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DesignIssues: Volume 38, Number 1 Winter 2022 55
Flexible Environments for Hybrid
Collaboration: Redesigning Virtual
Work Through the Four Orders
of Design
John Meluso, Susan Johnson,
James Bagrow
1 W. Richard Scott and Gerald F. Davis,
Organizations and Organizing: Rational,
Natural, and Open System Perspectives
(Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson
Prentice Hall, 2007), 159, http://www.
worldcat.org/oclc/70839752 (accessed
May 12, 2021).
2 See Nathan Rosenberg and L. E Birdzell
Jr, How the West Grew Rich: The
Economic Transformation of the Industrial
World (New York: Basic Books, 2008);
E. P. Thompson, “Time, Work-Discipline,
and Industrial Capitalism,” Past &
Present, no. 38 (1967): 56–97; Scott and
Davis, Organizations and Organizing.
3 Jack Nilles, “Telecommunications and
Organizational Decentralization,” IEEE
Transactions on Communications 23,
no. 10 (October 1975): 1142–47, https://
doi.org/10.1109/TCOM.1975.1092687;
and Katherine M. Chudoba et al., “How
Virtual Are We? Measuring Virtuality and
Understanding Its Impact in a Global
Organization,” Information Systems Jour-
nal 15, no. 4 (2005): 279–306, https://doi.
org/10.1111/j.1365-2575.2005.00200.x.
4 Shoshana Zuboff, In the Age of the Smart
Machine: The Future of Work and Power
(Oxford: Heinemann Professional, 1988),
cited in Chudoba et al., “How Virtual Are
We?,” 280.
5 Chudoba et al., “How Virtual Are We?”
6 For data on levels of change, see,
respectively, Erik Brynjolfsson et al.,
“COVID-19 and Remote Work: An Early
Look at US Data” (National Bureau of
Economic Research, June 15, 2020),
https://doi.org/10.3386/w27344; and
Liam Eagle, “Coronavirus Flash Survey
June 2020” (S&P Global Market
Intelligence, June 2020), https://
pages.marketintelligence.spglobal.
com/451-on-COVID19-Request.
© 2021 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
https://doi.org/10.1162/desi_a_00670
Introduction
Since the first industrial revolution, organizations have gathered
workers together in common locations in a process called agglom-
eration.
1
This move allowed organizations to share common energy
sources, tools, and goods among their employees, as well as to cen-
tralize logistics and increase worker supervision and control.
2
But
by the 1970s, the nature of work was evolving. Expanding use of the
telephone made “telecommuting” possible, meaning people could
collaborate without physically being together.
3
Tasks became “in-
creasingly ‘informated,’ turning a large proportion of corporate em-
ployees at all ranks into ‘knowledge workers’ whose tasks are com-
puter-mediated.”4 The need to remain competitive drove
organizations to acquire the best talent wherever those workers
were located, thereby guiding collaboration toward greater
“virtuality.”5
The COVID-19 pandemic conspicuously accelerated this
transition, shifting 35 percent of U.S. workers and 80 percent of
global corporate remote work policies from primarily co-located and
face-to-face interactions to virtual and hybrid forms of collaboration
within a few weeks.6 Nor has this sudden transition been temporary.
Nearly two-thirds (64%) of organizations report that “remote work-
ing is a permanent change they have made due to COVID-19,” with
a similar proportion (69%) reporting that at least 75 percent of their
workforce works effectively when remote.
7
Such reports are consis-
tent with long-held self-assessments showing the same.8 Increas-
ingly, individuals and organizations see the “liberating” potentials
of distributed work as it grants them newfound flexibility.9
Simultaneously, millions of people struggle with “flexible”
work arrangements. Even prior to the pandemic, information and
communication technology (ICT) adoption frequently yielded un-
intended or “dual” consequences
10
—the mixed effects of hybrid col-
laboration that increasing numbers of people now experience. For
example, while some people view Slack as a flexible lifeline amidst
DesignIssues: Volume 38, Number 1 Winter 2022
56
html?utm_source=spgisite (accessed
October 27, 2020.
7 Liam Eagle, “Coronavirus Flash Survey
October 2020” (S&P Global Market
Intelligence, October 2020), https://
pages.marketintelligence.spglobal.com/
rs/565-BDO-100/images/VotE_Digi-
talPulse-CoronavirusFlashSurveyOct2020-
Advisory-FINAL.pdf (accessed October
23, 2020).
8 Chudoba et al., “How Virtual Are We?”
9 Alexander Massey et al., “Location
Liberation: Adaptive Workplaces in
Government,” Deloitte Insights (blog),
March 4, 2021, https://www2.deloitte.
com/us/en/insights/industry/public-
sector/government-trends/2021/location-
liberation-adaptive-workplaces-govern-
ment.html (accessed May 18, 2021).
10 Ann Majchrzak et al., “Designing for
Digital Transformation: Lessons for Infor-
mation Systems Research from the Study
of ICT and Societal Challenges,” MIS
Quarterly 40, no. 2 (June 2016): 267–77.
11 Rani Molla, “Is Slack Ruining Our Jobs—
and Lives?,” Vox, May 1, 2019, sec.
Recode, https://www.vox.com/recode/
2019/5/1/18511575/productivity-slack-
google-microsoft-facebook (accessed
November 11, 2020).
12 Jeremy Bailenson, “Nonverbal Overload:
A Theoretical Argument for the Causes
of Zoom Fatigue,” Technology, Mind, and
Behavior 2, no. 1 (February 23, 2021),
https://doi.org/10.1037/tmb0000030;
and Geraldine Fauville et al., “Nonverbal
Mechanisms Predict Zoom Fatigue and
Explain Why Women Experience Higher
Levels than Men,” SSRN Scholarly Paper
(Rochester, NY: Social Science Research
Network, April 5, 2021), https://doi.
org/10.2139/ssrn.3820035.
13 Paul Leonardi et al., “Multiplex Appropri-
ation in Complex Systems Implementa-
tion: The Case of Brazil’s Correspondent
Banking System,” MIS Quarterly 40, no. 2
(June 2016): 462. See, e.g., Paul Leonardi
and Stephen Barley, “Materiality and
Change: Challenges to Building Better
Theory About Technology and Organiz-
ing,” Information and Organization 18,
no. 3 (March 10, 2008): 159–76, https://
doi.org/10.1016/j.infoandorg.2008.03.
001; Gerardine DeSanctis and Marshall
Scott Poole, “Capturing the Complexity
in Advanced Technology Use: Adaptive
Structuration Theory,” Organization
Science 5, no. 2 (May 1994): 121–47,
https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.5.2.121;
and Wanda Orlikowski, “The Duality
remote work isolation, others find its incessant notifications
insufferable.
