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Are All Distributed Teams the Same? Differentiating Between Temporary and Ongoing Distributed Teams

University of Central Florida, Orlando

Manju K. Ahuja

Indiana University, Bloomington

Distributed teams, sometimes called virtual teams, are becoming increasingly prevalent as businesses bring geographically dispersed members together to achieve a common goal. A framework for understanding geographically distributed teams based on their time span is yet to be developed. The authors believe that theory building in this area has centered on temporary teams and propose that many distributed teams have ongoing and recurring tasks. Using attention focus and the shadow of the future models, this article presents a framework for understanding the differences between temporary and ongoing distributed teams' structure, processes, and outcomes, suggesting that ongoing distributed teams must tackle more process and structural issues than temporary teams and that findings of virtual teams research thus far may not always apply here. The model also implies that ongoing distributed teams are more difficult to manage and experience greater variance in well-being outcome levels, whereas in temporary teams, members are more focused on task-related (production) outcomes.

Key Words: virtual teams • short-and long-term outcomes • computer-mediated communication • collaboration

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