Technology Alignment: A New Area in Virtual Team Research

Technology use and adaptation are the center of attention in research on virtual teams. Through empirical observations from six interpretative cases of virtual teams, we suggest conceptualizing the relationship between technology-use practices and collaborative practices as a technology-alignment process. We define technology alignment based upon four key perspectives on technology-use practices: continuous iterative process, reflection-on-action activities, malleability and reconfigurability, and transformation. Moreover, we show how these four key perspectives influence the design, the outcome, the task processes, and the socioemotional processes of the particular virtual team.