Motivation and Team Effectiveness: A Comparison of Face to Face and Virtual Teams in IT Sector

The advent of technology has brought about marked changes in the traditional structure of teams; face- to- face teams are supplemented with another kind of team, which is now known as virtual team. Humans have been collaborating across geographical boundaries for thousands of years, a phenomenon that is bringing the world closer, making work easier yet which is both problematic and complicated. Global organizations see benefits of collaboration across distance as a mean of providing focused attention to complex problems without physically relocating individuals. The objective of this study is to compare the face- to- face teams and virtual teams on the basis of motivation and team effectiveness. The relationship between motivation and team effectiveness, in these two types of set up has also been studied. The total sample size is 100, equally distributed in two types of teams face to face (n=50) and virtual teams (n=50) respectively. Motivational Analysis of Organization Behaviour (2002) and Team Effectiveness Scale (1997) developed by Udai Pareek were administered on the employees belonging to two different types of teams from various IT sector companies in Kolkata. Results revealed a significant difference between face to face and virtual teams on all the dimensions of motivation, except for achievement motivation. Achievement motivation seems to be not affected by the difference in space and time. The location of members and their interaction with each other produce motivation of dependence, control, efferent, affiliation and influence on the team members. A significant relationship between affiliation motivation and team effectiveness in face to face teams was found.