Exploring the Relationship between Personnel Factors and Structure Design Factors, Personnel Factors and Team Effectiveness in Virtual Teams

• Main Authors: Yu-yun Hsiu, 修郁雲
• Other Authors: Tzai-Zang Lee
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2008
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/45114421783936277322

碩士 === 國立成功大學 === 工業與資訊管理學系碩博士班 === 96 === Virtual team is a new form of organization. It offers unprecedented levels of flexibility and responsiveness, and has the potential to revolutionize the working condition. Many organizations are turning to virtual teams to help them meet the demands of the new and quite different business environment, and virtual teams are becoming an important mechanism seeking to leverage rare resources. On the other hand, macroergonomics is the newest aspect of the ergonomics dealing with human-organization interface. The central focus of macroergonomics is to optimize the structure of a work system, and it was clear that if companies were to be competitive, a more efficient work system structure would be required. Work system subsystems model, based on macroergonomics, was proposed by Hendrick and Kleiner (2001). Following, this study analyzed the characteristics of virtual teams based on work system subsystem model, and focused on the personnel factors and their relationships with structure design factors; also, this study surveyed the impact of personnel factors on team effectiveness. The research was conducted within the staffs of the member libraries of Nationwide Document Delivery Service (NDDS) and Consortium on Core Electronic Resources in Taiwan (CONCERT). Using canonical correlation analysis, positive relationships between one personnel subsystem factor (professionalism) and two organizational subsystem factors (formalization and decentralization) were found. Furthermore, the professionalism was positively related to team effectiveness. The range of findings do support the general statement that personnel subsystem is an important construct to consider in studying virtual teams. It is not sufficient for managers to simply develop some structural characteristics of a virtual team while ignoring personnel factors. According to the findings, the library consortia in Taiwan have lots of employees with high professionalism, and these institutes might aim to lower the formalization.