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Our broad contention in this article is that though the current understanding of virtual teams has advanced in significant areas over the last few years, it has not taken sufficient account of power dynamics within virtual teams nor sought to explore the nature of power within geographically distributed teams. Indeed, despite the overwhelming interest on virtual teams, our understanding of computermediated interactions and virtual team dynamics has remained limited. Reliance on mediated interactions and especially those that are text-based and asynchronous such as email has been seen to inhibit the development of good working and collaborative relationships;^2,3,4 such views often derive from the media richness theory which suggests that face-to-face is a richer information medium.¹

Our argument, however, is that even though the value of face-to-face communication in creating and promoting a rich …