When Expectations (Don’t) Meet Reality: Expected Versus Observed Challenges (EVOC) in Global Virtual Teams

<jats:p>Global virtual teams (GVTs) often begin collaboration with uncertain expectations about how difficult the work will be. Should members receive accurate previews, optimistic reassurance, or heightened expectations of difficulty? Drawing on Expectation-Disconfirmation Theory, we introduce the Expected Versus Observed Challenges (EVOC) framework to capture the gap between the challenges GVT members expected before the project and those they actually experienced. Using 30,015 records from over 5,000 GVTs, we examine how EVOC relates to team and individual performance. Positive challenge disconfirmation (expected greater challenges than actually observed, E &gt; O) was associated with higher expert-rated team performance than either congruence (E = O) or negative disconfirmation (E &lt; O). Component decomposition revealed mechanism heterogeneity: for team performance, the advantage was primarily explained by lower observed challenges and an experienced-difficulty pathway, whereas for peer-rated individual performance, expected challenges also contributed independently, consistent with anticipatory preparation, though this pattern was level-dependent. Team Identification was the strongest process bridge to team performance, and expected challenges buffered the harmful effect of observed challenges. The findings extend expectation-disconfirmation logic to collaborative performance and suggest that effective GVT preparation should foster constructive preparedness: candid previews of likely challenges paired with tools that reduce realized difficulty.</jats:p>