Managing strategic contradictions in hybrid teams

Abstract

It has become a common practice to organize work teams to include members in multiple geographic locations. In contrast to co-located teams and purely virtual teams, these ‘hybrid’ teams combine face-to-face communication with computer-mediated interaction. In this paper, we report a qualitative study of management practices in three hybrid teams in one organization. We adopt the theoretical approach of strategic contradiction, in which apparently contradictory pairs of elements can be managed by attending to their possible synergies or clarifying their distinctions so as to make balanced trade-offs over time. Our data reveal four sets of paradoxical frames in hybrid teams: remoteness–closeness, cultural uniformity–cultural diversity, rationality–emotionality, and control–empowerment. In referencing these paradoxical frames, teams engaged in three cognitive processes: (a) integrating to produce synergies between opposing tensions, (b) differentiating to clarify distinctions between opposing tensions and to balance trade-offs over time, and (c) polarizing to remove tensions between opposing elements by using one element to reduce the effects of another. Both integrating and differentiating processes were found to be instrumental to sustaining contradictions as interdependent dualities, whereas polarizing processes were found to preserve contradictions as dualisms. Our findings advance the understanding of managing strategic contradictions by showing how managers influence cognitive processes that paradoxically emphasize remoteness and closeness, cultural uniformity and cultural diversity, rationality and emotionality, and control and empowerment.

Keywords:

• virtual teams
• hybrid teams
• dualities

Acknowledgements

The authors are indebted to Huoy Min Khoo, Carolyn Powers, Rebecca Rodecker, and Karen Lee Smith for their assistance in data collection and analysis and to Line Dubé for her comments on a previous draft. Financial support from Georgia State University is gratefully acknowledged.

Notes

1 All names are pseudonyms.

2 CYA is an acronym that usually stands for ‘cover your ass.’ The phrases ‘cover your assets,’ ‘cover your bases’ or simply ‘CYA’ in the interviews are colloquial expressions describing defensive uses of email.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Karlene C Cousins

About the authors

Karlene C. Cousins is Assistant Professor of Decision Sciences and Information Systems at the Florida International University. She earned her doctorate in Computer Information Systems from the Georgia State University in 2004. She teaches courses on Information Systems Strategy and Policy, and Electronic Commerce Strategy. Her research interests include the development of theoretical explanations for the consequences of the interaction of the social and the technical, as a result of the implementation of information systems in organizations. Her work focused primarily on the impact of mobile technologies on organizational structure and the pattern of work. Her work has been published in Information and Organization, Information Technology and People, the Journal of the AIS, the Communications of the AIS and the International Journal of Mobile and Learning Organizations. Additionally, she is a member of AIS and INFORMS. She is past Managing Editor of Information and Organization. She has served in several professional capacities including MIS Manager in the Jamaican aviation industry and Management Consultant in one of the top five consulting firms.

Daniel Robey

Daniel Robey is Professor and John B. Zellars Chair of Information Systems at Georgia State University, holding a joint appointment in the Departments of Computer Information Systems and Managerial Sciences. He is Coordinator of the doctoral program in Computer Information Systems and teaches courses on Qualitative Research Methods and on Information Technology and Organizational Transformation. He earned his doctorate in Administrative Science in 1973 from Kent State University. He is Editor-in-Chief of Information and Organization, former Senior Editor of MIS Quarterly and serves on the editorial boards of Organization Science, Academy of Management Review, Information Technology & People, and the John Wiley series on Information Systems. He is the author of three books and numerous articles in such journals as Management Science, Organization Science, Information Systems Research, Information and Organization, MIS Quarterly, Human Relations, Journal of Management Information Systems, Information Systems Journal, Academy of Management Review, Academy of Management Journal, Information Technology & People, European Journal of Information Systems, and Decision Sciences. His current research includes empirical examinations of the effects of a wide range of technologies on patterns of work, including the development of theoretical approaches to explaining the development and consequences of information technology in organizations. He is a Fellow of the Association of Information Systems.

Ilze Zigurs

Ilze Zigurs is Professor and Department Chair of Information Systems and Quantitative Analysis in the College of Information Science and Technology at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. She holds the Mutual of Omaha Distinguished Chair of Information Science and Technology, and also served as the founding Director of the doctoral program in Information Technology. Her Ph.D. is from the University of Minnesota. Her research examines design, implementation, and use of collaboration technologies, particularly in virtual teams and projects. She has published in such journals as MIS Quarterly, Journal of Management Information Systems, International Journal of e-Collaboration, and Group Decision and Negotiation, among others. She has co-published with Deepak Khazanchi a book on patterns of effectiveness in virtual projects. She serves as Editor-in-Chief of e-Service Journal, and was formerly a Senior Editor for the MIS Quarterly and Department Editor for the IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management.