Pre-publication:
Enhancing Virtual Teams;
Social Relations vs. Communication Technology
Ton van der Smagt, Nijmegen Business School
A.G.M. van der Smagt
University of Nijmegen, The Netherlands
E-mail: T.vanderSmagt@bw.kun.nlNote: This is the pre-publication version of a paper that will be published in Industrial Mgmt & Data Syst. If you wish to cite this work, please refer to the final hardcopy version. The full reference is: Smagt, A.G.M. van der (Forthcoming), Enhancing virtual teams; Social relations vs. communication technology. In: Industrial Mgmt & Data Syst.
Abstract
Are virtual teams an adequate alternative for co-located (face-to-face) teams in case of complex, equivocal relations?’ Business scientists are predominantly pessimistic. They argue that ‘rich’ media - those that transmit higher levels of nonverbal cues - are necessary in these circumstances. In this paper a less pessimistic answer is formulated. Starting from the distinction between the report and command aspect of communication, it is argued that a better understanding of both aspects enables the researcher/adviser to change organizations (e.g. by replacing two-way monologue by dialogue and creating trust between parties) in such a way that new and divergent demands on communication emerge. This possibly allows us to drop the demanding face-to-face demands threatening the success of network organizations in general and virtual teams in particular.
Keywords: virtual teams, communication, equivocality, dialogue, trust.
Introduction
Network organizations are in the center of interest for two reasons. First, the need to increase their flexibility requires companies to concentrate on their core competencies and to cooperate with other companies in many fields. Secondly, the need for an increase in scales leads to mergers with (or takeovers of) companies in the same competence domain. Both reasons induce the need for intensive cooperation across organizational, spatial and political borders (Van Aken, et al., 1996).
The received view is that co-located teams offer optimal conditions for cooperation. However, as a rule, not many teams in network organizations are co-located; most of them are virtual. This leads to the question: ‘Is the received view right and are virtual teams no serious option for network organizations or are there organizational or technological solutions that make virtual teams an adequate alternative for co-located teams?’
As far as technological solutions are concerned, this question has been posed before. Business scientists are predominantly pessimistic. A characteristic position is the following: ‘rich’ media - those that transmit higher levels of nonverbal cues - are more appropriate in ambiguous or relational communication situations; ‘lean’ media are more appropriate in less ambiguous, routine situations (Daft & Lengel, 1984; see also Hiltz, Johnson, & Turoff, 1986). Nohria & Eccles (1992) conclude: "the viability and effectiveness of an electronic network will depend critically on an underlying network of social relationships based on face-to-face interaction." Likewise Schmidt (1994) notes: "articulation of distributed activities that involve discretionary decision making will typically require, at least intermittently, various negotiation processes. For this purpose, conventional co-located "face-to-face" interactions provide the required large bandwidth, not only in terms of gigabits per second but also, and more importantly, in terms of a rich variety of interactional modes with powerful and flexible social connotations."
It is posed, sometimes implicitly but more often explicitly, that face-to-face contact between actors is the ideal. Face-to-face replacing media should be ‘better’ the closer they approach this ideal. ‘Rich’ here means that no or hardly any ‘cues’ are filtered out. Because the current level of communication technology is far from this face-to-face ideal, most business scientists are pessimistic about the possibility to create virtual teams for non-routine activities. Consequently, they blame especially information scientists for being groundlessly optimistic about these possibilities.
Still there is enough empirical evidence for criticizing the claim that virtual teams - lacking face-to-face contacts - cannot adequately perform non-routine activities. At least the universal claim can easily be rejected but that is true for almost every universal claim. Therefore, it is more interesting to speculate about the conditions under which the face-to-face claim is valid or not valid respectively. In order to do that we should say more about the communication processes that are needed for coordination. Only a better knowledge and understanding of these communication processes will enable us to say more about the question under which conditions face-to-face contacts are indispensable.
How indispensable are face-to-face contacts?
There are good reasons to question the universal claim that face-to-face contacts are necessary in case of non-routine activities. A large number of examples of successful collaboration on complex, non-routine tasks that took place ‘at a distance’, is available. For instance, Schrage (1995) mentions several cases in the domain of scientific research, the arts, etc. Obviously direct face-to-face contact is not necessary in these circumstances, although the activity is complex and non-routine.
