A virtual team is a group of people working interdependently via various types of electronic media across organizational and geographical boundaries for a shared purpose (D’Souza & Colarelli, 2010). Research indicates virtual teams are becoming increasingly popular in organizations across the United States and the world (D’Souza & Colarelli, 2010; Rusman, van Bruggen, Sloep, & Koper, 2010). These teams vary in size, degree of geographic dispersion, prior shared work experience, nature of assignment, and expectations of a common future (Rusman et al., 2010). Although virtual teams have potential advantages like the removal of physical boundaries, the ability to form new partnerships, and optimization of competencies (Chinowsky & Rojas, 2003), they also introduce many challenges that may not be as prevalent in traditional teams.
Remaining focused on the overall goals and objectives of a project can become an issue if these are not consistently restated by managers or team leaders. Without the advantage of regular and ad hoc personal meetings, members of virtual teams may misinterpret, inadvertently change, or lose focus on the goals of the project. Because of this, individuals are charged with a greater responsibility to remain focused on both expected outcomes and objectives (Chinowsky & Rojas, 2003).
A reliable environment for teams to exchange information in a secure manner may be a necessity for virtual teams; therefore, security can pose another challenge. Different types of projects may require different levels of security. A virtual private network may be necessary to ensure that information is passed securely to the desired recipients. Authentication and encryption techniques can guarantee secure transmission of electronic...
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According to Northouse (2012), team leadership has become one of the most popular theories of leadership research. A team refers to a group of employees within an organization, who are interdependent of each, and share a common goal which can only be realized through coordination of their activities. Actually, this can be attributed to the fact that team members typically have dissimilar and unique roles that represent critical contributions to collective action. It goes without mentioning that a team can either be virtual or non-virtual (Tiffan, 2014).
Attaining results from a team consisting of members likely spread across vast distances is an increasingly difficult task without taking advantage of the necessary resources available for distance collaboration. Several factors are taken into consideration when building an effective team. Creating a team out of a group of people who come from a variety of backgrounds is not an easy task because group members must first learn how to collaborate as a team before they can even consider completing a project together. Teams have a clear purpose with defined roles for each of its participants. Collaboration with the use of technological resources comes into play when a team consists of members spread out geographically. Realizing the strengths of each team member as well as the resources that are available is essential to a team’s success.
A virtual team refers to a collection of collaborating persons in geographically dispersed means. This group of persons do work across space, time and organizational boundaries and are connected together via information and telecommunication technologies in order to accomplish one or more organizational goals. The virtual teams do require new array of ways to work across boundaries through processes, systems, technology and people. This does require effective leadership in order to be a success.
...erstanding of Teams. In N. Natalie (Ed), Teamwork: An Interdisciplinary Perspective (pp.22-30). Basingstoke, Hampshire, Palgrace Macmillan.
As the technological advances in the quality of video conferencing has continued to improve, it has allowed organizations to communicate in real-time even though they are on opposite sides of the world. Unilever, a parent company of numerous household brand names, is one such global company. They have had almost every major innovation project in the past two years conducted via video conferencing. Unilever managers are trained and expected to clarify the goals amongst virtual teams. However, preparing employees to operate in an agile way isn't easy. The major traps are introducing concepts too quickly, not giving it time to develop and introducing changes without sufficient training for managers who still don't trust employees to be self-reliant.
... such as communication, leadership, and groups and teams including virtual teams. Its engaging experience allowed for interactive learning and a thorough analysis of the interrelationship between effective communication and the beneficial outcomes of shared leadership in groups and teams. Through my individual experience as an observer assisted with my experience as a group member, the development of groups according to Tuckman’s model and ineffective methods such as barriers to communication and shared leadership possibly reduced the inefficiency in the first simulation. By implementing specific strategies such as minimizing intra-group conflict, adopting positive leadership attitudes and assigning roles to team members, group cohesion and team dynamics can be optimized in order to increase individual and team performance as reflected through our results.
Due to trust’s fragility, a breaking of trust can come do to a number of seemingly insignificant circumstances. Such circumstances include a member coming late to a meeting, not being prepared, presenting illogical and not well thought-out ideas, inconsistency in behavior, holding back opinions, etc. In order to avoid such circumstances, team members must have a clear vision of their goal and have a certain degree of zeal concerning the purpose of their task. To create these two ideals, it is suggested that the first activity a group collaborates to achi...
Today’s organizations operate in a challenging and global environment, which has forced them to become leaners, reduce production cycles, and improve production and communication technology where essential employees and content expertise have been consolidated. Organizational leaders currently do not have definitive evidence of management styles that they should seek to ensure members of a culturally diverse virtual team develop leadership, trust, and accountability. Virtual team management effectiveness will be evaluated under the five main types of management styles (Robert Tannenbaum & Warren H. Schmidt, 1958 & 1973) and other modern styles. These management styles or theories are the autocratic, democratic, bureaucratic, paternalistic, and laissez-faire. However, there are other more “modern” management styles or lead...
A work team will be defined for the purposes of this paper by a definition borrowed from Bateman and Snell (2004). A team is formed of people (usually a small number) with complementary skills who trust one another and are committed to a common purpose, common performance goals, and a common approach for which they hold themselves mutually accountable. Teams generally see themselves and are seen by others as a social entity, which is interdependent because of the tasks performed as members of a group.
At the same time, virtual teams have some advantages. For instance, it’s easier to think
Virtual corporations have some major characteristics (Judith, 2002, quoted in Byrne. n.d.) as following state: technology, excellence, opportunism, trust and no borders. Technology makes distance no longer a problem while entrepreneurs or companies far away from, due to the computer networks link people all over the world. Excellence was showed by each partner bringing its core competencies to the corporation, which can exert all advantages. Companies make alliances for specific market opportunity and this is a more efficiency work way than any others. Members in a virtual organization must trust their partners due to they meet the need by cooperating. The new communication ways were brought by computer networks, which blur the traditional hierarchies and boundaries.
Virtual model teams are members that communicate and interact with each other by computer system, hardware, software and other communication links, in other words electronically. By using new technology they can research and achieve their goals. Each team member will have to have a groupware program to manage information. These systems will benefit the company and their employees like being able to work from anywhere at anytime and reduce expenses associated with traveling, parking, lodging, and the probability to reduce the lease of a building; they also can form an alliance with different organizations in the country or outside the country.
Virtual teams – virtual team is one of the most popular teams in every organization because in virtual team the member are separated in different nation and use technologies to communicate to accomplish their goal on the time.
Rae, W.L. (1990). The team management resource in the training agency. Journal of European industrial training, 14(4): 3-11.
...tive impact on individual outcomes. Thus the result tells that managerial behavior control is not compatible with virtual team environment.