Chamakiotis, P., 2014. Exploring Creativity in Temporary Virtual Teams : The Case of Engineering Design. Thesis (Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)). University of Bath.

The
prevalence of Virtual Team (VT) configurations in organizations has
come to challenge the relevance of traditional management practices
based on traditional, physically collocated teams. Creativity—a topical
and multidisciplinary issue—has been under-researched within the context
of virtuality. Predicated on the premise that creativity may be
expressed differently in the context of VTs, I draw the conceptual
foundations for this research from the fields of virtuality (i.e. VTs)
and creativity, and use engineering design as the empirical context,
with the aim of pursuing a better understanding of creativity in
relationship with virtuality in the context of Virtual Design Teams
(VDTs). Design constitutes a pertinent empirical context because (a)
designers have to deliver outputs requiring creativity; and (b) their
work is increasingly accomplished in VDT environments. I report on the
findings from three case studies involving temporary VDTs. Studies 1 and
2 comprised student engineers. Study 3 was a comparative case study
focusing on a team of professional engineers, who completed one design
task while physically collocated (face-to-face, F2F) and another one
while geographically dispersed (virtually), with the aim of isolating
factors that are unique to virtuality. With an interpretive stance
guiding this research, the same analytical approach for each case study,
and with the team serving as the unit of analysis, I analysed the
collected data (interview data, observations, video recordings,
photographic material, documents, communication extracts, design and
other outputs) qualitatively with the use of visual and thematic
analysis. The thesis makes the following theoretical contributions: (a)
it advances understanding of creativity within the VDT lifecycle; (b) it
elicits factors influencing creativity in the temporary VDT context;
and (c) it explains how the unique characteristics of virtuality
influence creativity within this context. The thesis’ limitations as
well as implications for research and practice are also discussed.