Still, in strong contrast to these findings are the reports of several researchers that stress the importance of actual face-to-face presence of people who participate in non-routine activities (Daft & Lengel, 1984; Nohria & Eccles, 1992). Even companies that take advantage of information and communication technology more vigorously than others, consider face-to-face contacts as being essential for communication. Senior managers of geographically dispersed firms are reported to spend much of their time on the road in order to meet face-to-face with their employees in local units. Especially people in management positions regard the electronic media as a supplement, not as a replacement.
How can this often-reported need for face-to-face contacts be explained? Gergen & Whitney (1996, 337-8) have an answer:
"When a communication is abstracted from normal contexts of interchange, it also loses its speech act potential, that is, its capacity to function as a definitive performative, an action in itself. The performative capacity of a given communiqué is often signaled at the nonverbal level by tone of voice, gestures, and facial expression. One knows the difference between a command and a suggestion, for example, not necessarily by the content of a communiqué but by the imperious tone of voice accompanying the former but not the latter …Consider the small, face-to-face organization. Here conversational representation serves as the major mode in which the realities of the organization are developed and sustained. The proverbial boss can initiate disciplinary power through direct descriptions …The reliance on conversational representation has distinct advantages in the face-to-face organization. It is wedded to a particular context or course of action, it is authored by a specific individual and directed to a specific other, it is accompanied by nonverbal signals and personal history, it is potentially sensitive to feedback by the recipient, and it can be directly monitored. In effect, the conversational mode is perhaps ideally suited to the generation of disciplinary power."What conclusions can we draw from this? That face-to-face contact is essential for most coordination processes? That would be a little premature because the function of the described communication is to initiate, as both authors call it, disciplinary power over people. Now one could say that the use of disciplinary power is a typical (if not defining) property of bureaucratic coordination. If that is true, it is the bureaucratic context that justifies and explains the chosen mode of communication and the need for face-to-face contacts. Arguments that underpin this proposition will be presented and discussed in a later section. If the proposition makes sense we can also speculate on the possibility that a different mode of coordination (a post-bureaucratic way is meant) will make new and divergent demands on communication. This possibly allows us to drop the demanding face-to-face demands threatening the success of network organizations in general and virtual teams in particular.
Communication; a brief review
What is communication more than just informing each other about attributed meanings; what is it more than just information processing? Bateson (1951) raised this issue several decades ago. In his view, communication has two aspects: a ‘report’ aspect and a ‘command’ aspect.
As to the first aspect, an order ticket from Sales to Production ‘reports’ what is ordered. It is this ‘report’-aspect that has attracted most attention and dominated the ‘communication’-discussion for a long time. The central question reads: is the meaning of a message (e.g. the report-aspect of the ticket) determined by the sender (e.g. Sales) - and is it the task of the receiver (Production) to reconstruct the intended meaning? Or does the receiver determine the meaning and does each message, because of this, have just as many meanings as there are readings of it? This latter, interpretive view is the received view by now. It states that although the semantics of a message (e.g. an order ticket) can be identical for all actors, it is still vague and equivocal. Clarifying the meaning of a message is only possible by specifying its pragmatics; this is the meaning of the message when used in a specific context. Where Sales, Production, Maintenance, etc. make up different use contexts, the pragmatic meaning of an order ticket will vary accordingly. Different pragmatics mean that there is no guarantee that parties will understand each other smoothly and leaves us with the question as to why communication in most organizations is still fairly successful.
Bringing forward the command-aspect is justified by the understanding that a ticket expresses more than just the report aspect. Sending a ticket is not only an informative action (‘this or that has happened’; e.g. customer X placed a new order) but is at the same time also a performative action. It is an action that is supposed to set things in motion; to bring about a desired state (of the world). Changing things is much more intrusive than just informing and understanding; it always effects the interests of parties. It is the performative element that differentiates the command-aspect from the report-aspect and makes it a fundamental addition to the communication-discussion.
If parties attribute different (pragmatic) meanings to the same message this is, according to the received view, caused by differences in background knowledge. A well-known illustration is the observation of a change of color in a test tube. For some this means just a change of color, for others it proves that a particular chemical reaction has taken place. This difference in attributed meaning can be explained by the difference in chemical knowledge and experience of the observers.
In a business context difference in knowledge has the same effect. If customer X can be persuaded to order a new product Y, this is for Sales ‘an interesting opportunity’ because they know that customer X is a trend setter and can generate more sales in his type of market. For Production the same order is problematic because they know it is an addition to the workload that is already high. For Maintenance the order comes too early and is a downright threat because they know they still have too little experience to guarantee a breakdown-free production process.
