SNS Cyberinfrastructure and Incubating Global Virtual Teams

This paper explores the potential usefulness of social networking site technology (SNS) to fostering the formation of global virtual teams. This paper introduces the idea of how Virtual Organization Breeding Environments (VBEs) with rich SNS infrastructure could potentially facilitate the development of Virtual Organizations (VOs). Through this conceptual framework, I hypothesize that SNS may positively affect the development of global virtual teams through SNS-enabled VBEs. I conducted a pilot study of Google Wave and found it unsuitable to meaningfully answer the research questions I posed. The key purpose of this paper is not to present any substantive empirical findings from this work on Google Wave, but rather to advance the study of SNS and global virtual teams by reviewing relevant literature and sharing our thoughts on how to pick suitable case studies to evaluate if and how SNS may be valuable to the success of global virtual teams.