Research on Interaction Pattern of Virtual Team in Crisis Situation

In today’s society, various types of crisis events occur frequently. The advancement of technology and popularity of networking have made the spread of crises very rapid. How to deal with the crisis effectively is the focus of scholars. Based on the perspective of the team level and the theory of Sensemaking, in the crisis situation, this paper introduces the team emotion as a mediating variable to modeling the relationships among interaction patterns, team emotion, and team effectiveness. This research employed the experimental method and the questionnaire survey method to complete the experiment on twenty virtual teams on WeChat; and exploited structural equation modeling to test and analyze the model. The results of this study show that: The stable interaction patterns in the crisis have a positive effect on team effectiveness; interaction patterns have a positive effect on the formation of positive team emotional atmosphere; team emotion plays a positive mediating role between interaction patterns and team effectiveness. This study provides the crisis management inspiration for the virtual teams: In the crisis situation, the combination of stable interaction patterns and team emotion management is the key to improve team effectiveness.