Does Time Matter? Examining Collective Intelligence of Virtual Groups

Virtual groups are becoming increasingly prevalent today. Organizations are grappling with how best to create high-performing virtual groups. Does group performance benefit from having more time and does this benefit depend on the group size? Group performance has not been studied varying both time available and group size, and specifically, for virtual groups. This study is the first to examine the impact of available time and group size on group performance for virtual groups. It develops a set of hypotheses based on extant literature on how group size and time available impact performance. Measuring performance using collective intelligence and using an experiment, it looks at the performance of two different group sizes as available time is increased. The findings show that more time benefits large virtual groups and not small virtual groups. The findings imply that organizations can create high-performing groups by adjusting time available depending on group sizes.