Virtual Teams and Trust. Stanford Business Magazine has an interesting article on managing virtual teams, detailing both advantages and disadvantages:
“Task conflict,” Neale says, “is the conflict of ideas or controversy. And this is exactly the kind of conflict that is absolutely essential. It's the type of conflict we want to create and encourage in teams because it gets people to share their ideas. The battle of ideas occurs, and something better comes through the interaction?or else we wouldn't even have the team there.”
So the task of managers is to ensure that conflict about ideas doesn't turn into what Neale calls a “relationship clash.” Not surprisingly, she says, “virtual teams have a much more difficult time distinguishing the conflict of ideas in their virtual environment from the conflict of personal relationships.”