Assessing the effects of location, media and task type on team performance

Abstract

This paper reports an investigation into the relationship between the location of team members, the medium for team interaction and the task undertaken. The issue of task type has not been adequately addressed in the research literature, and it is unclear what role specific task types play in the interaction of teams, communication media and physical proximity. As this is the first study of its type to investigate these variables together, the investigation exploratory in nature. From the literature, it was difficult to derive specific research hypotheses, as much of the evidence is equivocal. In summary, the results show that there are:

• no statistically significant effects for location of the groups; • more interactions in the telephone-mediated groups; • differences in the task completion times regardless of media or location; • more ideas generated in the additive task by the computer-mediated group; • greater levels of satisfaction were reported with the discretionary task

These findings may help in the consideration of physical proximity and communication media when designing team work.