Odd Person Out? Studies of Distributed Group Work Where Communication Technologies are Unequal

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In today's organizations, many people have to work together even though they are not collocated, using email, video and audio conferencing, voicemail, etc. Remote team members typically feel that they suffer from having not only less contact overall, but less rich information as well. How much of a disadvantage do remote people have compared to those who are collocated? How much productivity, trust and social capital is lost? This program of research measures various losses using a new research vehicle, the long-term organizational simulation. Participants engage in a task in which they simulate buying and selling things to each other in a competitive market for weeks at a time. In the course of buying and selling, they form impressions of each other, make long standing deals, favor some suppliers over others with speedy reactions and lower prices. Various theories predict how the losses will vary when the numbers of remote people and their locations vary, and how various interventions will help. This research will not only allow us to sort out predictions of some major theories of relationship formation and social capital, but will advise managers of distributed teams how to improve efficiency, effectiveness and the morale of these teams.