As long as communication only serves to inform, the possible misunderstandings following from the attribution of different meanings can be solved. The obvious solution is the transfer of background knowledge between the parties. Sales can explain to the other parties why selling the new product to this customer is so important and Production and Maintenance can explain their view as well. Although this is not always easy, sharing background knowledge is here the key to success. However, if a message is not only a report but a performative action as well, the situation changes substantially. Contrary to a report, a performative act always asks for some sort of justification. What this justification exactly implies varies from (organizational) context to context but there is always a right to assess the validity of the action. A performative act induces some form of emancipative behavior. Emancipation means in this case that the ‘receiving’ or ‘listening’ party not just tries to reconstruct the meaning of a message but has critical questions about this meaning as well (Habermas, 1984; Ngwenyama & Lee 1997). More in particular, receiving parties enter into discussions about the meaning as intended by the one who acts; this meaning is not accepted at face value. Possible questions are: why is the ‘incoming request for delivery’ categorized as being ‘an order'?, who was involved in this codification process?, which criteria played a role and how are these criteria related to communities of interest in the organization? Why are we (e.g. Production, Maintenance) not involved in the decision process? Can we not (re)negotiate the decision criteria? Obviously, Sales will ask similar questions if Production let them know that ‘they cannot deliver the same day’.
In an organizational context, where parties are expected to cooperate in one or the other way, the discussion is not only about ‘what is the meaning of this message?’ but also ‘can we accept the meaning of this message?’ Or still more to the point: ‘can we accept the definitions of the basic entities of our organization (the definition of order acceptation rules, the formulation of task descriptions, time schedules, cost criteria, quality criteria, etc.) that underlie the communications between parties?’
These questions by ‘emancipated’ parties add a political dimension to communication. Without the command aspect, communication seems to be a more or less neutral and technical activity that can be evaluated in terms of the traditional research methodological criteria of validity and reliability. The main objective is to create unambiguous mutual understanding and to reduce equivocality. With the command aspect, the objective is more than only the reduction of equivocality; we should evaluate it in terms of trustability as well. As long as mutual understanding is the only problem, trust is no issue. But as soon as constructed meanings have real consequences for other parties, these parties ‘discover’ their interests and take sides. And as soon as a party takes sides, trustability becomes a central issue. I will discuss this in more detail in a later section.
In conclusion: in this section we learned that communication has both a report aspect and a command aspect. This insight makes communication a lot more complicated. In addition to the information that parties need to get grips on the constructed reality of the various other parties, they also need information about the trustability (in terms of competence and positive intentions) of these other parties. This extra evaluation criterion has far-reaching consequences for our view on the role of information systems in organizations. From now on information should not only contribute to a right understanding between parties but also to mutual acceptance and trust. Both objectives can generate quite different information needs. In the last section I discuss these different information needs more specifically and examine their consequences for the possibility of coordination ‘at a distance’. In the next two sections, however, we first take a closer look at the report-aspect and the command-aspect respectively.
The report-aspect: two-way monologue versus dialogue
Discussing the report-aspect of communication, we assume for a moment that trust plays no role in the coordination of organizational processes and that disagreements follow from uncertainty and multiple understandings.
Multiple understandings, the most problematic of the two, is extensively discussed by Daft and Lengel (1984; 1986) under the heading ‘equivocality’. "Equivocality means ambiguity, the existence of multiple and conflicting interpretations about an organizational situation… Participants are not certain about what questions to ask, and if questions are posed, the situation is ill-defined to the point where a clear answer will not be forthcoming… Uncertainty is a measure of the organization’s ignorance of a value for a variable… Equivocality is a measure of the organization’s ignorance of whether a variable exists." (1986, 556-57).
According to Daft and Lengel, the way to reduce equivocality is to overcome disagreement between parties and to reduce ambiguity about goals, interpretation of issues and actions. They propose a number of structural mechanisms that fit along a continuum with respect to their relative capacity for resolving equivocality. It starts with group meetings and integrator roles (rich media with high resolving capacity) and ends with formal information systems and rules and regulations (lean media with low resolving capacity). ‘Rich media are more personal and involve face-to-face contact between parties, while media of lower richness are impersonal and rely on rules, forms, procedures, or data bases.’
