The Power of Introverts: Personality and Intelligence in Virtual Teams

ABSTRACT

Teams have increasingly turned to computer-mediated communication (CMC) to work when team members cannot all be in the same physical space at the same time, leading to the need to better understand what influences group performance in these settings. We know that team member intelligence and personality affect team performance when teams work face-to-face, but their effects are not yet clear when teams use text-based CMC, which has different characteristics than face-to-face communication. We conducted a laboratory study of 61 teams working on a decision-making task using text-based CMC. We found that team mean extraversion had a large negative effect, and team mean neuroticism had a medium-sized negative effect on team performance. Team mean intelligence had no effect. We recommend that managers consider the effects of extraversion when selecting team members and focus on selecting more introverted team members if the team is likely to extensively use text-based CMC. Likewise, managers should consider extraversion when designing teamwork processes for virtual teams; if a team has many members who are high in extraversion, the team should use text-based CMC sparingly. We also recommend that researchers use extraversion as a control factor in future research studying text-based CMC because extraversion has a large effect on team outcomes and, left uncontrolled, could increase unexplained error variance and overshadow the focus of the research study.

KEYWORDS:

• Virtual teams
• personality
• intelligence
• extraversion
• introversion
• computer-mediated communication
• team performance
• group performance

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. https://www.textrequest.com/blog/how-many-texts-people-send-per-day/

2. https://www.nexalearning.com/blog/bid/24544/six-startling-statistics-about-email-use

3. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/microsoft-teams/instant-messaging

4. https://wonderlic.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/WPT-REnglishSampleQuestions.pdf

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Alexander S. Dennis

Alexander S. Dennis ([email protected]) is a Ph.D. student at the Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland, College Park. Before beginning his doctorate work, he received a B.A. in Behavioral Economics from Indiana University and worked as a consultant at Bain & Company for several years. His main research interests are the effects and the development of identity and remote work.

Alan R. Dennis ([email protected]; corresponding author) is Professor of Information Systems and holds the John T. Chambers Chair of Internet Systems in the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University. His research focuses on three main themes: team collaboration; fake news on social media; and information security. Dr. Dennis has published more than 150 research papers, and has won numerous awards for his theoretical and applied research. His research has been reported in the popular press almost 1000 times, including the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, The Atlantic, CBS, Canada’s CBC and CTV, UK’s Daily Mail and Telegraph, Australia’s ABC, France’s Le Figaro, South Africa’s Sowetan Live, Chile’s El Mercurio, China Daily, India’s Hindustan Times, and Indonesia’s Tribune News, and many other well-known outlets. He is a Fellow and Past President of the Association for Information Systems.

Jordan B. Barlow

Jordan B. Barlow ([email protected]) is an assistant professor of business analytics in the Opus College of Business at University of St. Thomas (Minnesota). He received his Ph.D. from the Kelley School of Business, Indiana University. His two main research interests are collaboration (collective intelligence, CMC, and virtual group work) and behavioral IS security. He has published research in Journal of Management Information Systems, MIS Quarterly, Journal of the AIS, Group Decision and Negotiation, Information & Management, and other journals. Dr. Barlow has also presented his work at several leading conferences.

Alan R. Dennis

Alexander S. Dennis ([email protected]) is a Ph.D. student at the Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland, College Park. Before beginning his doctorate work, he received a B.A. in Behavioral Economics from Indiana University and worked as a consultant at Bain & Company for several years. His main research interests are the effects and the development of identity and remote work.

Alan R. Dennis ([email protected]; corresponding author) is Professor of Information Systems and holds the John T. Chambers Chair of Internet Systems in the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University. His research focuses on three main themes: team collaboration; fake news on social media; and information security. Dr. Dennis has published more than 150 research papers, and has won numerous awards for his theoretical and applied research. His research has been reported in the popular press almost 1000 times, including the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, The Atlantic, CBS, Canada’s CBC and CTV, UK’s Daily Mail and Telegraph, Australia’s ABC, France’s Le Figaro, South Africa’s Sowetan Live, Chile’s El Mercurio, China Daily, India’s Hindustan Times, and Indonesia’s Tribune News, and many other well-known outlets. He is a Fellow and Past President of the Association for Information Systems.