  There has been a transformation from individual work to team work in the last
few decades (Ilgen, 1999), and many organizations use teams for many activities
done by individuals in the past (Boyett & Conn, 1992 ; Katzenbach & Smith,
1993). In recent years, there has been a renewed interest in computer-mediated
groups because of the increases in globalization of business operations leading
to geographically dispersed executives and decision makers. However, what seems
to be lacking is some focus in terms of problem settings and corresponding
tools to support collaborative decision making. The research question of this
study deals with the dynamics of virtual teams' members. A model, suggesting
that team dynamics can increase the teams' output, is presented, and a
methodology to examine the model is illustrated. An experiment was performed,
in which subjects, who were grouped into teams, had to share information in
order to complete a task. The findings indicate that the social aspect of the
virtual team's discussion is negative than the social aspect of the
face-to-face team's discussion, and that the virtual team's output is inferior
to the face-to-face team's output. The virtual team is a common way of working
nowadays, and with the growing use of Internet applications and firms'
globalization it will expand in the future. Thus, the importance of the
theoretical and practical implementation of the research will be discussed.
