The Impact of Surface and Deep-Level Attributes on Peer Evaluations in Global Virtual Teams

This study explores the role of surface-level and deep-level characteristics when peers evaluate the performance of their team members in global virtual teams (GVTs). These peer evaluations are analyzed longitudinally across ten weeks based on a sample from a project involving more than 66,000 students enrolled at more than 650 universities in 100 countries who worked in over 10,000 GVTs on an international consulting project. Our study views peer evaluations of performance as acts of team members’ sensemaking and, therefore, draws from sensemaking theory. The results suggest that the surface-level characteristics of age, gender, and country reputation, play a comparatively stronger role when team members make sense of a peer’s performance in the early stage of a team’s work. Deep-level characteristics, namely overall intelligence, emotional intelligence, cultural intelligence, and language skills, are utilized by team members for the performance evaluation of a peer in later stages of the project.