The value of Daft and Lengel’s contribution is that it placed equivocality high on the research agenda of business and information science. That criteria, norms, and procedures in modern organizations are subject of permanent discussion was illustrated in the last section. However, their Information Richness Theory (IRT) – claiming that equivocality can only be reduced by the use of rich communication media – has at least two weak points. First, it makes no clear distinction between the report-aspect and the command-aspect of communication. Failing to do so, easily leads to a mix up of ‘understanding’ and ‘trustability’ issues. This is unwanted because equivocality is a problem of (bad) mutual understanding in the first place. The second weak point is that it tells us so little about the communication processes that should help to overcome disagreement and to reduce ambiguity. Characteristic elements of rich media like ‘direct feedback’ and ‘multiple cues’ play, according to both authors, an important role but how and under what conditions? Unfortunately, communication itself remains a black box in their theory. In this section I will open this box (at least partly) and distinguish between two types of communication: two-way monologue and dialogue. Discussing both types enables us to evaluate in the last section Daft and Lengel’s information richness claims and helps us to find an answer to the question whether or not face-to-face contacts are essential for team coordination.
First, what is a dialogue? "Dialogue implies more than a simple back-and-forthness of messages in interaction; it points to a particular process and quality of communication in which the participants "meet," which allows for changing and being changed (Anderson et al., 1994; 10)." This characterization is interesting because of the denial of the simple back-and-forthness character. Dialogue as a specific form of communication is often distinguished from ‘monologue’. In making this distinction, it is tempting to characterize monologue as ‘one-way’ communication and dialogue as ‘two-way’ but that can be confusing because a monologue can be two-way too, and still differ from a dialogue.
What makes a dialogue between parties different from a two-way monologue? In a two-way monologue each party knows how to categorize its environment, what meanings to attribute and how to act. The entire interaction is focused on either getting information (discovering the meanings as attributed by others) or on sending information (about one’s own attributions). Meaning is, in a two-way monologue, an a priori property. That is, meaning exists before interaction between parties takes place; it is an input to the interaction, not a result of it. Sales ‘knows’ beforehand what a new order means and the same is true for Production or Maintenance. Meaning is stereotypical; iterative change can take place but only afterwards, as a result of negative feedback.
A dialogue is radically different and can realize a much richer form of mutual understanding. Parties that participate in a dialogue reflect on the assumptions behind their own meaning attribution process and on the assumptions used by others. This reflection brings to light that meaning attribution is not directly related to the objectives that parties have but to the means they use to reach those objectives. For instance: if the objective is to attend a meeting, what is the meaning of an external event like a traffic jam? Is the attributed meaning ‘delay?’ The answer is that this does not depend on the objective (attending a meeting) but on the means we use to reach that objective. If we use a car the meaning is indeed ‘delay’ but if the subway is a viable alternative, this meaning can change completely (it can even be ignored).
An inherent property of means is that they are multiple; that is, there are always multiple ways to reach an objective. Reflection on this issue teaches parties that if they have a choice with regard to the available means, they have a choice with regard to attributed meanings as well. Furthermore, they learn that not only have they a choice but every party has a choice. Characteristically, in a dialogue, parties try to exploit this choice-space together. Although each party sticks to its own objectives, they decide in consultation about the means they will use to reach these objectives. Consequently, they decide in consultation about meaning attribution as well. This is done by matching the sets of viable alternative means (see Fig. 1).
Look at an apparently simple communications like ‘product X is ordered’ (indeed, the example of the last section). Is the attributed meaning (‘this request for delivery is accepted and considered as being an order’) an a priori decision by Sales that can only be canceled with compelling counter arguments of Production (negotiating, negative feedback loops, etc.)? Or is it a first option from a set of equivalent options that can all be chosen in consultation? Or, as phrased recently by Mandelbaum (1996) in an interesting case study (presenting an empirical interpretation of this distinction): ‘is [the order ticket] a unilateral proposal or a collaborative proposal? The same communication is in the former case a first step in a negotiation process between parties, in the latter case it is a first step in an open dialogue between the same parties. Both processes have different objectives and obey different rules. The former is a ‘two-way monologue’, the latter a ‘dialogue’. In a dialogue no meaning issues are decided a priori. Sales does not accept the order beforehand, neither will Production reject it. Neither of them attributes meaning blindly and in a stereotypical way. You could say that in this view meaning is not attributed by individual parties but is discovered between them. The advantage is that possible conflicts between attributed meanings can be omitted more easily than would have been the case in a two-way monologue (Van der Smagt 1997a; 1997b). Fig. 1.‘Two-way monologue’ versus ‘dialogue’. The vertical arrow symbolizes the matching process. However, this does not mean that dialogue is the obvious choice for people to communicate. It’s here that we should introduce politics (and the command-aspect) again. If parties do not trust each other, dialogue may prove itself as rather naive and unrealistic. There will always be the chance that one of the parties, probably the most powerful one, takes advantage of the situation and imposes itself on the other parties using their attitude of ‘open’ dialogue. So, what is needed for a dialogue is establishing trust. If we want dialogue to be a serious option for organizational communication and at the same time know that organizational form is an important determinant of trust, it makes sense to take a closer look at organizational form.
