Virtual teams have grown over the last decade and became an efficient and cost-saving way to deliver a certain job by making use of different communication methods. Members of a virtual team have a very different human interaction as they don’t share a physical space most of times, they don’t get to talk or meet the other person in real time, and most importantly, the work is shared, done, and transmitted in packages of information.
Several researchers have addressed humor and team effectiveness, interaction and productivity; but most findings fall on the area of physical teams, where humor reactions happen instantly and affect the members’ behaviors in such a way that can even be measured in frequency as well as compared with an immediate performance stated by managers right after a meeting and again, after several years.
In this paper, we take some first steps toward understanding how humor is approached in virtual teams and which factors have a strong influence on it.
We examine different studies about “humor in teams” and “effectiveness in virtual teams” separately, to define boundaries, concepts, issues and variables. Following this, we consider the results obtained from analysis in organizational physical teams to identify how to relate real-time interactions in a virtual context.
Due to the exploratory nature of this study, we approached different professionals to collect qualitative data through interviews and email observations to see how humor presents at some point in human interaction and under which circumstances in virtual teams. Afterwards, we try to identify, explain, and expose situations in which humor affects virtual teams’ productivity. We found that life span of a project affects how close the relationships may become, reaffirming our propositions that communication channel, leadership, language, age, and seniority affect the perception and development of humor in virtual scenarios.
We provide managerial implications about the factors to be considered in the communication arena related to humor in a virtual team, and also, the value of diversity, leadership skills, and emotional intelligence.

Virtual teams have grown over the last decade and became an efficient and cost-saving way to deliver a certain job by making use of different communication methods. Members of a virtual team have a very different human interaction as they don’t share a physical space most of times, they don’t get to talk or meet the other person in real time, and most importantly, the work is shared, done, and transmitted in packages of information.
Several researchers have addressed humor and team effectiveness, interaction and productivity; but most findings fall on the area of physical teams, where humor reactions happen instantly and affect the members’ behaviors in such a way that can even be measured in frequency as well as compared with an immediate performance stated by managers right after a meeting and again, after several years.
In this paper, we take some first steps toward understanding how humor is approached in virtual teams and which factors have a strong influence on it.
We examine different studies about “humor in teams” and “effectiveness in virtual teams” separately, to define boundaries, concepts, issues and variables. Following this, we consider the results obtained from analysis in organizational physical teams to identify how to relate real-time interactions in a virtual context.
Due to the exploratory nature of this study, we approached different professionals to collect qualitative data through interviews and email observations to see how humor presents at some point in human interaction and under which circumstances in virtual teams. Afterwards, we try to identify, explain, and expose situations in which humor affects virtual teams’ productivity. We found that life span of a project affects how close the relationships may become, reaffirming our propositions that communication channel, leadership, language, age, and seniority affect the perception and development of humor in virtual scenarios.
We provide managerial implications about the factors to be considered in the communication arena related to humor in a virtual team, and also, the value of diversity, leadership skills, and emotional intelligence.

1 Introduction 1
1.1 Research Background 1
1.2 Research Objectives 2
2 Literature Review 3
2.1 Virtual Teams 3
2.1.1 Definition of Virtual Teams 3
2.1.2 Differentiation of Virtual Teams 4
2.1.3 Communication 5
2.1.3.1 Synchronous vs. Asynchronous 6
2.1.3.2 Frequently used channels 14
2.1.4 Benefits of Virtual Teams 15
2.1.5 Drawbacks of Virtual Teams 16
2.1.6 Building Effectiveness 17
2.2 Humor 18
2.2.1 Definition of Humor 19
2.2.2 Benefits of Humor 20
2.2.3 Dangers of Humor 21
2.2.4 Roles in team’s interactions 22
2.3 Team member characteristics and performance 23
2.3.1 Cultural Background 23
2.3.2 Language 24
2.3.3 Seniority 24
2.3.4 Leadership 25
3 Research Methodology 26
3.1 Design and implementation 26
3.2 Data Collection 26
3.2.1 Semi-structured interviews 27
3.2.2 E-mail observations 28
3.3 Data analysis 28
4 Results 30
4.1 Fundamental role of leaders 31
4.2 Battle of communication channels 32
4.3 Beginners vs. experienced members 34
4.4 Citizens of the world 36
4.5 Let’s talk 37
4.6 E-mail connection 38
5 Discussion 40
5.1 Misconceptions 40
5.2 Leading Virtual Teams 42
6 Conclusions 44
6.1 Managerial Implications 45
6.2 Contributions to theory 45
6.3 Limitations and future research directions 45
7 References 47

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