Fast Company Now points to a study on Global Teams. Here's Ross Mayfield's take on the post - Productivity in far-flung teams :

"University of North Carolina professor of information and technology management Arvind Malhotra studied 54 global virtual teams in 31 companies, from Intel to Royal Dutch Shell, with a suprising finding:

These virtual teams, largely composed of people who have never met, were not only productive but also more innovative than "face-to-face teams."

"They make decisions faster with more input from others and develop policies that are implemented worldwide with fewer problems than conventional teams," said Malhotra.

His research also dispells myths of virtual teams:

Myth: Far-flung teams are deployed to save money on travel. Truth: High-performing global teams are measured on faster, better responses to rapidly changing environments.

Myth: Far-flung teams require hands-off leadership.
Truth: These teams require communication-intensive leaders. These team leaders check in on each of their members frequently, mentor them, and establish and communicate team norms.

Myth: Global team leaders don't deal directly with diversity.
Truth: Far-flung team leaders handle diversity purposefully, recognizing it early in the team's life cycle and leveraging it throughout the team's life cycle.

Myth: Face-to-face meetings are required early in a far-flung team's life cycle to build trust.
Truth: Global teams build trust through a planned team communication strategy and frequent in-process, team-tuning sessions mostly without ever meeting.

Myth: Given the restrictions of time and space differences, far-flung teams are best served by allocating one task to every member.
Truth: Far-flung teams build trust and simulate intellectual growth by pairing diverse members into subteams that perform highly interdependent tasks."

This is consistent with our experience that working virtually is simply more productive and innovative."

This is good to read as I find myself working increasingly in global teams.  In my experience, success is not driven only because of time and cost efficiencies, nor is it simply driven by tasks performed.  It comes from the ability to embrace diversities making for better innovation, it depends upon how the team/s are set up to motivate each other and build upon interdependencies, it relies on the collective power of the team.  And finally on trust that allows the team to manage the uncertainty and complexity of virtual collaboration.   

I found a paper that discusses Communication and trust in global virtual teams - and explores whether trust can exist in global virtual teams;  how trust might be developed in a team and what communication behaviors might facilitate trust in global virtual teams. 

Although the paper highlights the importance of social communication on building trust and therefore efficiencies in virtual teams, it is an old paper based on research done over 6 years ago. I wonder how that might have changed today with social software. What does social software mean in the context of where we work and how we work ? How will our workplaces and social interactions metamorphosize (is this a word?) and transform with adoption of such tools ? What frameworks can we use to examine the differences in the nature of trust, modes of communication and workspaces across different types of virtual teams ?