Examining the effect of social media tools on virtual team conflicts: A process model

Abstract

This research investigates how the use of social media tools affects virtual team conflicts. The novel concept of “feature richness”, which is understood as affordances of social media tools, is theorized. Feature richness distinguishes social media tools from other commonly used communication tools in virtual teams. The researchers propose a process model which suggests that operationally, feature richness is understood as the process nature of social media tools. The primary data was collected at corporate organizations in form of a Likert questionnaire. The research findings reveal that social media tools lead to effective communication, which encourages the development of trust, team cohesion and satisfaction in virtual teams. This further reflects in form of reduced virtual team conflicts.