The command-aspect: trust and organizational form
Recent discussions about trust interpret trust as a two dimensional concept (Rousseau et al., 1998). Broadly speaking these dimensions concern expectations for the intentions and the necessary competencies of parties to contribute in a positive way. The critical questions about definitions and criteria, which we mentioned in the last paragraph, illustrate a lack of trust concerning the competencies of other parties to do their job in the right way. For instance, Production may doubt whether Sales has the competencies to make the right decisions about order acceptation. This means: Production (the truster) distrusts Sales (the trustee) on this issue. Giving an order or making a request implies that a party claims to have these competencies and this gives the receiving party the right to assess these claims. The same holds true for expectations about the intentions of parties. Each action in an organizational context claims (often implicitly) to be based on positive intentions. And again, the receiving party has the right to assess these claims.
The best way to understand trust is to see it as a property of the relationship between parties, not as a property of an individual. There is trust between parties if each of the interacting parties acknowledges the right of the other parties to assess the competence and the positive intentions of their acts. So, the right to assess is reciprocal and applies to all the parties that are involved. Often, trust is also restricted to certain interaction domains. This means that you can trust a party in a certain domain but distrust them in another. Trusting a party completely, on every issue, is rare.
Ngwenyama and Lee (1997) translate the competence and the positive intentions dimension of trust in four behavioral claims. Each act of a trustable party claims to be truthful, complete, sincere and appropriate. In order to find out how trust is related to organizational form, it is important to note that the rights to assess the claims of an acting party may differ between types of organizations. In this paper we discuss two of these types: bureaucratic and post-bureaucratic organizations. In bureaucratic organizations, the right to assess the claims of others is restricted to the criterion of appropriateness. For instance the question ‘are they authorized to command this or to request that?’ is all right but the question ‘is this a truthful, complete and sincere description of the situation?’ will often remain unanswered. It is only in a post-bureaucratic organization that the right to assess, not only on appropriateness, but also on truthfulness, completeness and sincerity is firmly laid down. Only if the right to assess all four types of claims is granted, do we say that trust is established.
What is the reason that in bureaucratic organizations the right to assess the claims of others is so restricted? Researchers at the London Tavistock Institute (Tavistock Institute, 1966) noticed long ago that in bureaucratic organizations with substantial functional differentiation a mismatch easily develops between technical dependence (induced by functional differentiation) on the one hand and organizational independence (induced by hierarchical decomposition and task-based autonomy) on the other. Under the conditions of functional differentiation, parties develop different interests and objectives. As noticed earlier, conflicting interests or objectives form no problem as long as parties have no difficulty with the coordination of their efforts to realize them. However, parties in bureaucratic organizations have been found to be less motivated to act in a cooperative way. A possible explanation for this lack of motivation is that parties in bureaucratic organizations are evaluated and assessed on the success of their individual contributions; not on the success of the collective effort.
