An Empirical Investigation of the Roles of Outcome Controls and Psychological Factors in Collaboration Technology Supported Virtual Teams

The purpose of this research is to examine whether outcome controls of group work (i.e. time pressure and reward) trigger psychological factors (i.e. distraction, motivation, and trust) and affect problem-solving virtual teams' ability to share information and develop high quality solutions. Results of a laboratory experiment on GSS-based virtual teams indicate that teams exhibited higher motivation and trust under time pressure, and both motivation and trust, in turn, have a positive relationship with information sharing and solution quality in ridge regressions. However, reward control has no significant impact on any psychological factors in both ordinary least squares regression and ridge regression.