This study is an attempt to contribute to extant research on gender, anonymity and virtual teams. Based on the multiple case study data, the paper has proposed relationships between gender, anonymity, group processes and outcomes throughout the lifespan of a virtual team. These provide specific evidence of the temporal influence of member characteristics and technology characteristics on virtual team outcomes. In general, we found that linguistic acts in the virtual team are primarily affected by anonymity. Anonymity affected socioemotional and norms and rules acts. Gender as a user characteristic affected the group dynamics of member conformity and leader emergence. In turn, these group processes influenced other process and outcome variables. In particular, group performance was affected by task-related and norms and rules acts while members’ satisfaction towards the collaboration process was affected by socio-emotional acts and member conformity.
There are several research implications of this study. First, since a process flow of the impact of gender and anonymity on group processes and outcomes has been mapped, research could further examine each proposition and test their relationship in other settings using quantitative methods.
Second, a major contribution of this paper is the identification of group processes that interplay with gender and anonymity. These salient intervening processes such as linguistic acts and the group dynamics, member awareness, conformity and leader emergence can be useful variables for subsequent research. Gender anonymity does not directly affect outcomes, rather these variables mediate or moderate the degree of performance and satisfaction.
Third, this case study can be complemented with alternate methods of analysis such as content — analysis to investigate the percentage of each pattern of behavior or quantitative methods like surveys and experiments to generalize findings to a wider population.
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Besides theoretical implications, this study has implications for practice. The evidence from the case data suggests several strategies in the management of virtual teams. This is illustrated in Table 4.
Nevertheless, this study is not without its limitations. First, the case study methodology while allowing researchers to understand “how” and “why” phenomena occur, can only apply to the specific context. Second, the current study used undergraduate students as subjects instead of actual management teams and findings may not be generalized to the real world. However, the study evaluated graduating students who were taking the MIS course, who could potentially be working in virtual teams.
Secondly, the teams chosen were not zero — history teams and their previous work experience could have dictated norms and rules such as in
Team C. However, the researchers did check with the participants about their previous work history and working norms during the interview. For the students that were friends before the formation of the virtual team, they replied that this was the first time they were working in a virtual team and they did not know of any predefined or implicit norms of working in such CMC teams. They previous worked with their teammate face-to-face for only one other project.
Finally, the study could have examined an anonymous, all-female team to complement the other cases. However, the researchers were unable to triangulate enough data for such a group. Still, based on the existing cases and the process model mapped, the paper already suggests group processes and outcomes for this case.
Gender and anonymity are indeed crucial in virtual teams, affecting group processes and per-
formance and satisfaction. Employing a multiple case study, this paper has illuminated several group processes such as team awareness and leader emergence that affected team outcomes. It has shown the salience of gender allocation and technological configurations (anonymity vs. identified) for effective team performance in virtual teams.