Discussions about what motivates parties in organizations have a long history. Broadly, there are two views. In the utilitarian, goal rational view, objectives are either assumed to be innate or their source is simply left open. The institutional view assumes that parties motives are determined by organizational norms and values. For understanding both views, and especially the second one, it is crucial to have insight in the way organizational relations are organized. In this paper I distinguish two types: the bureaucratic organization (already mentioned) and the post-bureaucratic organization. Heckscher, to which I owe the term ‘post-bureaucratic’, characterizes bureaucracy as follows:
"For Weber, perhaps the central concept [of bureaucracy] was the differentiation of person from office: That is, jobs were defined by the needs of the organization rather than by the people in them. This was one of the most important breaks with prior tradition, when non-bureaucratic tax collectors, for example, had the job as a personal possession and defined it according to their own interests. Thus the key to bureaucracy is the rational definition of offices; it divides work up into chunks and holds individuals accountable for different pieces. In order to guarantee the functioning of the organization, each piece has to be clearly specified in terms of its duties and methods. The fundamental limitation of bureaucracy derives from its very foundation in the specification of offices: That is that people are responsible only for their own jobs" (Heckscher 1994, 19).Interestingly, this characterization starts with mentioning the reason why bureaucracy was ‘invented’ and was so successful at its introduction. That organizations protect themselves against unbridled self-interests of individual workers is reasonable and defensible. Analogous to the continuum between hierarchy and market - as the transactions cost theory describes it - organizations choose the hierarchy side if opportunistic behavior is likely and coherence and effective collaboration are threatened. However, the difficulty with bureaucracy is the way the hierarchical control of workers is carried out; that is, the way they are evaluated and assessed. In the bureaucratic type workers are evaluated primarily on the success and quality of their individual contribution; in the post-bureaucratic type this evaluation is primarily based on the success and quality of the joint project.Characteristically for a bureaucratic organization, responsibilities are hierarchically structured. This means that only management is responsible for the overall success and decides about what each individual member should contribute. The responsibility of the individual worker is limited to the choice of means; his output is prescribed. The effect of this distribution of responsibilities is that an individual team member behaves opportunistically. Because he is assessed on his individual output, a team member is only interested in other team members as far as they present constraints or possibilities which hinder or help him to meet the demands made on him. To worry about the overall success simply does not pay off.
It is unnecessary to say that this has negative consequences for the overall result. However, these consequences are especially negative because the responsibilities of parties are restricted to the choice of means. As we noticed in the last section, it is precisely for the choice of means that coordination between parties is vital. Opportunistic behavior (induced by bureaucratic management) can easily frustrate fruitful coordination.
In post-bureaucratic organizations the relation between parties is organized (in terms of structure and culture) in such a way that feeling responsible for the overall result really pays off (in terms of status, recognition, career opportunities, or payment). Simply doing your job is not enough; parties have to participate in finding solutions on the group level and are evaluated and assessed on that. This means that the individual contribution of each party – and the choice of means for effectuating this contribution - is decided and evaluated interactively among the parties themselves.
It is the insight that an actor is atomized - by evaluating his individual output, not the success of the collective to which he contributes - that forms the crux for understanding bureaucratic organization and subsequently presents the key for articulating a viable post-bureaucratic alternative. It gives us a sort of underlying mechanism that can explain what motivates people if they participate in organizations. The basic assumption of the new approach is a classic one: people consistently seek their own profit. The new twist in a post-bureaucracy is that one exploits this self-interest for the collective by making sure that self-interests are only served if the collective is successful.
At the start of this section I characterized trust as ‘expectations for the intentions and the necessary competencies of parties to contribute in a positive way.’ I noticed that these expectations are based on the right to assess, not only the appropriateness, but also the truthfulness, completeness and sincerity of claims of the trustee (the one to be trusted). It is now justified to conclude that in post-bureaucratic organizations this right to assess these claims can easily be granted. In a context where opportunism is systematically discouraged and cooperation is encouraged, the mutual assessment of claims meets no serious opposition. Granting the right to assess each others’ claims is in the self-interest of each party.
Virtual teams: relaxation of informational requirements
How does the foregoing relate to our main question concerning the conditions that make face-to-face contacts a necessary prerequisite for the coordination of virtual teams? The distinction between the report aspect and the command-aspect of communication suggests that we can split up the answer to this question according to both aspects.
