Virtual teams have grown over the last decade and became an efficient and cost-saving way to deliver a certain job by making use of different communication methods. Members of a virtual team have a very different human interaction as they don’t share a physical space most of times, they don’t get to talk or meet the other person in real time, and most importantly, the work is shared, done, and transmitted in packages of information.
Several researchers have addressed humor and team effectiveness, interaction and productivity; but most findings fall on the area of physical teams, where humor reactions happen instantly and affect the members’ behaviors in such a way that can even be measured in frequency as well as compared with an immediate performance stated by managers right after a meeting and again, after several years.
In this paper, we take some first steps toward understanding how humor is approached in virtual teams and which factors have a strong influence on it.
We examine different studies about “humor in teams” and “effectiveness in virtual teams” separately, to define boundaries, concepts, issues and variables. Following this, we consider the results obtained from analysis in organizational physical teams to identify how to relate real-time interactions in a virtual context.
Due to the exploratory nature of this study, we approached different professionals to collect qualitative data through interviews and email observations to see how humor presents at some point in human interaction and under which circumstances in virtual teams. Afterwards, we try to identify, explain, and expose situations in which humor affects virtual teams’ productivity. We found that life span of a project affects how close the relationships may become, reaffirming our propositions that communication channel, leadership, language, age, and seniority affect the perception and development of humor in virtual scenarios.
We provide managerial implications about the factors to be considered in the communication arena related to humor in a virtual team, and also, the value of diversity, leadership skills, and emotional intelligence.

Virtual teams have grown over the last decade and became an efficient and cost-saving way to deliver a certain job by making use of different communication methods. Members of a virtual team have a very different human interaction as they don’t share a physical space most of times, they don’t get to talk or meet the other person in real time, and most importantly, the work is shared, done, and transmitted in packages of information.
Several researchers have addressed humor and team effectiveness, interaction and productivity; but most findings fall on the area of physical teams, where humor reactions happen instantly and affect the members’ behaviors in such a way that can even be measured in frequency as well as compared with an immediate performance stated by managers right after a meeting and again, after several years.
In this paper, we take some first steps toward understanding how humor is approached in virtual teams and which factors have a strong influence on it.
We examine different studies about “humor in teams” and “effectiveness in virtual teams” separately, to define boundaries, concepts, issues and variables. Following this, we consider the results obtained from analysis in organizational physical teams to identify how to relate real-time interactions in a virtual context.
Due to the exploratory nature of this study, we approached different professionals to collect qualitative data through interviews and email observations to see how humor presents at some point in human interaction and under which circumstances in virtual teams. Afterwards, we try to identify, explain, and expose situations in which humor affects virtual teams’ productivity. We found that life span of a project affects how close the relationships may become, reaffirming our propositions that communication channel, leadership, language, age, and seniority affect the perception and development of humor in virtual scenarios.
We provide managerial implications about the factors to be considered in the communication arena related to humor in a virtual team, and also, the value of diversity, leadership skills, and emotional intelligence.

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