Management Methods for Global Virtual Teams - A Review of Current Literature and Directions for Future Research

Abstract

Global virtual teams, whose members are geographically dispersed across time, space and cultures have become increasingly prevalent as an organizational form in the modern industrial development, especially fueled by the unprecedented COVID pandemic conditions. To understand how to manage this unique organizational form to sustain and excel in the challenging business environment becomes extremely relevant and imperative. This paper conducted a systematic review of published literature on the findings from virtual team research in the past two decades (from 2001 to 2021) in an effort to shed light on the understanding of the management methods for global virtual teams. The review is organized around the variables repeatedly examined and verified by researchers in pursuit of the knowledge, then it classified the literature into different themes according to how to manage those variables on the purpose of understanding the methods to deal with them. Based upon the review, suggestions for further research that can guide future inquiry are proposed.