The Ethical Implications of Virtual Interaction

Virtual forms of organizing are increasing in today's organizations, with virtual teams being one of the most popular ways to bring distributed individuals together to work on tasks and make decisions. However, theory suggests that the factors that drive unethical behaviors in teams – such as deindividuated communication and impeded identification – are the same factors that characterize interaction in virtual teams. This suggests that virtual interaction may make teams particularly vulnerable to unethical behaviors such as opportunism and deception. This chapter maps out a theoretical model to better understand when unethical behaviors are likely to occur in virtual teams, and what virtual team characteristics might help to mitigate the likelihood of such behaviors.