For several decades organizational researchers have explored the practice of using electronic technology to communicate when team members work physically apart from each other. Yet despite a growing body of research in the areas of telework and virtual teams, findings regarding the antecedents and outcomes of virtual work have often been inconsistent and many questions remain [1, 2]. One possible reason for the equivocality of findings regarding this practice is the lack of a common definition and method of measuring virtual work. The purpose of this paper is to present a definition and measure of virtual work that can capture the practice in a variety of settings. I integrate work from studies on telework and virtual teams to present a new definition of virtual work. I propose using social network analysis as a tool to measure virtual work scope, an individual?s level of virtual work practice in teams.

Note: Link takes you to a copy of the working paper that was presented at this conference.