Inevitable vs. Evitable: An Approach to the Better Situation for Virtual Teams

It is often believed that because virtual members trust one another less than the non-virtual do, and therefore, the traditional face-to-face teams are better than the virtual. It is desirable that the virtual team is organized to cope with the inevitable, restrictive situation in which they cannot organize a team with face-to-face meetings. However, we believe that even if a manager coping with a certain problem can organize a face-to-face team (evitable situation), there might be some areas or cases in which organizing a virtual team is better than organizing a faceto-face team. This paper suggests that it is important for practicing managers to identify when (for which situations) the virtual teams are most suitable and can be successful.