Geographic dispersion in teams : its history, experience, measurement, and change

This thesis begins with the simple argument that geographic dispersion has gone surprisingly unexamined despite its role as the domain-defining construct for geographically dispersed teams (a.k.a. "virtual teams"). The last few years have seen slow but steady growth in field studies of such teams, but our understanding of geographic dispersion and the role it plays in work is stillquite limited. The thesis attempts to open the "black box" of geographic dispersion, show that it is far from a new phenomenon in organizations, understand the ways in which it is experienced, propose ways in which it can be measured, and understand the effects of doing work at increasing degrees of dispersion. It does so through three studies which combine qualitative and quantitative methods, and draw on archival, survey, observational, and interview data. Study 1 uses rich archival data covering more than two centuries (1670-1950) of the life of one firm - i.e., the Hudson's Bay Company - to understand its far-flung managers' experience of dispersion. It shows that the managers experienced their dispersion through a combination of coordination, communication, isolation, and control challenges. It also serves as a "typifier," showing that modem "virtual" teams have deep historical roots. Study 2 proposes a multi-dimensional definition of dispersion, including spatial-temporal distance and configuration, as well as a series of new measures to capture those dimensions. It explores the measures and their relationship to communications frequency in a sample of 115 dispersed project teams from a Fortune 500 company.

Department dc:contributor.department

Sloan School of Management.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2002

Author dc:creator

• O'Leary, Michael Boyer, 1969-

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Wanda Orlikowski and JoAnne Yates.

• Sloan School of Management.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/16883

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/16883