Antecedents of Awareness in Virtual Teams

This study examined the antecedents of awareness in geographically distributed teams. Task structure, group propensity, communication frequency, groupware usage, and subjective reliance on various communication tools were proposed to affect the perceived level of awareness. Based on data collected from seven distributed student engineering teams, results showed that perceived task interdependence and communication frequency were positively associated with the level of awareness, but group propensity and groupware usage were not. Further analysis found the reliance on synchronous meetings mediated the relationship between task interdependence and awareness level. Implications for virtual team management are discussed.