Australian Universities (AU) and the German Academic Exchange Service has granted $5000 funding to support an international research collaboration between the Centre for Transformative Work Design and the Department of Industrial/Organizational and Social Psychology at TU Braunschweig in Germany focusing on the topic “Work Design and Communication in Virtual Teams”.
Led by Florian Klonek, the funding will be used to address the challenging questions on how communication patterns in teams are affected by virtual work characteristics. The two research partners will cooperatively investigate the levels of virtuality on team interaction processes – both focusing on the communication processes occurring during virtual team collaborations, and work design factors acting as input or moderators of these team processes.
The German partner already conducted a preliminary study on behavioural team dynamics during virtual team discussions using a between-subjects design under different media settings (face-to-face, instant messaging, and e-mail).
The combination of pre-existing preliminary work from the German partner with the theoretical knowledge of the Australian research partner provides a perfect match to bring forward our understanding of how virtual work design characteristics impact on team communication processes and outcomes.
The feedback from the funding institution on the research proposal was: “YES. Relevant topic. Good planning. Good groups. Engage well.”.
We are grateful for this opportunity and are looking forward for a fruitful research collaboration! If you are interested in learning more about this research or want to engage with us in terms of research, feel free to contact us .