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Managing strategic contradictions in hybrid teams

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European Journal of Information Systems

Abstract

It has become a common practice to organize work teams to include members in multiple geographic locations. In contrast to co-located teams and purely virtual teams, these ‘hybrid’ teams combine face-to-face communication with computer-mediated interaction. In this paper, we report a qualitative study of management practices in three hybrid teams in one organization. We adopt the theoretical approach of strategic contradiction, in which apparently contradictory pairs of elements can be managed by attending to their possible synergies or clarifying their distinctions so as to make balanced trade-offs over time. Our data reveal four sets of paradoxical frames in hybrid teams: remoteness–closeness, cultural uniformity–cultural diversity, rationality–emotionality, and control–empowerment. In referencing these paradoxical frames, teams engaged in three cognitive processes: (a) integrating to produce synergies between opposing tensions, (b) differentiating to clarify distinctions between opposing tensions and to balance trade-offs over time, and (c) polarizing to remove tensions between opposing elements by using one element to reduce the effects of another. Both integrating and differentiating processes were found to be instrumental to sustaining contradictions as interdependent dualities, whereas polarizing processes were found to preserve contradictions as dualisms. Our findings advance the understanding of managing strategic contradictions by showing how managers influence cognitive processes that paradoxically emphasize remoteness and closeness, cultural uniformity and cultural diversity, rationality and emotionality, and control and empowerment.

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Notes

  1. All names are pseudonyms.

  2. CYA is an acronym that usually stands for ‘cover your ass.’ The phrases ‘cover your assets,’ ‘cover your bases’ or simply ‘CYA’ in the interviews are colloquial expressions describing defensive uses of email.

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Acknowledgements

The authors are indebted to Huoy Min Khoo, Carolyn Powers, Rebecca Rodecker, and Karen Lee Smith for their assistance in data collection and analysis and to Line Dubé for her comments on a previous draft. Financial support from Georgia State University is gratefully acknowledged.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Decision Sciences and Information Systems, College of Business, Florida International University, Miami, FL, USA

    Karlene C Cousins

  2. Department of Computer Information Systems, Robinson College of Business, Georgia State University, Atlanta, GA, USA

    Daniel Robey

  3. College of Information Science & Technology, University of Nebraska at Omaha, Omaha, NE, USA

    Ilze Zigurs

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  1. Karlene C Cousins
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  2. Daniel Robey
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Correspondence to Karlene C Cousins.

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Cousins, K., Robey, D. & Zigurs, I. Managing strategic contradictions in hybrid teams. Eur J Inf Syst 16, 460–478 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1057/palgrave.ejis.3000692

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