Past research has focused on understanding the characteristics of work that are fully virtual or fully collocated. The present study seeks to expand our understanding of team work by studying knowledge workers' experiences as they were suddenly forced to transition to a fully virtual environment. During the height of the US lockdown from April to June 2020, we interviewed 51 knowledge workers employed on teams at the same professional services firm. Drawing from in situ reflections about teams' lived experiences, this paper explores how the shift to virtual work brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic illuminated the fundamental activities that team work requires, facilitated and undermined the performance of team activities, and prompted employees to adapt and reflect on their use of digital technology to perform these activities. Using the shift to virtual work as a unique learning opportunity, our findings demonstrate that team work entails several core activities (task, process, and relationship interactions) that require additional adjustments to successfully enact in the virtual (vs. collocated) environment.

过去的研究集中在理解完全虚拟或完全并置的工作特征。本研究旨在通过研究知识工作者突然被迫过渡到完全虚拟的环境中的经验来扩大我们对团队合作的理解。在2020年4月至2020年6月美国封锁的高峰期，我们采访了同一家专业服务公司的51名知识工作者。本文从对团队生活经历的现场反思中汲取了经验，并探讨了如何转变COVID-19大流行带来的虚拟工作的启发，阐明了团队工作所需的基本活动，促进和破坏了团队活动的绩效，并促使员工适应并反思他们使用数字技术来执行这些活动。利用向虚拟工作的转变作为独特的学习机会，我们的发现表明，团队工作需要几个核心活动（任务，流程和关系交互），这些活动需要进行额外的调整才能成功地在虚拟（相对于并置）环境中实施。