COMMUNICATION PROBLEMS IN VIRTUAL TEAMS

Communication Problems in Virtual Teams

Nick Schok

The University of Arizona Eller College of Management

December 8, 2017
In this report, there is information regarding the communication in virtual teams. Virtual teams
have allowed companies to be continuously productive while lowering costs associated with
traditional workplace teams. The benefits of virtual teams are outweighing the weaknesses but
with this comes issues that many companies fail to address. This information is intended to
increase awareness of communicational issues that lower success rates of virtual teams. More
specifically, the information below will highlight Diversity Differences, Lack of Non-Verbal and
Face-to-Face Cues, Communication Frequency Issues, and Communication Interruptions.

Diversity Differences

Virtual teams are groups that work together towards the same common goal while being
geographically disperse. Electronic collaboration is becoming more popular in organizations as
increased productivity is directly correlated, however, many are finding a culture and language
barrier very difficult to deal with. According to survey of 1372 businesses from 80 countries
done by RW3 Culture Wizard, 85% of respondents worked on virtual teams with 48% reporting
that half of their team is of other cultures (Dulebohn & Hoch, 2017).

Culture

Diverse cultural backgrounds in virtual teams is one issue that plagues many organizations and is
leaving many to question whether it is doing more harm than good. A lack of understanding
among team members is brought up by Marlow, Lacerenza, and Salas (2017) due to variations in
backgrounds of team members. They cite a management journal saying, highly diverse teams are
likely to speak less due to both communication quality and frequency which may negatively
affect performance.

These problems may be fixed with more team organization and planning initially. It may be
beneficial for teams to familiarize common norms and traits to follow which can promote
effectiveness. A power structure is also valuable for teams to minimize teamwork issues
(Kramer, Shuffler, & Feitosa, 2017).

Language

Qinghao Wang a professor at University of Quebec did data analysis and ran a regression on
“what communications problems occur more frequently in communication process in virtual
teams” and published his results in a 2012. According to his analysis, something he coined as
‘knowledge transfer’ was considered the second most common problem. Essentially, moving
information from one entity to another is becoming more complicated with virtual teams.
A language barrier is one of the main things causing this complication. As information is moving
very quickly between individuals and companies, language barriers are costing teams more time
and resources than before (Wang, 2012). Translating information to many languages for
companies or team members can potentially cause lost, wrong, or incomplete information. The
more language problems teams have, the lower the clear communication between members will
be.

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Lack of Non-Verbal and Face to Face Cues

In the business world, interacting with other individuals and personal within and outside of the
company is required in almost every job position. Face-to-Face interaction and non-verbal cues
are needed for persuasion techniques and conveying information more effectively. Virtual teams
lack both things thus causing a negative impact to the team.

Lack of Non-Verbal Cues

An obvious problem with virtual teams is the lack of physical and face-to-face interaction among
members. According to Wang (2012), in his case study, a lack of non-verbal cues was given as
the most frequent problem among virtual teams. Non-verbal cues are, eye movements, facial
expressions, hand gestures, and body language. These are used when communicating to facilitate
turn taking, regulate flow of conversation, provide feedback, and convey subtle meanings (Wang,
2012). His current study shows that a lack of these cues negatively affects the communication of
teams.

Lack of Face-to-Face Cues

Another issue brought up by Bulebohn and Hoch (2017) is that managers and virtual team
leaders need to possess the skills able to deal with the lack of face-to-face connections. Team
leaders are needing additional skills in, collaborative technology, ability to influence member
engagement, appreciation for diversity, and the ability to build trust with their geographically
dispersed team members (Bulebohn & Hoch, 2012). These new skill requirements are testing
leader’s abilities to affectively keep up with the changing corporate world.

Communication Frequency Issues

Frequent communication is obviously important to the success to any type of team. Increased
technology has allowed for faster than ever connections between parties. In an article written by
Marlow, Lacerenza, and Salas (2017) an idea called “cognitive load theory” is thought to be a
weakness in virtual teams. “Individuals have a limited working memory capacity and when this
is met, learning and processing are impaired” (Marlow et al., 2017). There is a level of
information that any one person can process and once that level is crossed the benefits of more
information are essentially non-existent.

Another suggestion made by Desanctis and Monge (1998) is that increased frequency in
communication can bring more irrelevant information to be processed. This wastes time in the
reviewing and sorting of this information leading to less efficiency than normal. This may lead to
a cognitive overload as well, processing too many emails can be more harmful than just reading
a few good ones. On average, people are sending and receiving 122 business emails per day, it
difficult for companies to cut through the noise (Hannah, 2017). Communication frequency is
being favored more than communication quality.

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Communication Interruptions

Technical failures are something that all virtual teams must keep in mind while interacting.
While it’s rare for this to happen nowadays, it still does happen and catches teams off guard.
Between large and medium companies, the frequency of technical failures does not differ.
However, between small/micro companies and medium sized companies, communication
technical failures happen more often in the medium sized (Wang, 2012). Analyzing this shows
that technical failures do in fact happen more often in medium and large sized companies as they
do not differ. Bigger is not necessarily better, the success of the small/micro company’s
communication comes from a minimalist communication approach. They do not have the size to
use all the equipment and tools that larger companies use, limiting their technical failure rates.

With a better understanding of Diversity Differences, Lack of Non-Verbal and Face-to-Face

Cues, Communication Frequency Issues, and Communication Interruptions business now
understand the difficulties that obstruct virtual team’s success. This information provided can be
used to help teams across all business settings, by identifying these problems a strong team can
be formed and be very successful. If questions arise based on the information from this report,
feel free to contact me at rnschok@email.arizona.edu or call my phone at (907) 687-8822.

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 References

Dulebohn, J. H., & Hoch, J. E. (january 2017). Virtual teams in organizations. Human Resource
Management Review, 27(4), 569-574. doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.hrmr.2016.12.004

Marlow, S. L., Lacerenza, C. N., & Salas, E. (january 2017). Communication in virtual teams: a
conceptual framework and research agenda. Human Resource Management
Review, 24(4), 575-589. doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.hrmr.2016.12.005

Kramer, W. S., Shuffler, M. L., & Feitosa, J. (january 2017). The world is not flat: Examining the
interactive multidimensionality of culture and virtuality in teams. Human Resource
Management Review, 27(4), 604-620. doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.hrmr.2016.12.007

Wang, Q. (2012). Equipes virtuelles et communication (Order No. MR93415). Available from
ABI/INFORM Collection; ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global. (1351359485).
Retrieved from http://ezproxy.library.arizona.edu/login?url=https://search-proquest-
com.ezproxy4.library.arizona.edu/docview/1351359485?accountid=8360

Hannah, R. (2017, April 18). Dynamic Signal Report: The State of Workplace Communications
is Disconnected. Retrieved December 7, 2017, from
https://d2l.arizona.edu/d2l/le/content/600392/topics/files/download/5308436/DirectFileT
opicDownload

Desanctis, G., & Monge, P. (1998). Communication processes for virtual organizations. Journal
of Computer-Mediated Communication, 3(4), 0-0. Retrieved December 7, 2017.