The gender impact of temporary virtual work groups

Much knowledge work involves temporary work teams. Increasingly, these teams are not face-to-face but virtual teams. The paper explores the gender impact of virtual collaboration as compared to face-to-face teams. Descriptive statistics are used to show the different perceptions of the group experience based on gender and on face-to-face versus virtual team experiences. Women in the virtual groups perceived that the group stuck together more and helped each other more than did the men. Also, the women were more satisfied with the virtual group than men and felt that group conflict was readily resolved. In comparing the experience of women in the virtual groups to women in the face-to-face groups, the face-to-face women were less satisfied with the group experience than their virtual counterparts and perceived that conflict was smoothed over.