Virtual teams: Technology and the workplace of the future

Abstract

Managers are challenged to develop strategically flexible organizations in response to increasingly competitive marketplaces. Fortunately, a new generation of information and telecommunications technology provides the foundation for resilient new organizational forms that would have not been feasible only a decade ago. One of the most exciting of these new forms, the virtual team, will enable organizations to become more flexible by providing the impressive productivity of team-based designs in environments where teamwork would have once been impossible. Virtual teams, which are linked primarily through advanced computer and telecommunications technologies, provide a potent response to the challenges associated with today's downsized and lean organizations, and to the resulting geographical dispersion of essential employees. Virtual teams also address new workforce demographics, where the best employees may be located anywhere the world, and where workers demand increasing technological sophistication and personal flexibility. With virtual teams, organizations can build teams with optimum membership while retaining the advantages of flat organizational structure. Additionally, firms benefit from virtual teams through access to previously unavailable expertise, enhanced cross-functional interaction, and the use of systems that improve the quality of the virtual team's work.

Virtual Teams and International Business Teaching and Learning: The Case of the Global Enterprise Experience (GEE)

“…Indeed, projects based on global virtual teams are one of the ways identified as driving the in-house internationalization in business schools (Chappell & Schermerhorn, 1999;Eisner & Harvey, 2008;Freeman, Knight, & Butt, 2011;Gavidia, Mogollón, & Baena, 2005;Milhauser & Rahschulte, 2010;Shea, Sherer, Quilling, & Blewett, 2011). Scholars agree on the importance of organizations having employees that are adept team players with experience accomplishing effective virtual projects that require online interaction, managing the dislocation of geographicand time-based boundaries (Arnison & Miller, 2002;Duarte & Snyder, 2006;Gibson & Cohen, 2003;Lurey & Raisinghani, 2001;Townsend, DeMarie, & Hendrickson, 1998;Shea et al, 2011).…”

“…Finally, some authors claim that the effectiveness of a virtual team is exactly the same as any other traditional (face-to-face) team, and requires understanding about work and relationships amongst the project's participants (Berry, 2011;Hertel, Geister, & Konradt, 2005;Lurey & Raisinghani, 2001;Townsend et al, 1998).…”

“…Since the 1990s, lower costs and responsiveness advantages have been identified as the main benefits of using virtual teams for international projects (Ahuja & Carley, 1999;Mowshowitz, 1997;Townsend et al, 1998). According to Martins, Gilson, and Maynard (2004), virtual teams are groups whose participants use information technology in functioning throughout locational, sequential, and interpersonal restrictions to undertake a codependent assignment.…”

On the Performance of Workflow Processes with Distributed Actors: Does Place Matter?

“…ICTs are a key enabler for the emergence and sustained popularity of so-called virtual teams, i.e. groups of geographically and organizationally dispersed coworkers that are assembled using a combination of telecommunications and information technologies to accomplish an organizational task [25]. WfMSs too enable the fast communication and collaboration between geographically dispersed users and can therefore be expected to contribute to improved interaction between them [6,23,24].…”

Understanding Conflict in Virtual Teams: An Experimental Investigation using Content Analysis

“…Virtual teams are groups of geographically dispersed co-workers who are brought together using telecommunication and information technologies to work on a particular task [38]. Global virtual teams usually span across space, time and organizational boundaries [16]; are culturally diverse and geographically dispersed [12]; and perform tasks of a global nature [19].…”