Conditions for innovation behaviour of virtual team members: a ‘high-road’ for internationally dispersed virtual teams

Item does not contain fulltextThe central research question of this paper is “What are the conditions for innovative behaviour of virtual team members?”. This is an important issue for companies given the impact of ICT on work. Virtual teams are assumed to be part of normal business life. This paper presents a preliminary model on three possibly relevant characteristics of virtual teams, and technological and organisational factors that moderate the relationship with innovation behaviour. Based on a survey among virtual team members (N=83 from 16 organisations with virtual teams) we present the results of a multilevel analysis. Main findings are that members spending more time in a virtual team score higher on innovative work behaviour. In virtual teams innovation behaviour can be stimulated by using reciprocal IT tools (like document sharing), coordination by trust (not by output) and high job demands. Counter-intuitive is the result, that high task dependencies in virtual teams in highly complex surroundings are negatively associated with innovation