11
People also report experiencing “Zoom fatigue.” Al-
though video conferencing certainly has helped people to stay con-
nected with loved ones and colleagues (in some cases the only time
people have seen others’ faces during the pandemic), spending all
day in video meetings can feel particularly exhausting, probably
because of increased cognitive load, self-evaluation, sensations
of intimacy, and reduced mobility.12 Of course, both of these exam-
ples assume that people have sufficient or consistent enough
internet access to collaborate remotely in the first place—a particu
-
larly challenging reality in many rural communities and develop-
ing nations.
Numerous works demonstrate that users “appropriate new
technology by adapting it to meet their needs, which may or may
not match designers’ goals.”13 Such appropriation occurs even in
the realms of relationships, the roles of others, and policies.14 At
some level, this process is both efficient and sufficient because
users “make things work” for themselves. In fact, “tailoring systems
to meet user requirements may prove impossible,” according to
Leonardi et al.; particularly as problems become increasingly com-
plex and as user populations grow “so diverse as to be incompletely
definable,” letting those in need appropriate designs in distinct
ways that work for them may prove more effective.15
That said, universal, inclusive, and feminist design advocates
would argue (as we do) for the necessity of at least working to in
-
clude everyone to mitigate inequity16—an outcome more often borne
by marginalized groups. Indeed, Buchanan points out that the
principle that underlies approaches like design thinking and its
growing appeal to organizations is the “quality of experience for all
those served by the organization.”17 For this reason and others, many
organization scholars call for the redesign of the work systems that
affect all those who work18—the systems of interdependencies
between tasks, processes, knowledge, skills, and technologies
that organizations require to accomplish their goals.19 In this case,
the challenges of redesigning collaboration “are not problems of ac-
tion but of reaching a new understanding of the purposes and
ends”20—namely, of addressing the needs of all stakeholders.
Fortunately, two bodies of work hold potential for address-
ing the conundrum of hybrid collaboration. The first is Buchanan’s
work on the four orders of design—symbols, things, actions, and en-
vironments
21
—which describes a trend long underway of moving
beyond the design of objects or tools and into the design of inter-
actions and environments. But for hybrid work specifically, the
past 10 years also have seen a consolidation of knowledge by schol-
ars of management, organizational communication, information
DesignIssues: Volume 38, Number 1 Winter 2022 57
systems (IS), and psychology about numerous aspects of remote
work—from cultural preferences for technologies to classic notions
of team performance. Hence, by reviewing the past decade of liter-
ature reviews on virtual collaboration through the lens of Buchan-
an’s four orders of design, this article proposes that designing work
systems as flexible collaborative environments increases the likelihood
of producing more equitable outcomes for organizations’ stakehold-
ers. To that end, the following sections detail the four orders of de-
sign and virtual technology implementations before describing our
review methodology. We then present the thematic outcomes of our
analysis, discuss them through the lens of the four orders of design,
and identify their implications for the future of technologies, phys-
ical and virtual workspaces, and even organizational cultures. We
find that flexible collaborative environments could leverage the ben-
efits of varying degrees of virtuality to make work systems more
satisfying for all those who interact with them.
The Four Orders of Design and Their Intersections
Identifying immutable foundations of design has proven chal-
lenging, and consequently, scholars have framed its means and ob-
jectives differently over time.
22
Some scholars approach design as a
science of considering “possible worlds” and selecting from among
the set of alternatives, whether for objects or organizations
23
; others
see design as making sense of chaos by distilling simplicity from
complexity
24
; others have cast design as efficient communication
toward behavior modification25; and some see it as a means of ef
-
fecting change in the world.
26
Of course, all of these views are accu-
rate in different ways and contexts, regardless of their somewhat
disjointed perspectives.
Part of the value of denoting the four “orders” of design is in
dialectically unifying these framings. Although the names have var-
ied in subtle ways over time, their substance remains largely the
same: The first order of design involves symbols, the essence of com-
munication. Symbols take many forms: Language, images, and be-
haviors all convey symbolic meanings.27 Classically, this order de-
scribes disciplines such as graphic design, audio, video, and
communication professions. The second order is the order of things
or objects, whether statuary, furnishings, vehicles, electronics, soft-
ware, etc. Industrial and product design certainly pervade, although
the order also comprises the work of engineers and artists of all fla-
vors, craftspeople, and marketers, among others. The first two or-
ders clearly overlap in that objects often serve symbolic purposes,
as with a child’s favorite toy or a tote bag that advertises support for
a local radio station and that potentially conveys an identity the car-
rier seeks to project. The third order is that of action and interaction,
of Technology: Rethinking the Concept
of Technology in Organizations,”
Organization Science 3, no. 3 (August 1,
1992): 398–427, https://doi.org/10.1287/
orsc.3.3.398.
14 Paul M. Leonardi et al., “Multiplex
Appropriation in Complex Systems
Implementation: The Case of Brazil’s
Correspondent Banking System,” MIS
Quarterly 40, no. 2 (June 2016): 462.
15 Leonardi et al., 471.
16 Kristin Skeide Fuglerud, “Inclusive Design
of ICT: The Challenge of Diversity” (PhD
Diss., University of Oslo, 2014), https://
nr.no/en/publikasjon/1183013/; Edward
Steinfeld and Jordana Maisel, Universal
Design: Creating Inclusive Environments
(Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2012);
P. John Clarkson et al., Inclusive Design:
Design for the Whole Population (London:
Springer-Verlag, 2013); and Catherine
D’Ignazio and Lauren F Klein, Data Femi-
nism (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2020).
17 Richard Buchanan, “Worlds in the Mak-
ing: Design, Management, and the
Reform of Organizational Culture,” She
Ji: The Journal of Design, Economics,
and Innovation 1, no. 1 (Autumn 2015):
17, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.
sheji.2015.09.003.
18 Kingshuk K. Sinha and Andrew H.
Van de Ven, “Designing Work Within and
Between Organizations,” Organization
Science 16, no. 4 (2005): 389–408,
https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.1050.0130.
19 Scott and Davis, Organizations and
Organizing, 21.
20 Richard Buchanan, “Branzi’s Dilemma:
Design in Contemporary Culture,”
Design Issues 14, no. 1 (Spring 1998):
16, https://doi.org/10.2307/1511825.
21 Richard Buchanan, “Wicked Problems
in Design Thinking,” Design Issues 8,
no. 2 (Spring 1992): 5–21, https://doi.
org/10.2307/1511637; Richard Buchanan,
“Design Research and the New Learn-
ing,” Design Issues 17, no. 4 (Autumn
2001): 3–23, https://doi.org/10.1162/
07479360152681056; and Buchanan,
“Worlds in the Making.”
22 Buchanan, “Wicked Problems in Design
Thinking.”
23 Herbert A. Simon, The Sciences of the
Artificial (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press,
1996), 117.
24 Jon Kolko, “Abductive Thinking and
Sensemaking: The Drivers of Design
Synthesis,” Design Issues 26, no. 1
(Winter 2010): 15–28, https://doi.
org/10.1162/desi.2010.26.1.15.
DesignIssues: Volume 38, Number 1 Winter 2022
58
25 Jorge Frascara, “Graphic Design: Fine Art
or Social Science?,” Design Issues 5, no.
