the challenges of virtual teams, while few have identified their assets and benefits, identifying strategies by which to increase team effectiveness and satisfaction. As technological ability and industry contexts are rapidly and continuously changing, virtual work represents a promising avenue of research as an ever-evolving, fundamental shift in how organizations have historically done business. Defining Features The four defining features of a virtual team – geographic dispersion, electronic dependence, national diversity, and dynamic structure – have unique effects and should be considered independently. For example, although electronic dependence sometimes coincides with geographic dispersion, this is not always the case; teams in the same office may use e-mail to avoid the trip up to another floor, and teams in different countries may prefer to meet face-to-face infrequently rather than use video calls. As such, there is conceptual agreement that virtuality is a multidimensional higher-order construct. Rather than being dichotomous “on-off” conditions, these four features of virtuality each represent a continuum, and the degree of difference influences the strength of its effects. These four factors will be explored in further detail below. Geographic dispersion refers to the degree of physical distance between team colleagues. A team that spans multiple continents is more dispersed than one whose participants are located in the same city, and this degree of dispersion in turn modulates the severity of outcomes. Electronic dependence refers to the degree of reliance on electronic tools such as e-mail or instant messaging for communications. National diversity refers to the number of different nationalities represented on the team. Virtual teams may consist of members of a single nationality (e.g. a software team split between the American East and West Coasts, but who all share American nationality or a global team of Germans who work in different countries, but all share German nationality). Colleagues from different nations may bring different cultural values, mindsets, allegiances, and communication styles to the team. Dynamic structure/membership refers to how often members leave and join the team, and to how stable or changeable members’ roles are. Rather than having stable membership, many virtual teams are short-term and project-based, or involve frequent member turnover. Framework for Processes Overview According to Gibson and Cohen (2003), the effectiveness of virtual teams is a function of enabling conditions, which are created and supported by managers and leaders, and do not work independently but rather in concert with one another through multiple performance strategies.