An examination of the effects of web-based virtual working environments on team effectiveness within construction projects

The purpose of this research was to examine the effects of a web-based virtual working environment on team effectiveness within construction project contexts. The web-based virtual working environment is a collaborative infrastructure in which team members extensively interact with each other and electronic documents, utilising an array of IT. This new virtual working environment is established through the combined use of conventional and web-based IT systems. There is a trend in the industry to adopt this new virtual working environment to overcome the fragmented nature of construction projects. The study was carried out under the Structural Equation Modelling framework. The team effectiveness was defined through four dimensions, namely team performance, team cohesion, team satisfaction and team knowledge management. The web-based virtual working environment was defined based on two distinct roles of IT: information efficiency and information synergy. The data were collected from paper-based and web-based questionnaires through industry-wide surveys between March and August 2003. Two hundred and fifty completed responses were obtained from a range of construction professionals from 18 countries. On average, they had 18.75 years (SD = 10.75) of industrial working experience. From 250 samples, there were 157 teams (62.80%) that had an electronic centralised repository installed and used. From the data analysis procedure using the Multiple Group Analysis with hierarchically nested hypothesis testing strategy in LISREL 8.54, the results confirmed that there were moderator effects of the web-based virtual working environment on team effectiveness and its mediator ( = 177.731, df = 147, p = 0.042 and = 14.362, = 5, < 0.01). The moderating effects intensified the effects of team effectiveness on team knowledge management, whereas, weakened the effects on the other team effectiveness indicators. In addition, the research found that the size of the team and the size of its co-located part did not affect team effectiveness. The main findings suggested that a web-based virtual working environment enhanced team collaboration by allowing a larger number of team members to interact in a shared virtual workspace with more effective team knowledge management. However there was evidence that the sample found it more difficult and had less satisfaction of working through the new virtual working environment.