1 (Autumn 1988): 18–29, https://doi.
org/10.2307/1511556.
26 Ilse Oosterlaken, “Design for Develop-
ment: A Capability Approach,” Design
Issues 25, no. 4 (Autumn 2009): 91–102,
https://doi.org/10.1162/
desi.2009.25.4.91.
27 Eric Eisenberg and Patricia Riley, “Organi-
zational Culture,” in The New Handbook
of Organizational Communication:
Advances in Theory, Research, and
Methods, ed. Fredric M. Jablin and Linda
L. Putnam (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage
Publications, 2001), 291–322, https://doi.
org/10.4135/9781412986243.
28 Buchanan, “Wicked Problems in Design
Thinking,” 10.
29 Buchanan, “Worlds in the Making”;
Buchanan, “Design Research and the
New Learning.”
30 The “system” metaphor makes an
important contribution even as it is
interchangeable with the “environment”
metaphor because it allows us to move
beyond a grounding in material space
and into a grounding in relationships
between artifacts of any kind, material
or not.
31 C. Marlene Fiol and Edward J. O’Connor,
“Identification in Face-to-Face, Hybrid,
and Pure Virtual Teams: Untangling the
Contradictions,” Organization Science 16,
no. 1 (2005): 19–32, https://doi.
org/10.1287/orsc.1040.0101.
32 John Schaubroeck and Andrew Yu,
“When Does Virtuality Help or Hinder
Teams? Core Team Characteristics as
Contingency Factors,” Human Resource
Management Review 27, no. 4 (Decem-
ber 2017): 636, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.
hrmr.2016.12.009.
which brings us to present notions of the design of user experi-
ences (with technologies and other people), services, and processes.
We might consider a business consultant who designs new processes
(or streamlines the old). Here, too, the consultant’s new process
likely involves interacting with some kind of information technol-
ogy on a designed device, the relevance of which would increase if,
for example, the process manipulated customized manufacturing
processes or open office workspaces.
Buchanan’s fourth order comprises environments or systems.
Interestingly, Buchanan further specifies that these environments
are “for living, working, playing, and learning,” which underscores
the unity of purpose or thought that guides a particular environ-
ment ’s desig n . 28 This order naturally lends itself to professions of
built environments—architecture, urban planning, interior design—
but also to professions of designed missions that draw more from
the systems metaphor—systems engineering, organization design,
and public policy, among others.29 As with the other orders, the
fourth often integrates the first three and, likewise, can be inte-
grated into them. For example, a public health initiative may in-
volve the development of recognizable symbols, the construction
of personal protective equipment, and the administration of vac-
cines, all oriented toward a unified mission of community well-
being—or the initiative might serve as a symbol of worthiness for
re-election—or both, depending on the “possible world” each indi-
vidual inhabits.30
Similarly, we can apply this logic to systems of virtual work.
Before we delve into this logic, we need to explain a language for
discussing some attributes of virtual work.
Terminology of Virtual Collaboration
Whether our teams are co-located in the same office, are distributed
around the globe, or involve a hybrid mix of the two varying by
the day, information and communication technologies (ICTs) play
substantive roles in most present-day work designs.31 ICTs have
significantly evolved in recent years, with the addition of team
chats, blogs, wikis, and, more recently, video calling, audio process-
ing, computer vision, and natural language processing among many
others. Technologies result in differing amounts of team virtuality—
“the extent and value of utilizing information and communication
technologies within work teams.”32 Here, value refers to the richness
of the informational content provided by ICTs, whether through its
synchronicity or asynchronicity. For example, integrating video-
conferencing into team interactions tends to result in lower team
virtuality because of its communication synchronicity and relatively
rich content; meanwhile, email tends toward higher asynchronicity
and lower informational quality. Virtuality produces mixed results
DesignIssues: Volume 38, Number 1 Winter 2022 59
for team performance, learning, adaptation, satisfaction, trust, and
identity, depending on factors such as team member skills, author-
ity structure, and how long the team has been together.
33
Further-
more, the continual evolution of teams through varying configura-
tions of remote work yields different experiences for different teams
at different times.
IS research also examines how teams accomplish outcomes
with technology by understanding the interrelated contributions of
the technical artifact and the social behaviors of people. This theo-
retical lens, known as materiality, asserts that while users of technol-
ogies exercise some discretion over how technologies affect their
work, technologies both promote and constrain certain activities,
based on the properties of the designed artifact.
34
(Here, an object
shapes interaction, and perhaps interactions shape interactions.)
Rice and Leonardi summarize how organizations adopt, use, and
benefit from ICTs: Increased adoption may arise out of “individual
(e.g., innovativeness and self-efficacy), social (e.g., influence), and in-
stitutional (e.g., top management commitment) contexts.”35
Materiality may resonate with many people who have found
themselves working remotely during the pandemic because specific
technologies, their implementations, and social uses often shape
such experiences—for better and worse. In general, a team’s or or
-
ganization’s network may expand from ICT use—for example,
through connections made via professional social media sites; still,
information overload can dampen the benefits of this outcome. As
the pandemic has made clear, the flexibility of “working from any-
where” juxtaposes challenges that may result from disruption of or
-
ganizational structures, work processes, differences in geography,
culture, professionalism, and interaction frequency. Readers can
likely recall similar tensions in their own careers.
Such mixed experiences bring us back to Buchanan. Our
designed work systems do yield outcomes of both individual and
collective good; neither individuals nor organizations would hail
their benefits otherwise! And yet, “if the purpose of design think
-
ing is to create the environments within which we live [and work],
the purpose is also to make possible the unity of the individual with
the environments that human beings create.” Many work systems
do not facilitate unity: seamless alignment between each worker’s
intentions and their means of fulfilling those intentions through
their work environments. Whether caused by “practical,” “intellec-
tual,” or “emotional” dissatisfaction, workers often find that “the
felt unity of an experience is broken, trust and confidence are di-
minished, and human satisfaction in the fulfillment of reaching a
goal is lost.”36 Hence, much of work as we know it only partially
“works.” To understand why, the remainder of this piece reviews
the established knowledge on virtual collaboration through the four
33 Chudoba et al., “How Virtual Are We?”;
Mei Lu et al., “Virtuality and Team
Performance: Understanding the Impact
of Variety of Practices,” Journal of Global
Information Technology Management 9,
no. 1 (2006): 4–23, https://doi.org/10.108
0/1097198X.2006.10856412; and
Schaubroeck and Yu, “When Does
Virtuality Help or Hinder Teams?”
34 Ronald Rice and Paul Leonardi, “Informa-
tion and Communication Technologies in
Organizations,” The SAGE Handbook of
Organizational Communication: Advances
in Theory, Research, and Methods (2014),
425–48.
35 Rice and Leonardi, 430.
36 Buchanan, “Worlds in the Making,” 19.
DesignIssues: Volume 38, Number 1 Winter 2022
60
37 Mathieu Templier and Guy Paré, “A
Framework for Guiding and Evaluating
Literature Reviews,” Communications of
the Association for Information Systems
37, no. 1 (August 2015), https://doi.
org/10.17705/1CAIS.03706.
