Effects of time pressure and communication environment on team processes and outcomes in dyadic planning

An experiment compared dyadic performance in a radio communication and a more sophisticated communication environment to face-to-face (FtF) meetings. Thirty-six dyads, working under low or high time-pressure conditions, needed to combine information and to produce a written plan. Teams working in the sophisticated communication environment collaborated from separate locations over a networked computer system allowing them to share a note-taking program, work in parallel, and exchange in real-time audio as well as video. Results revealed detrimental effects of time pressure on both team processes and outcomes, and supported our hypothesis that distributed teams can perform as well as FtF teams. No differences were found between FtF teams and teams working in the sophisticated communication environment on process and outcome measures, except for the quantity of performance: The sophisticated communication environment enabled distributed teams to work on the task more rapidly than their FtF counterparts. Radio teams produced plans of lower quality and were less satisfied with the quality of their planning process than FtF teams.