Date of Award

9-8-2015

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Information Science

First Advisor

Elizabeth Pierce

Abstract

Research on virtual teams and how they function has become an important topic. This is due to organizations ever-increasing use of teams of globally dislocated employees, or virtual teams, to collaborate on projects to not only cut costs, but also create products that can be marketed and sold globally. Virtual team members need to share data to coordinate their efforts to meet those goals. To help reduce costs and improve speed, management often requires employees to use computer-mediated communication (CMC) technologies, such as email, to share data. When employees work within a virtual team, they are frequently required to collaborate online within a diverse group of people representing different countries and genders. Although one demographic may use a particular CMC technology to share data, another may use a different technology which may not be best suited for the task at hand, such as using a text message to share a large amount of data. This can potentially lead to data not being shared effectively. This dissertation explores gender and geographic factors in the selection of CMC technologies for coordination and information quality needs when sharing data within virtual teams. By using extant theoretical frameworks for information quality and media richness, this research explores those relationships by administering surveys to players in a popular online web-browser game known as Travian. Travian is a massively-multiplayer online game in which over ten-million people from around the world work together in virtual teams towards a common goal. Surveys were administered over a 30 day period through the Travian forums. The results were compiled and analyzed with descriptive statistics as well as Chi-Square, Fisher's exact test and contingency tables. Analysis of the results showed a clear relationship between both gender and geographic factors with CMC technology selection to share data for coordination and information quality needs. The results of this research add a necessary first-step in creating a best practices strategy for managers who use virtual teams so they may share data more effectively.

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