Abstract:

The term “virtual team” describes a group of people working together on a joint project, across space, time, and companies while using information and communication technologies (ICT) to communicate with each other. Despite the expansion of virtual teams and the extensive literature there is still a little evidence about the challenges these teams have to face and about the internal processes. Main reason for this lack of quantitative research probably lays in the complexity of the term “virtual team” its self. Authors generally disagree on the level of virtuality a team has to reach to be treated as hybrid/virtual. These uncertainties make all attempts of quantitative studies very misleading and inconsistent.  The following paper presents a list of dimensions that are cited by the theoretical literature the most frequently. Subsequently, based on this research background, an analysis of team typology is made focusing on a sample of project teams from various organizations. Using the pre-defined criteria each team was judged by the level of cooperation and by the type of communication used during the team working activities. The outputs of this initial team evaluation indentifying the percentage of virtual teams in the sample will be used in further research of virtual team working. Data analyzed in this paper included 772 project teams operating in the Czech Republic.