38 The logical expression for this search is
“noft(virtual OR hybrid OR distributed OR
remote) AND noft(work OR collaboration
OR teams OR groups) AND noft(review)”
where “noft” means no full text.
39 Specifically, Stefan Jooss, Anthony
McDonnell, and Kieran Conroy, “Flexible
Global Working Arrangements: An
Integrative Review and Future Research
Agenda,” Human Resource Management
Review (August 27, 2020), 100780,
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.hrmr.2020.
100780 which deals with location rather
than virtuality.
40 Several articles distinguish between
professional- and student-derived
knowledge (e.g., Jennifer Gibbs, Anu
Sivunen, and Maggie Boyraz, “Investigat-
ing the Impacts of Team Type and Design
on Virtual Team Processes,” Human
Resource Management Review 27, no. 4
(December 2017): 590–603, https://doi.
org/10.1016/j.hrmr.2016.12.006).
orders. As our review shows, hybrid work systems need to accom-
modate individuals and teams alike, flexibly and simultaneously, to
fully facilitate unity. And in doing so, they may also create oppor-
tunities not currently afforded to existing work systems.
Review Methodology
For this work, we conducted a “review of reviews,” known in the IS
literature as an umbrella review or an overview of reviews, follow-
ing the procedure outlined by Templier and Paré.
37
We searched all
41 databases included in ABI/INFORM on ProQuest for reviews of
accepted knowledge about virtual work. In this search, we looked
for explicit review articles, meaning works that self-identified as a
review or meta-analysis of virtual, hybrid, distributed, or remote as-
pects of work, collaboration, teams, or groups.38
We screened for article quality by performing this search
within the Association of Information Systems’ “basket of eight”
journals (i.e., European Journal of Information Systems, Information Sys-
tems Journal, Information Systems Research, Journal of AIS, Journal of In-
formation Technology, Journal of MIS, Journal of Strategic Information
Systems, and MIS Quarterly), in addition to eight top management
journals (i.e., Academy of Management Review, Academy of Management
Journal, Organization Science, Management Science, Organizational Be-
havior and Human Decision Processes, Administrative Science Quarterly,
Human Resource Management Review, and Journal of Management) and
two relevant organizational psychology journals (Journal of Applied
Psychology and Small Group Research). We also limited the search to
the years 2010–2020 to ensure that our findings represented the most
up-to-date knowledge from the field, while allowing time for stud-
ies of different perspectives to accrue. Collectively, these searches
returned 30 unique articles. We then excluded articles that did not
self-identify as reviews or meta-analyses (e.g., Human Resource Man-
agement Review yielded several false positives because of the journal
name) or that reviewed an adjacent topic.39 Of the 13 studies that re-
mained (see Table 1), 8 came from a Human Resources Management
Review special issue on virtual teams from 2017. Finally, given our
interest in the design of hybrid work arrangements, we excluded any
findings from purely co-located settings.40
For the final sample of 13 studies, we recorded the theme
identified by the authors; associated the factors of each finding as
inputs, moderators, mediators, or outputs; noted their association
with individuals, leaders, teams, or organizations; and identified
the relationship between factors as positively related, as negatively
related, as having mixed effects, or as having no effect. Many of the
inductive thematic reviews cited findings for which only one study
supported the finding, so we included only findings with multiple
supporting studies to ensure claim validation. For instances in
DesignIssues: Volume 38, Number 1 Winter 2022 61
Table 1 | The 13 Review Articles Included in the Umbrella Review
Authors
Breuer, Christina; Hüffmeier,
Joachim; Hertel, Guido
Gibbs, Jennifer L.; Sivunen, Anu;
Boyraz, Maggie
Gilson, Lucy L.; Maynard, M.
Travis; Young, Nicole C. Jones;
Vartiainen, Matti; Hakonen, Marko
Han, Soo Jeoung; Beyerlein,
Michael
Handke, Lisa; Klonek, Florian
E.; Parker, Sharon K.; Kauffeld,
Simone
Hoch, Julia E.; Dulebohn,
James H.
Kramer, William S.; Shuffler,
Marissa L.; Feitosa, Jennifer
Liao, Chenwei
Marlow, Shannon L.; Lacerenza,
Christina N.; Salas, Eduardo
Mesmer-Magnus, Jessica R.;
DeChurch, Leslie A.; Jimenez-
Rodriguez, Miliani; Wildman,
Jessica; Shuffler, Marissa
Roehling, Mark
Schaubroeck, John M.; Yu,
Andrew
Schmidtke, James M.; Cummings,
Anne
Review Title
Does trust matter more in
virtual teams? A meta-analysis
of trust and team effectiveness
considering virtuality and
documentation as moderators
Investigating the impacts of
team type and design on virtual
team processes
Virtual teams research:
10 years, 10 themes, and
10 opportunities
Framing the effects of
multinational cultural diversity
on virtual team processes
Interactive effects of team
virtuality and work design on
team functioning
Team personality composition,
emergent leadership and
shared leadership in virtual
teams: A theoretical framework
The world is not flat: Examining
the interactive multidimension-
ality of culture and virtuality
in teams
Leadership in virtual teams:
A multilevel perspective
Communication in virtual teams:
A conceptual framework and
research agenda
A meta-analytic investigation
of virtuality and information
sharing in teams
The important but neglected
legal context of virtual teams:
Research implications and
opportunities
When does virtuality help
or hinder teams? Core team
characteristics as contingency
factors
The effects of virtualness
on teamwork behavioral
components: The role of shared
mental models
Year
2016
2017
2015
2016
2020
2017
2017
2017
2017
2011
2017
2017
2017
Publication
Journal of Applied
Psychology
Human Resource
Management Review
Journal of Management
Small Group Research
Small Group Research
Human Resource
Management Review
Human Resource
Management Review
Human Resource
Management Review
Human Resource
Management Review
Organizational Behavior
and Human Decision
Processes
Human Resource
Management Review
Human Resource
Management Review
Human Resource
Management Review
Review Type
Meta-analysis
Thematic inductive
Thematic inductive
Thematic inductive
Thematic inductive
Thematic inductive
Thematic inductive
Thematic inductive
Thematic inductive
Meta-analysis
Thematic inductive
Thematic inductive
Thematic inductive
Terminology
Virtual teams
Virtual teams
Virtual teams
Multinational
virtual teams
Virtual teams
Virtual teams
Virtual teams
Virtual teams
Virtual teams
Virtual teams
Virtual teams
Virtual teams
Virtual teams
DesignIssues: Volume 38, Number 1 Winter 2022
62
41 Julia Hoch and James Dulebohn, “Team
Personality Composition, Emergent
Leadership and Shared Leadership in
Virtual Teams: A Theoretical Framework,”
Human Resource Management Review
27, no. 4 (December 2017): 678–93,
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.hrmr.2016.
