The factors behind working in virtual community

Abstract

Purpose In this paper, the prior research on virtual teams was reviewed to assess the state of the literature. The purpose of this paper is to determine why individuals prefer working in virtual teams (also termed liquid workers and part-time workers). Previous researchers have focussed on the benefits that organizations receive if they hire liquid workers, but to date, no research has been conducted to determine the perspective of these liquid workers. The various definitions of virtual teams are discussed and an integrative definition is proposed that suggests all teams may be defined in terms of their extent of virtualness. Design/methodology approach A systematic review of the literature on virtual teams was conducted. The data were collected from 12 informants. A thematic analysis was used to analyse the data. Findings Six main themes were identified, namely, pliability, opportunities, increased earnings, vigour, family and transportation. Research limitations/implications This study was conducted in a three-metropolitan city in India and warrants being extended to rural and international settings to gain additional insights and confirmation of the research findings. Practical implications It is suggested that organizations who recruit liquid workers will be in a position for substantial cost savings; this is because organizations usually make payment of liquid workers’ wages on an hourly basis. This will help the organizations to schedule the number of working hours depending on their needs. Originality/value The current study is novel as there is a paucity of research in identifying the factors behind working in the virtual community in India. This study presents the first research of its kind to the best knowledge of the author, and the findings will be valuable for companies who are looking for cost savings.

Working in Virtual Teams: A Systematic Literature Review and a Bibliometric Analysis

“…Nguyen-Duc et al [30] investigated geographical separation as a relevant factor in the performance of virtual teams, while Yu [31] studied the relationship of global business with virtual teams, and especially the aspects of communication, leadership and trust. Acharya [32] studied remote workers in virtual teams in the area of administration and economy in three cities in India. Charalampous et al [33] and Donnelly and Johns [34] researched the areas of psychology, business and administration.…”

Exploring the Influence of Social Media Information on Interpersonal Trust in New Virtual Work Partners

“…Finally, a word of caution is required regarding the practice of exploring personal information from public social media profiles; social network users tend to be concerned about their privacy [13,36]. Social media users are generally willingly to share their identities; however, they are also concerned about the usage of their information by unknown others [7,28]. To circumvent privacy concerns, social media users can sometimes develop identity strategies, such as creating virtual identities that differ from their real identities or abandon their social media accounts [36].…”

“…Each person's public profile represents a rich source of personal information readily available to any individual around the globe. Whether this information can be useful to facilitate relationship building between new virtual work partners is still mostly unknown [4]; however, this area deserves focused attention as researchers suggest that the majority of active professionals are already working with some form of virtual collaboration [5][6][7].…”

Designing digital workplaces for employee engagement: Practical guidelines from a systematic literature review

“…Figure 1 represents the search process. In the SLR, we identified eleven other papers that are also literature reviews [16,17,18,19,20,21,22,23,24,25,26]. However, none of them considers the generational impacts in a digital workplace.…”

“…2008 Virtual No Engagement and effectiveness [47] The influence of leadership style on communication effectiveness and leader performance. 2010 Remote No Performance and effectiveness [26] The benefits of working in virtual teams. 2019 Virtual No Performance [48] The differences between the virtual and traditional teams.…”