Making Sense in a Virtual Organization: Team Identity and Collaborative Technology Use Gloria Mark Dept. of Information and Computer Science University of California, Irvine Irvine, CA 92697-3425, USA +1 949-824-5955 gmark@ics.uci.edu Erin Bradner Autodesk, Inc. 111 McInnis Parkway San Rafael, CA 94903 erin.bradner@autodesk.com ABSTRACT This paper reports on a study of factors that affect team identity in a virtual organization. 204 members of 18 different teams were studied in a large multinational organization where the majority of collaboration is conducted across geographic distance. A survey was administered and three months of team observations were conducted. The results showed that members of smaller teams judge their teams to have higher participation, better rapport, higher commitment, better knowledge of team goals, and higher awareness of their teammates. We also found that higher levels of team interdependency were associated with higher familiarity among the members and a higher level of collaboration readiness. Collaborative technology adoption also differed: smaller teams tended to adopt technologies that more directly supported collaboration, whereas larger teams tended to adopt technologies with greater reliance on coordination functionality. There was no relation of task type to team size. Putting these results together, we propose that the process of sensemaking to construct identity in a virtual organization is influenced by team size. In larger teams there is less clarity in the team boundaries, goals, membership, and less general awareness of other members.