¶ … collaboration technology can assist virtual teams in today's business world. As Andriessen (2012) shows, there are positive and negative effects to using collaboration technology -- what needs to be better described is how these effects are produced and why. Because of the still relative newness of virtual teams and collaborative technology (Gilson, Maynard, Young, 2015), it is essential to organizational success in the Digital Age that these concepts be understood as fully as they possibly can be. That requires assessing the nature of the relationship and how collaborative tech impacts virtual teams. As Fan, Chen and Wang (2014) note, collaborative tech has different effects depending on "creativity and idea generation performance" in the sense that "direction-giving instructions generate more ideas under the demanding feedback approach" while "receiving instructions with more empathetic language" results in "higher creativity performance under the encouraging feedback approach" (p. 421). This shows that collaborative technology and its impact is also dependent upon management skills and approaches. This is consistent with the findings of Sanders (2006) and Schyns and Schilling (2013), who show that leadership styles have a direct impact on how teams coordinate and conduct themselves at work.

Significance

This study is significant because the Digital Age has transformed the way the...

People think, interact, communicate and organize largely in a virtual world. Thanks to the Internet this sort of environment is possible but virtual teams using collaborative technology are also subject to all the shortcomings that go along with this new innovative technology and the dependency upon it that now exists.
This study will be significant for anyone using virtual teams and/or collaborative technology to facilitate organizational success because it will show how management styles play a role in the collaborative tech and virtual team relationship.

Conceptual Framework

The conceptual framework that this study will use is based on the idea that collaborative technology can assist virtual teams in achieving organizational success when utilized in the appropriate manner and with the correct approach.

The variables that will be assessed will be collaborative technology and virtual teams. The effect will be assessed by analyzing the impact of collaborative tech on virtual teams.

Statement of Research Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to assess the impact of collaborative technology on virtual teams.

Approach

The approach that this study will take is phenomenological. It will use both survey and interview methodology to collect data from virtual teams on their experience…