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Developing team personal familiarity in the permanently connected virtual team : an ethnography of multimedial relational communication
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Powell, Dorothy Ruth (2022) Developing team personal familiarity in the permanently connected virtual team : an ethnography of multimedial relational communication. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.
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Official URL: http://webcat.warwick.ac.uk/record=b3928863
Abstract
This study uses ethnographic and abductive approaches to data collection and analysis to cast new light on multimedial relational communication in permanently connected virtual teams (PCVTs) as they interact with one another via a mobileenabled group chat technology (WhatsApp).
The study confirms that the communication afforded to VTs by mobile-enabled group chat applications such as WhatsApp plays a constitutive role in the development of team personal familiarity. Furthermore, while extant studies in the area of permanent connectedness have confirmed mobile instant messaging as a channel through which already established relationships are preserved, I have found that new relationships may be nurtured through multimedial group chat communication even where the parties have never met in person.
The study expands our understanding of the development of team personal familiarity in three key ways. Firstly, it draws attention to the ease with which PCVTs may develop team personal familiarity, and to the fact that multimedial team communication via WhatsApp is implicated in this process. Secondly, I find that PCVTs may co-construct virtual third places in group chats that are conducive to the development of team personal familiarity. I theorise that dominant views in the extant literature regarding the primacy of face-to-face contact in the VT may be based more on outmoded perceptions than on lived experience in the contemporary PCVT. Thirdly, I find that fantasy chaining episodes, a key component of Symbolic Convergence Theory (SCT) are a notable feature of team communication in the group chat. Such episodes enable PCVTs to converge on shared understandings, particularly in the area of team personal familiarity.
The novel approach to line-by-line analysis of multimedial text presented here emerged as I engaged with the data, drawing on analytical techniques adapted from interactional sociolinguistics (IS) (Gumperz, 1982; Tannen, 2008; Rampton, 2019) This analytical approach may provide a template for future exploration of multimedial communication in the mobile-enabled group chat, and may be applied to online communication in other contexts.
Item Type: | Thesis (PhD) | ||||
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Subjects: | H Social Sciences > HD Industries. Land use. Labor H Social Sciences > HD Industries. Land use. Labor > HD28 Management. Industrial Management H Social Sciences > HM Sociology |
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Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | Virtual work teams, Teams in the workplace, Communication in organizations, Electronic discussion groups, Online chat groups | ||||
Official Date: | September 2022 | ||||
Dates: |
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Institution: | University of Warwick | ||||
Theses Department: | Warwick Business School | ||||
Thesis Type: | PhD | ||||
Publication Status: | Unpublished | ||||
Supervisor(s)/Advisor: | Ucbasaran, Deniz ; Oborn, Eivor ; Llewellyn, Nick | ||||
Format of File: | |||||
Extent: | 263 pages : illustrations | ||||
Language: | eng |
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