As far as the report-aspect is concerned we made a distinction between two-way monologue or dialogue. How does 'face-to-face' relate to both forms of communication? Schein (1993) has the following interesting observation on dialogue:
"I became specifically preoccupied with the question of how dialogue was different from good face-to-face communication of the sort we learn about in group dynamics and human relations workshops… Most communication and human relations workshops emphasize active listening, by which is meant that one should pay attention to all the communication channels - the spoken words, the body language, tone of voice, and emotional content. One should learn to focus initially on what the other person is saying rather than on one's own intended response. In contrast, dialogue focuses on getting in touch with underlying assumptions (especially our own assumptions) that automatically determine when we choose to speak and what we choose to say. Dialogue is focused more on the thinking process and how our perceptions and cognitions are preformed by our past experiences. The assumption here is that if we become more conscious of how our thought process works, we will think better, collectively, and communicate better… Active listening plays a role in this process, but is not the central focus or purpose (Schein, 1993, 45).I conclude from this that face-tot-face (especially body language, tone of voice, etc.) is more crucial for a two-way monologue than it is for a dialogue. In a dialogue, the difficult part is to make one's own assumptions manifest; not the exchange of insights with others. The attitude in relation to other actors is one of openness; which makes it relatively easy to get behind the position and possibilities of other actors. In a two-way monologue the situation is different. The difficult part is here to reconstruct the attributed meanings by other actors. The point is not that actors in a two-way monologue hide or suppress information (that would make it a trust-issue, not an report-issue) but the simple fact that they act 'automatically' and often unconsciously. There is no reflection on assumptions, nor is there an explicit statement of possibilities that can be offered to other actors. Therefore the parties in a two-way monologue have no choice; only a careful examination of other parties and a reconstruction of their position offers a chance for successful communication. 'Rich' face-to-face contacts are certainly helpful here.For virtual teams, where face-to-face contacts are rare, the conclusion is straightforward. If you want them to communicate successfully, make sure that dialogue is their primary way of interaction and avoid two-way monologues as much as possible.
However, dialogue is not only an attractive way of communicating but a hard way too. That takes us to the command-aspect and the establishment of trust. How does face-to-face relate to this aspect? I mentioned ‘granting the mutual assessment of behavioral claims’ as the central element of establishing trust. How are these assessments made? For obvious reasons, a dubious way is to ask the trustee himself whether he is trustable or not. The best way is to collect background information independently of the trustee. Past performance is also a good indicator. Roughly, there are two options now: either the trusted parties grant the assessment of only appropriateness claims or they grant the assessment of truthfulness, completeness and sincerity claims as well. In the first case the organizational form is such that there is no trust and teams are coalitions between opportunistic actors (as is true for bureaucratic organizations). Because other parties do not allow the assessment of any claim (except appropriateness), parties have to reconstruct the position and the possibilities of other actors under rather difficult conditions. These conditions are comparable to those of ‘two-way communication’, however with the big difference that parties now deliberately hide or suppress information which makes the reconstruction task extra hard.
If you are uncertain about the intentions and competencies of other parties because they deliberately hide or suppress information, you have no other choice than to objectify them, model them and exploit every available indication to get a grip on them. In these circumstances face-to-face contacts (and other very ‘rich’ media), that provide for strategically necessary information about other actors (in terms of non-verbal cues, body language, etc.), will be essential.
If the organizational form is such that all parties know that their success is directly dependent on the success of the collective (as is true for post-bureaucratic organizations) and teams are no longer coalitions between opportunistic actors but can be characterized as partnerships, informational requirements will be significantly different. In this case much of the strategic information about other actors is superfluous. This offers the opportunity to match the choice of communication technology with the specific, from situation to situation varying, demands of the interaction relation. At times the speed of transmission will be important, at other times the nitty-gritty of the documentation is crucial. Sometimes the flexibility of the media is most important. However, no matter what is important, the conclusion is that the one-sided stress on very demanding ‘rich’ media (transmission of many and varied cues) has disappeared. Of course, no guarantee can be given that the currently available communication technology will match the reduced demands and make virtual teams a realistic option for non-routine activities but the expectation, however, seems realistic.
In conclusion, it is my contention that the one-sided stress in literature on the necessity of rich media seems to indicate the implicit assumption that communication is a two-way monologue instead of a dialogue and trustability is low. After all, transmission of as many as possible cues is most functional in circumstances where competitive relations prevail and detailed knowledge of other actors is essential. Recognizing the advantages of a change to post-bureaucracy and institutionalized dialogue opens the prospect of less demanding forms of communication and easier implementation of virtual, not co-located teams. This does not mean that there are no other (or even better) reasons to favor post-bureaucracy and dialogue. But our conclusion makes it easier to agree with the conclusion of the Tavistock researchers Higgin and Jessop in 1965: "initially asked to report on how communications might be improved we conclude that an improvement in relationships between the parties is likely to improve communications more effectively than any changes in communication techniques" (quoted in Newcombe, 1996).
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