Virtual teams and virtual meetings : investigating the conventional wisdom that face-to-face communication is better

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the nature and impact of virtual working and communication in distributed teams, such as those which collaborate to execute projects from remote locations. Conventional wisdom is that virtuality constitutes a liability both in terms of a perceived negative impact on the less tangible affective issue of working relations and the more tangible metrics of project deliverables. In this paper the author seeks to understand both at a general level to what extent virtuality presents risks and opportunities for those in distributed teams, and also the more specific aspect of virtuality in meeting communications, and investigates how far virtual meetings can be an effective substitute for face-to-face meetings, including a brief overview of the potential impact of emerging technologies on virtual meetings. It concludes, against most common perceptions on the impact of virtuality, that virtual teams and virtual meeting communication can be just as effective as those with a non-virtual and co-located character, and in specific contexts it can even be desirable and outperform more classical modes of interaction. On the specific question of virtual meetings, it is suggested that teams can gain real benefits from the careful usage of virtual meeting interactions, particularly those supported by higher quality video conferencing suites, where training is provided or when sufficient natural exposure or experience of the medium simply enables team members to acquire sufficient skills to take advantage of the specific features of virtual conferencing over face-to-face interaction