of utilizing technology to overcome constraints such as temporal and geographical dispersion. For example, collective-level efficacy, or the collective belief in the ability to collaborate effectively, is a crucial factor influencing traditional team performance, now being applied in virtual team studies. Yet researchers regularly apply collective-level efficacy concepts that do not account for the idiosyncratic nature of technology-mediated teamwork. This approach provides an incomplete view of how collective-level efficacy forms and operates during virtual collaborations. Reinforcing this lack of clarity, most studies concentrate on empirically assessing collective-level efficacy’s relationships with other variables rather than on how it develops and functions in these settings. Thus, a notable omission from the practitioner and academic literature is a focus on the nature, evolution, and consequences of collective-level efficacy in technology-mediated virtual team settings. The current study addresses this need by developing a conceptual model explaining how virtual team efficacy, a virtual team-specific conceptualization of collective-level efficacy, emerges and subsequently impacts downstream outcomes during a collective cognitive process unique to virtual settings.