Department of Psychology, Neuroscience & Behaviour, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.
Office of Education Science, Department of Surgery, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.
Perspect Med Educ. 2018 Jun;7(3):147-155. doi: 10.1007/s40037-018-0434-9.
Concerns around the time and administrative burden of trainee promotion processes have been reported, making virtual meetings an attractive option for promotions committees in undergraduate and postgraduate medicine. However, whether such meetings can uphold the integrity of decision-making processes has yet to be explored. This narrative review aimed to summarize the literature on decision making in virtual teams, discuss ways to improve the effectiveness of virtual teams, and explore their implications for practice.
In August 2017, the Web of Science platform was searched with the terms 'decision making' AND 'virtual teams' for articles published within the last 20 years. The search yielded 336 articles, which was narrowed down to a final set of 188 articles. A subset of these, subjectively deemed to be of high-quality and relevant to the work of promotions committees, was included in this review.
Virtual team functioning was explored with respect to team composition and development, idea generation and selection, group memory, and communication. While virtual teams were found to potentially offer a number of key benefits over face-to-face meetings including convenience and scheduling flexibility, inclusion of members at remote sites, and enhanced idea generation and external storage, these benefits must be carefully weighed against potential challenges involving planning and coordination, integration of perspectives, and relational conflict among members, all of which can potentially reduce decision-making quality.
Avenues to address these issues and maximize the outcomes of virtual promotions meetings are offered in light of the evidence.
有报道称，学员晋升流程的时间和行政负担引起了人们的关注，这使得虚拟会议成为本科和研究生医学领域晋升委员会的一个有吸引力的选择。然而，这种会议是否能够维护决策过程的完整性尚未得到探索。本叙事性综述旨在总结关于虚拟团队决策的文献，讨论提高虚拟团队效率的方法，并探讨其对实践的影响。
2017 年 8 月，在 Web of Science 平台上使用“决策”和“虚拟团队”这两个术语，对过去 20 年发表的文章进行了搜索。该搜索共产生了 336 篇文章，然后将其缩小到最终的 188 篇文章。其中一部分文章，主观上被认为是高质量的，与晋升委员会的工作相关，被纳入了本次综述。
从团队组成和发展、创意生成和选择、群体记忆和沟通等方面探讨了虚拟团队的运作。虽然虚拟团队可能提供了一些相对于面对面会议的关键优势，包括方便和灵活的日程安排、包括远程成员的参与，以及增强的创意生成和外部存储，但这些优势必须与潜在的挑战进行权衡，包括规划和协调、观点整合以及成员之间的关系冲突，所有这些都可能降低决策质量。
根据证据，提出了一些解决这些问题和最大化虚拟晋升会议成果的方法。