12.012.
which the object of study was not specified, the party enacting or
affected by a given practice was inferred from context. Furthermore,
statements about generic “effects” were designated as having
“mixed effects” on a generic “outcomes” specification. Following
the compilation of these findings, we inductively coded the findings
from each study, partially informed by the author-identified the-
matic categories. Our work shows that a significant majority of the
findings involve preferences and attributes that, in Buchanan’s
framework, we might classify as third order and fourth order, but
the findings vary significantly within most topics.
Results: Hybrid Collaborations as Environments
Following the procedure described in the previous section, we
identified a total of 243 claims made across the reviews that sat-
isfied the specified criteria. An inductive coding process distilled
these findings into 14 themes, which we gathered into 4 catego-
ries, as summarized in Table 2. The number of articles and the total
number of claims are displayed for each category and theme. Of
course, many of these claims are redundant because different re-
views frequently refer to the same articles; hence, these quantities
metaphorically represent the relative attention paid to each topic
(within and across disciplines) and the extent of nuance within each
category, rather than the importance of each. Also, although themes
can and do apply to multiple categories, we organized the themes
into personality traits, task expectations, task resources, and team
interaction because this sequence parallels both the progression of
a project and the categories’ demonstration of the four orders. Table
2 further describes the percentage of claims in which the factors
were positively or negatively related, in which there were no effects
or mixed effects, and in which a factor was identified as mediating
two other factors.
The findings of these studies are too numerous to recount
here in full. Instead, we briefly summarize the claims that fall
within each category and theme to contextualize their subsequent
consideration through the four orders.
Personality Traits and Virtuality
Projects often start by constructing teams. A review by Hoch and
Dulebohn provides, to the best of our knowledge, a unique synthe-
sis of organizational psychology literature.41 They describe the rela
-
tionships between the “big five” personality dimensions (extraver
-
sion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, openness, and emotional
stability) and leadership in virtual teams.
With respect to individuals, all five traits correlate with an
increased likelihood of that person emerging as a leader, and indi-
vidual leadership emergence correlates with team performance.
DesignIssues: Volume 38, Number 1 Winter 2022 63
Table 2 | A Statistical Summary of the Claims Identified in the Review Articles
Catagory
Personality Traits
Personality Traits Total
Task Expectations
Task Expectations Total
Task Resources
Task Resources Total
Team Interaction
Team Interaction Total
Grand Total
Relationship
1
1
2
1
3
2
3
1
4
5
1
6
5
1
1
1
4
13
13
Personality Traits
Job Demands
Legal Frameworks
Information
Technology
Virtuality
Communication
Conflict
Culture
Leadership
Task Interdependence
Team Building
Team Cognition
Trust
Inductive Theme # of Reviews
Theme Appears in
# of
Claims
25
25
8
8
16
4
7
6
17
50
2
67
34
7
4
11
10
185
243
Positive Negative No Effect Mixed
Effects
Mediates
80.0%
80.0%
25.0%
12.5%
50.0%
14.3%
50.0%
35.3%
50.0%
50.0%
70.1%
52.9%
71.4%
50.0%
36.4%
70.0%
58.9%
56.4%
37.5%
18.8%
25.0%
14.3%
50.0%
29.4%
32.0%
17.9%
2.9%
14.3%
54.5%
10.0%
20.0%
18.5%
1.5%
0.5%
0.4%
12.0%
12.0%
37.5%
100.0%
68.8%
25.0%
71.4%
35.3%
50.0%
7.5%
14.3%
50.0%
10.0%
5.4%
12.3%
8.0%
8.0%
18.0%
3.0%
44.1%
9.1%
10.0%
15.1%
12.3%
With respect to team composition, relationships become more
mixed. Several qualities (i.e., conscientiousness, agreeableness, and
emotional stability) are positively correlated with shared leadership
and team performance. Other qualities (i.e., extraversion and open-
ness) have mixed effects on both shared leadership and team per-
formance. For the most part, as virtuality increases, so do both the
likelihoods that leaders will emerge and that the team will share
leadership. That said, in cases where the team scores highly on
agreeableness, shared leadership tends to emerge more often.
In designing a team, managers might approach its formation
with a unifying thought of how to pursue a goal. We can assume
managers and organizations may have some control over the
personality composition of their teams, contingent on other
constraints—but only some control. People have unique identities
DesignIssues: Volume 38, Number 1 Winter 2022
64
with varying degrees of each quality (if people are even reducible
to the five traits), so we cannot assume that every manager (or any
manager) can form “optimal” team compositions. Nevertheless, the
result of forming a team is the design of a human system—an envi-
ronment of interacting identities.42 These identities contribute unique
values and interests to the system, embodied in the people we work
with toward goal-attainment.
Task Expectations
Gradually, teams construct both explicit and tacit expectations.43 In
virtual teams, these expectations can include anything from roles
and responsibilities, to social norms, to government regulations. The
several reviews that discuss this topic tend to describe what we
might call incentives or job demands and how their limitations and
subsequent rewards shape outcomes.
44
The majority of the findings
relate to teams, but the reviews also consider individual well-being
and organizational outcomes.
Beginning with individuals, constraints on a person’s job (e.g.,
time, role ambiguity) tend to somewhat decrease functioning, but
they yield mixed effects depending on the kind of constraint. For
example, virtuality is more constraining with short-term projects
than long-term projects. Mixed effects also exist with respect to
well-being and varying amounts of virtuality.45 In terms of team
constructs, such as task non-routineness and rewards, mixed in-
centives (i.e., rewards at both the individual and group levels) are
positively related to individual well-being and also improve team
performance.46 Problem-solving demands (e.g., difficulty) yield
mixed results for performance, especially when they are moderated
by virtuality. These demands, on average, decrease both perfor-
mance and trust. Perhaps a surprising finding is that the degree to
which a task is unique or non-routine can decrease trust in a team.
47
Legal frameworks increasingly prove relevant as teams be-
come more global, often resulting in uncertainty for virtual teams
because of the relative newness of virtual collaboration compared
to legal timescales.48 COVID-19 brought this issue to the fore as
workers who previously commuted across borders began working
full time in different tax jurisdictions. National and transnational
laws shape labor standards, safety, compensation, freedom from dis-
crimination, and other work aspects. Organizations also establish
“private law” that can affect workers’ rights and obligations (e.g.,
through contracts and adoption of international standards). Such
practices raise questions about the legal status of virtual and hybrid
employees and employers, depending on the borders crossed. Thus
far, “countries have not significantly adapted their approach to
determining the legal status of a [hybrid] worker as an employee,”
resulting in “significant ambiguity.”49
42 Fiol and O’Connor, “Identification in Face-
to-Face, Hybrid, and Pure Virtual Teams.”
43 Gilad Chen and Richard Klimoski, “The
Impact of Expectations on Newcomer
Performance in Teams as Mediated by
Work Characteristics, Social Exchanges,
and Empowerment,” Academy of
Management Journal 46, no. 5
(October 1, 2003): 591–607, https://doi.
org/10.5465/30040651.
