Karen Sobel Lojeski is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Technology and Society at Stony Brook University. Notably Dr. Lojeski is most famously known for her first book, “Uniting the Virtual Workforce: Transforming Leadership and Innovation in the Globally Integrated Enterprise”. In her book, Lojeski identifies the phenomenon of the virtual distance. Virtual Distance is a sense of psychological and emotional detachment that begins to grow little by little and unconsciously when most encounters and experiences are mediated by screens on smart devices (“Virtual Distance and Learning: An Application of Organizational Best Practices in Education”). Lojeski’s idea of the virtual distance came from a study that involved 122 participants from a large U.S based, financial services company. The goal of Lojeski’s study was to determine what effect virtual distance and learning played on members in a group, who collaborated on projects solely through virtual means and were from different parts of the …show more content…
Organizational Citizenship Behavior, or OCB, is a set of behaviors team members exhibit that go beyond the scope of their job descriptions and formal roles and duties (“Virtual Distance and Learning: An Application of Organizational Best Practices in Education”). The results of the study validated that virtual distance can have some undesirable and unintentional effects. Lojeski found “as virtual distance increased in between members of a team, trust between the team declined by over 80%, cooperative and supportive behaviors decreased by over 80%, and organizational commitment and satisfaction declined by more than 50%.”(“Virtual Distance and Learning: An Application of Organizational Best Practices in Education”) In addition, Lojeski also found that “project success rates drop over 50%, role and goal clarity decline by 75%, and innovative behaviors fall behind by over 90%.” (“Virtual Distance and Learning: An Application of Organizational Best Practices in Education”)