The Tension Between Expectations of Availability and the Reality of Availability in Hybrid Teams

The demands of the global world increasingly dictate that people travel in order to conduct work. Oftentimes, this means that team members are neither strictly here nor there. Teams such as these are hybrids, where members alternate between co-located and distributed contexts. The pervasive nature of information and communication technologies, however, continues to impose an expectation of availability on the team members even as they travel. In this paper, we take a reflexive research stance to inform our understanding of the complexities of accomplishing knowledge work within a hybrid team configuration. An illustrative case highlights issues and outcomes associated with member availability that arose during the writing of a research paper. Categorical reasons for member unavailability are identified and contrasted with the expectation of availability. We suggest that the issues and conflict we experienced may be traced to the ambiguous nature of the task and the early project phase requiring problem formulation.