44 Lisa Handke et al., “Interactive Effects of
Team Virtuality and Work Design on Team
Functioning,” Small Group Research 51,
no. 1 (February 1, 2020): 3–47, https://
doi.org/10.1177/1046496419863490;
Lucy Gilson et al., “Virtual Teams
Research: 10 Years, 10 Themes, and 10
Opportunities,” Journal of Management
41, no. 5 (July 2015): 1313–37, https://
doi.org/10.1177/0149206314559946;
and Mark Roehling, “The Important but
Neglected Legal Context of Virtual
Teams: Research Implications and Oppor-
tunities,” Human Resource Management
Review, Virtual Teams in Organizations
27, no. 4 (December 2017): 621–34,
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.hrmr.2016.
12.008.
45 Handke et al., “Interactive Effects of
Team Virtuality.”
46 Gilson et al., “Virtual Teams Research.”
47 Handke et al., “Interactive Effects of
Team Virtuality.”
48 Roehling, “The Important but Neglected
Legal Context of Virtual Teams.”
49 Ibid., 625.
DesignIssues: Volume 38, Number 1 Winter 2022 65
Design Requirements
We can think of incentives as objects to achieve or to avoid
that shape the processes (i.e., the actions and interactions) that indi-
viduals and teams design toward goal attainment. They also can
serve symbolic purposes for organizations. Likewise, legal con-
structs serve symbolic, objective, and procedural purposes. How ef
-
fectively these objects of achievement draw in—and how effectively
the objects of avoidance deter—depends on the alignment between
the incentive environments of teams,50 and also of the individuals,
organizations, and governments that construct or participate in en-
vironments both internal and external to a team.
Task Resources
Teams draw on resources to perform tasks and achieve their
goals. Resources are “aspects of the job that help achieve work goals,
reduce demands, or promote growth from the job demands–
resources model of work design.”
51
Although materials qualify as
resources, teams also make use of information, social networks,
skills, and tools.
Perhaps the most (superficially) intuitive resource in virtual
work is technology. Alluding back to materiality, different technol-
ogies have different effects on both individual and team outcomes,
depending on the context in which the tool is used and the user’s
experience with the tool.52 (Though, organizations sometimes sup-
plement experience with training to address inexperience.) ICTs are
related to numerous individual-level outcomes, including some im-
provements (e.g., reduced social loafing, increased perceptions of
leader competence, and satisfaction) and some degradations (e.g.,
decreased perceptions of productivity, decreased extra-role activity,
and increased decision time).53 Again, these outcomes vary widely
because many other factors moderate the effects of ICTs.
Information also plays important roles, with various effects.
Having access to more information can produce both positive and
negative outcomes. For example, certain kinds of information, such
as feedback about processes and outcomes, tend to correlate with
improved team functioning54; meanwhile, other information, such
as a person’s knowledge-sharing abilities, correlate with decreased
social network development.55
In combination, resources tell increasingly nuanced tales
through concepts like materiality. The choices involved in construct-
ing a team’s virtuality extend beyond the second order; they predi-
cate team processes through which people exchange information in
a web of exchanges that leave us with a combined virtual–material,
informated environment. This web encompasses all of our genres of
communication in hybrid configurations, along with the tools of
knowledge work.
50 These incentive environments might
rhyme with utility functions from
game theory or constraint functions
in optimization.
51 Handke et al., “Interactive Effects of
Team Virtuality,” 12.
52 Gibbs et al., “Investigating the Impacts
of Team Type and Design”; Soo Jeoung
Han and Michael Beyerlein, “Framing the
Effects of Multinational Cultural Diversity
on Virtual Team Processes,” Small Group
Research 47, no. 4 (August 1, 2016):
351–83, https://doi.org/10.1177/
1046496416653480; and Gilson et al.,
“Virtual Teams Research.”
53 Gilson et al., “Virtual Teams Research.”
54 Handke et al., “Interactive Effects of
Team Virtuality.”
55 Han and Beyerlein, “Framing the Effects
of Multinational Cultural Diversity.”
DesignIssues: Volume 38, Number 1 Winter 2022
66
One major resource obviously is missing here: “The team”
also serves as a resource. We consider its myriad interactions next.
Team Interaction
Teams play such important roles in current work designs that we
practically take their existence for granted. Unequivocally, they are
incredibly complex.
56
Our review identified eight themes that natu-
rally arise in literature on virtual team interactions: communication,
conflict, culture, leadership, task interdependence, team building,
team cognition, and trust. Here, we address three of the themes
briefly because, in most cases, each theme carries a mix of positive
and negative relationships, mediators, and moderators, as demon-
strated by the relationship percentages shown in Table 2.
The research on communication primarily describes relation-
ships that connect either individual- or team-level inputs (e.g., fre-
quency, timeliness, virtuality, skill level) to individual- or team-level
outputs (e.g., performance, trust, satisfaction, innovation, identity).
These relationships are often mediated (e.g., by uniqueness, open-
ness, privacy, temporal stability, authority, virtuality) or moderated
(e.g., by virtuality, task complexity, skill) by other constructs.
57
In our
analysis, 50% of the claims identify positive relationships between
the input and output, 32% identify negative relationships, and 18%
identify nuance in how relationships are mediated.
Much of the culture-related research considers diversity
based on geographic dispersion or national origin.58 Kramer et al.
conduct a unique review of cultural typologies, including Hofstede’s
cultural dimensions, Triandis’s cultural typology, Trompenaars’s
cultural differences, high–low context cultures, and tight vs. loose
cultures.
59
Several studies also consider topics of subgroup forma-
tion, language barriers, and workplace harassment.60 Each of these
cultures are then related to greatly varied outcomes, including more
pervasive constructs (e.g., team performance) as well as more cul-
ture-related outcomes (e.g., team identification, tool preference by
culture, coordination difficulty, subgroup formation, conflict). Here,
70% of the findings describe positive relationships between the
input and output, 18% report negative relationships, and 8% report
mixed effects. Many of the positive items describe cultural prefer-
ences for high or low tool synchronicity, compliance with the au-
thoritative figure’s choices, and reliance on virtual tools. Collec-
tively, these findings demonstrate that a “one size fits all” work
design is unlikely to prove fruitful.
Finally, we consider trust, which is one of the most widely
studied topics in virtual teams and consistently results in mixed
findings.
61
Initially, many of the findings seem intuitive: Team trust
is positively correlated with performance, as is individual trust with
increased communication. However, particular communicative be-
haviors reveal mixed relations to team trust, thus adding nuance,
56 Holly Arrow et al., Small Groups as Com-
plex Systems: Formation, Coordination,
Development, and Adaptation (Thousand
Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2000),
https://doi.org/10.4135/9781452204666.
