Banter, focus, and suitable monitoring: Perspectives on virtual team effectiveness

Abstract

This interpretive study examines how members of virtual teams experience Virtual Team (VT) effectiveness as a socio-technical accomplishment shaped by people, collaboration technologies, and enacted practices. Drawing on 37 semi-structured interviews with Australian IT professionals and analysed using reflexive thematic analysis, we identified three digitally mediated practice domains: temporal structuring (Focus Time), social presence (Workplace Banter), and visibility/control (Monitoring). Participants’ accounts suggest each domain can enable or inhibit effectiveness depending on calibration. Focus practices support deep work when protected by shared norms and legitimate signalling; lightweight social presence sustains cohesion and psychological safety when optional and inclusive; and visibility practices support accountability when transparent and outcome-oriented but become counterproductive when experienced as surveillance. Our central contribution is a socio-technical calibration account of VT effectiveness, developed through three specific theoretical contributions concerning calibration, digitally mediated practice domains, and enabling/inhibiting boundary conditions. We show that perceived effectiveness arises not from temporal structuring, social presence, or visibility/control in isolation, but from the ongoing adjustment of these digitally mediated practices in relation to one another. This account explains why similar collaboration technologies can enable effectiveness in some teams while inhibiting it in others. We extend VT scholarship by specifying how platform features and local norms jointly shape attention, cohesion, and trust, and we offer design guidance for focus-friendly, socially connective, and trust-preserving digital work arrangements.