Khaos

Are Virtual Teams Less Suited to Men than Women?

I was reading a paper today by Emmeline de Pillis and Kimberly Furumo that considered the hypothesis that men are more likely to be “deadbeats” on a virtual team than women. Deadbeats are described a “free riders” – people who are content to take credit for a group effort without doing any work.

They carried out an experiment with 201 people who were randomly assigned to either a face-to-face or virtual team of three people. They were trying to show that virtual teams have less cohesion than face-to-face teams and also that virtual teams have a higher percentage of non-contributing members (these were described as either deserters or deadbeats). Their results did show that there is less cohesion, less satisfaction, more time spent on a task, and more deadbeats within a virtual team. Most of the deadbeats were male but their results didn’t have statistical significance. The only deserters were male but again this didn’t have statistical significance.

I was aware that most studies show less cohesion in new virtual teams but I hadn’t really thought about gender issues. I’m going to have to read more papers on this area because Pillis and Furumo believe that virtual work is a particularly poor fit for the average male student. This concerns me. Most of the virtual teams I’m aware of are in the I.T. industry and they are predominately male. I want to know what it is about men that makes it harder for them to work in this environment and what can be done to improve their experience.

4 Responses to “Are Virtual Teams Less Suited to Men than Women?”

  1. Stray Taoist Says:

    When I left NewWork for NewNewWork, they offered me working-from-home virtual teamery.

    I considered it, and considered it not for me. I didn’t feel it was something I could do. (Actually, I don’t think I could work from home. Oh, right, for a pile of cash I could probably put up with it.)

    I like *real* interaction. Sure, sitting on IRC with cow-orkers is fine, but I feel the need to see (and not via a videolink) people. To actually interact with the chicks down the other end of the office. Having done a video conference on a project I am working on, then having a meeting face-to-face with said-same people, so much more got done when we were working in the same physical location. Although that was just a meeting, not the project. As they talk about it, and I get to do the work.

    So out of a sample of me, I would prefer not to be in a virtual team. I would also prefer not to be a deadbeat, but that is something else.

    (And hey! I am enjoying your recent (more frequent-than-before) output. Even if there isn’t enough what-makeup-I-bought-in-Japanaland-type posts.)

  2. Adrian Howard Says:

    A reference to the paper would be lovely 🙂

  3. karen Says:

    A reference would indeed be sensible 🙂

    I read lots of papers via the ACM’s digital archive which I believe is for subsribers only – so I don’t usually bother putting in a link to those references.

    The paper was called “Virtual vs. face-to-face teams: deadbeats, deserters, and other considerations” and was published in April 2006 as part of the Proceedings of the 2006 ACM SIGMIS CPR conference on computer personnel research: Forty four years of computer personnel research: achievements, challenges & the future SIGMIS CPR ’06. The authors were Emmeline de Pillis and Kimberly Furumo.

  4. Adrian Howard Says:

    Thanks 🙂

    I’ve been digging into the advantages of co-located teams recently so it’s appreciated.