57 Han and Beyerlein, “Framing the Effects
of Multinational Cultural Diversity”;
Shannon Marlow et al., “Communication
in Virtual Teams: A Conceptual Frame-
work and Research Agenda,” Human
Resource Management Review 27, no. 4
(December 2017): 575–89, https://doi.
org/10.1016/j.hrmr.2016.12.005; Jessica
Mesmer-Magnus and Leslie DeChurch,
“Information Sharing and Team Perfor-
mance: A Meta-Analysis,” Journal of
Applied Psychology 94, no. 2 (2009):
535–46, https://doi.org/10.1037/
a0013773; Roehling, “The Important
but Neglected Legal Context of Virtual
Teams”; Schaubroeck and Yu, “When
Does Virtuality Help or Hinder Teams?”
58 Gibbs et al., “Investigating the Impacts
of Team Type and Design”; Gilson et al.,
“Virtual Teams Research”; and Han
and Beyerlein, “Framing the Effects of
Multinational Cultural Diversity.”
59 William Kramer et al., “The World Is
Not Flat: Examining the Interactive
Multidimensionality of Culture and
Virtuality in Teams,” Human Resource
Management Review, Virtual Teams in
Organizations, 27, no. 4 (December
2017): 604–20, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.
hrmr.2016.12.007.
60 Gibbs et al., “Investigating the Impacts
of Team Type and Design”; Gilson et al.,
“Virtual Teams Research”; Roehling, “The
Important but Neglected Legal Context of
Virtual Teams.”
61 Christina Breuer, Joachim Hüffmeier,
and Guido Hertel, “Does Trust Matter
More in Virtual Teams? A Meta-Analysis
of Trust and Team Effectiveness Consid-
ering Virtuality and Documentation as
Moderators,” Journal of Applied
Psychology 101, no. 8 (2016): 1151–77,
https://doi.org/10.1037/apl0000113;
Gilson et al., “Virtual Teams Research”;
Han and Beyerlein, “Framing the Effects
of Multinational Cultural Diversity”;
Roehling, “The Important but Neglected
Legal Context of Virtual Teams.”
DesignIssues: Volume 38, Number 1 Winter 2022 67
even as qualities such as building trust early, using a positive tone,
and knowledge sharing are positively related to building “swift
trust” in shorter term teams.
These samples from communication, culture, and trust pro-
vide a subset of the complexity imbuing team interaction. Concur-
rently, they call into question the notion of a singular design because
team environments—human systems of interaction—necessarily in-
volve heterogeneous identities, incentives, and information. Next,
we address the challenge of advancing toward work systems that
achieve unity between their environments.
Discussion
Multiple systems of work artifacts underlie virtual collaboration.
Our understanding of work systems grows more complex as we
frame environments of identities, incentives, information, and oth-
ers as interacting, “nested within another and another, stretching all
of the way from the goods and services provided to the customer to
the top of organizational leadership,” says Buchanan.
62
(Appropri-
ately, Buchanan is describing organizational culture in this quote,
which itself is a socially constructed environment.) In this work, we
have described hybrid collaboration as overlapping, sociotechnical,
co-constructed environments that collectively form a hybrid work
environment in which humans shape humans, who shape technol-
ogy, that shapes humans.
Work environments cannot be static, singular constructs if
we seek to achieve unity between heterogeneous stakeholders. That
said, adopting “plural” designs likely would expect minorities of all
kinds to assimilate into dominant norms and would not create unity
either. Instead, according to Nishii, “the key to moving from a plu-
ral organization to an inclusive one is to alter the sociorelational con-
text[, the environment] within which heterogeneous individuals in-
teract.”
63
We must strive for work systems that are flexible enough to
facilitate personalization, purposefully designing in ways by which
workers can “appropriate” work designs. This reorientation is a log-
ical outgrowth of various research streams on structural flexibility,
digital innovation, flexible technologies, and organization design,
among others.
64
Therefore, we propose that work systems designed
as flexible collaborative environments are more likely to approach unity
among work, worker, team, and organization.
Designing flexible environments requires more than techni-
cal acumen alone. Note that all 13 review articles appeared in man-
agement journals.
65
Such reviews “highlight the need for theory and
research to inform organizations in designing, structuring, and
managing virtual teams.”66 This vantage point clarifies that although
flexible collaborative environments likely will involve technology,
managers play pivotal roles as environmental designers of tasks,
team interactions, and (hopefully, more inclusive) organizational
62 Buchanan, “Worlds in the Making,” 20.
63 Lisa H. Nishii, “The Benefits of Climate
for Inclusion for Gender-Diverse Groups,”
Academy of Management Journal 56, no.
6 (October 9, 2012): 1754, https://doi.
org/10.5465/amj.2009.0823.
64 See, respectively, Seyed M. Iravani et al.,
“Structural Flexibility: A New Perspective
on the Design of Manufacturing and Ser-
vice Operations,” Management Science
51, no. 2 (February 2005): 151–66,
https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.1040.0333;
Rajiv Kohli and Nigel Melville, “Digital
Innovation: A Review and Synthesis,”
Information Systems Journal 29, no. 1
(January 2019): 200–23, https://doi.
org/10.1111/isj.12193; Paul Leonardi,
“When Flexible Routines Meet Flexible
Technologies: Affordance, Constraint,
and the Imbrication of Human and
Material Agencies,” MIS Quarterly 35,
no. 1 (March 2011): 147–67, https://
doi.org/10.2307/23043493; and Saras
Sarasvathy et al., “Designing Organiza-
tions That Design Environments: Lessons
from Entrepreneurial Expertise,” Organi-
zation Studies 29, no. 3 (March 1, 2008):
331–50, https://doi.org/10.1177/017084
0607 088017. Additional sources include
Jason Robbins et al., “Extending Design
Environments to Software Architecture
Design,” Automated Software Engineer-
ing 5, no. 3 (July 1998): 261–90, https://
doi.org/10.1023/A:1008652607643;
Thomas Ludwig et al., “Designing for
Collaborative Infrastructuring: Supporting
Resonance Activities,” Proceedings of
the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction
2, no. CSCW (November 2018): 1–29,
https://doi.org/10.1145/3274382; M.
Cecília Baranauskas and Vania Paula de
Almeida Neris, “Using Patterns to
Support the Design of Flexible User Inter-
action,” in Human-Computer Interaction:
Interaction Design and Usability, ed.
Julie Jacko, Lecture Notes in Computer
Science (Berlin: Springer, 2007), 1033–
42, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-
73105-4_113; Wendy Mackay, “Triggers
and Barriers to Customizing Software,”
in Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference
on Human Factors in Computing Systems
(New York: ACM, 1991), 153–60, https://
doi.org/10.1145/108844.108867; and
Joanna McGrenere et al., “A Field Evalu-
ation of an Adaptable Two-Interface
Design for Feature-Rich Software,” ACM
Transactions on Computer-Human Inter-
action 14, no. 1 (May 2007): 3-es, https://
doi.org/10.1145/1229855.1229858..
