To tell or not to tell: Examining team silence and voice in online AD Hoc teams

Team silence is the unwillingness of team members to express concerns regarding how another team member's actions negatively impacts the team's ability to accomplish their goals; team voice is the intentional expression of these concerns to the team and/or team member. This research explores team silence and team voice in the context of online ad hoc teams in which dispersed team members, focused on their own self-interest, work together using digital collaboration tools. We consider if team members in online ad hoc teams remain silent when a team member engages in self-interested behavior that can negatively impact the team's ability to accomplish their goals. This research in progress describes a quasi-experiment that uses the context of a massively multiplayer online role playing game to explore factors that contribute toward team members' willingness to break silence and use their voice when an online ad hoc team member engages in self-interested actions.