DesignIssues: Volume 38, Number 1 Winter 2022
68
cultures. Novel managerial designs should consider identities, in-
centives, information, and their interactions as organizations pur-
sue productivity, innovation, and talent retention. Crucially, work
design processes are more likely to create unity if they involve par-
ticipatory co-creation with workers instead of merely designing for
them. “Imposed” work designs are likely to foster dissent, rather
than the unity that can be derived from co-creation with employ-
ees.67 Consider how the increasing pervasiveness of “gig work” tends
to achieve organizational flexibility, but it comes at the expense of
workers, rather than by empowering workers to substantively co-
create customized work environments that benefit everyone.68
To some extent, we already see organizations trending toward
“unifying” environments: Products like Slack, Microsoft Teams, and
GSuite tout their abilities to streamline team processes through a
central hub often located “in the cloud.” But even purpose-built plat-
forms often fail to address objectives of unity.69 These largely nor-
mative platforms’ singular and plural designs evidently yield mixed
results and hence less unity, thereby sustaining a need for more flex-
ible environments.
Given our review, designers and researchers can prioritize
the need to identify ways in which they can construct flexibility,
using the themes we identify in Table 2 as a starting point. For ex-
ample, consider the intersection of communication, virtuality, and
technology. Many of today’s video technologies visually and audi-
torily place speakers and non-speakers in ways that prioritize extra-
version and likely yield Zoom fatigue.70 Some research explores con-
structing entirely virtual three-dimensional environments as
solutions,
71
although these experiences at present are bandwidth-in-
tensive and still buggy.72
Despite its relatively low virtuality, even video communica-
tion involves numerous forms of “noise” that materially shape the
symbolic meanings we glean from one another. Are there ways to
use computer vision, audio processing, and natural language pro-
cessing to build in additional flexibility for both co-located and re-
mote workers? Videoconferencing software has already begun to
address background noise in real time, which grants more flexi-
bility to working parents with children at home.
73
Meanwhile, live
speech synthesis may provide transcription that facilitates greater
accessibility, as well as possibilities for overcoming audio and video
garbling through reduced bandwidth requirements; for inferring
employee satisfaction; and for collecting data that describes work
patterns as social networks. These relatively novel forms of data col-
lection could help managers identify network connections that are
beneficial to individuals and teams (as social network sites do), and
perhaps new organizational structures.
65 Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for
this observation.
66 James Dulebohn and Julia Hoch,
“Virtual Teams in Organizations,” Human
Resource Management Review 27, no. 4
(2017): 569, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.
hrmr.2016.12.004.
67 See, e.g., Thompson, “Time, Work-
Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism”;
and D’Ignazio and Klein, Data Feminism.
68 See, e.g., Jeremias Prassl, Humans as a
Service: The Promise and Perils of Work
in the Gig Economy (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2018); M. Graham et al.,
“The Risks and Rewards of Online Gig
Work at the Global Margins,” 2017,
https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:8c791
d5a-e3a5-4a59-9b93-fbabea881554;
and Thomas Kohler et al., “Co-Creation
in Virtual Worlds: The Design of the User
Experience,” MIS Quarterly 35, no. 3
(September 2011): 773–88, https://doi.
org/10.2307/23042808.
69 See, e.g., Kohli and Melville, “Digital
Innovation.”
70 Much of face-to-face communication also
favors extraversion, but abilities to move
and choose who or what we focus on
alleviate this favoritism to some degree.
There is a need to recognize that even
face-to-face interaction, as constructed
today, can leave introverts with few
comfortable ways to engage. Bailenson,
“Nonverbal Overload.”
71 See, e.g., Kohler et al., “Co-Creation in
Virtual Worlds”; Akshay Bhagwatwar et
al., “Contextual Priming and the Design
of 3D Virtual Environments to Improve
Group Ideation,” Information Systems
Research 29, no. 1 (March 2018):
169–85, https://doi.org/10.1287/
isre.2017.0721; and Andreas Schmeil et
al., “A Structured Approach for Designing
Collaboration Experiences for Virtual
Worlds,” Journal of the Association for
Information Systems 13, no. 10 (October
2012): 836–60.
72 Stacey Vanek Smith and Cardiff Garcia,
“The Virtual Office,” Podcast, The
Indicator from Planet Money, March 31,
2021, https://www.npr.
org/2021/03/31/983097569/the-virtual-
office (accessed March 31, 2021).
73 Ron Amadeo, “Google Meet Takes on
Zoom with AI-Powered Noise Cancella-
tion,” Ars Technica, June 9, 2020,
https://arstechnica.com/gad-
gets/2020/06/google-meet-takes-on-
zoom-with-ai-powered-noise-cancella-
tion/ (accessed June 27, 2020).
DesignIssues: Volume 38, Number 1 Winter 2022 69
On a cautionary note, we are not saying that any of these
features is necessarily “better.” Materiality acknowledges trade-
offs, along with potential benefits; trade-offs in this case might
include automating away historically devalued actions, such as re-
cordkeeping, increased computing needs, and privacy concerns.
Nevertheless, by designing work environments for flexible interac-
tion—and in doing so, integrating symbols, objects, and actions—
we still may provide workers with the customizability they need to
experiment with solutions that appeal to their unique social, tech-
nical, and legal positionalities.
To be clear, this opportunity extends beyond recreating yes-
terday’s work systems. Instead, designers can provide the greatest
value by working in interdisciplinary ways with researchers and
practitioners, managers and gig workers, to understand the under-
lying fundamental objectives of work and by thinking broadly about
how to achieve these objectives—from creating psychologically safe
and inclusive cultures to promoting innovation.
74
Pandemic lock-
downs revealed that many people actually value the opportunity to
build relationships with colleagues and develop shared culture. Peo-
ple often find fundamental value in the depths and breadths of
human connection afforded by the action of doing work with
others. Incorporating the situated knowledge of individuals and
collectives will prove necessary for our new work systems to stand
the test of time. Even better, it may capitalize on a plethora of novel
hybrid capabilities toward greater flexibility for all.
Countless possibilities remain. Reading this article may have
brought to mind experiences of the reader’s own that went surpris-
ingly poorly, or surprisingly well. Growing accustomed to the chal-
lenges of hybrid work does not innately justify its perpetuation. But
with all their liberations and frustrations, pandemic-necessitated
changes generated an impetus to develop prototypes of flexible en-
vironments for hybrid collaboration. Informed by the pandemic, we
can proceed intentionally toward a thought of unity between het-
erogeneous work, workers, teams, and organizations, and toward a
more satisfying future for all.
Funding
This work is supported by Google Open Source under the Open
Source Complex Ecosystems And Networks (OCEAN) project. Any
opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed
in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily re-
flect the views of Google Open Source.
74 Markus Baer and Michael Frese,
“Innovation Is Not Enough: Climates
for Initiative and Psychological
Safety, Process Innovations, and Firm
Performance,” Journal of Organizational
Behavior 24, no. 1 (2003): 45–68, https://
doi.org/10.1002/job.179; and Nishii,
“The Benefits of Climate for Inclusion
for Gender-Diverse Groups.”
