Barbara Frey
MBA 5367
Virtual Teams
March 2, 2009
Just as the one-factory, company-owned towns have become nearly, if not completely extinct, almost so have the large corporate offices filled with row upon row and floor upon floor of desks, cubicles and the cacophony of ringing telephones. The visual image of busy worker bees in offices humming with activity, even as recently portrayed the 1980 film “Nine to Five” is practically obsolete. The near ubiquity of communications technology coupled with the justification needs of financial allocations has brought about the lone knowledge worker, the bee in his own hive, who nevertheless contributes the same large scale, goal-oriented project outcomes that he would have on a traditional team not so long ago. The virtual worker, often part of a virtual team, is part of the paradigm shift of the global workforce.
While the workers’ physical locations may have changed, their outputs and the cognitive processes they use to achieve them are relatively the same. What has changed significantly are 1) the ways workers communicate with other workers, managers, customers and stakeholders; 2) the use and management of time and geography; and 3) the challenges, controls and expectations inherent with internal and external processes across space, time and cultures.
First, communicating with time and geographical factors are by means of synchronous and asynchronous methods, including relatively low-tech telephony: one-to-one or audio-conferencing, one-to-many and many-to-many; commonplace email, voicemail or electronic bulletin boards to advanced, high-tech, information rich electronic meeting systems (EMS), videoconferencing, instant message chat, personal computing devices and web pages of varying complexities, purposes, and collaborative abilities.
Second, time management is an essential factor in the success and functionalities of virtual teams. Even with shared electronic calendaring, geographical time zones must be considered. Whether just a couple of time zones away or on the other side of the planet, time management respective of the project’s nature can result in time zone creep and inconvenience for some workers or may necessitate around-the-clock project coordination, such as digital animation project sharing between movie studios in L.A. and animators in India.
Third, virtual teams’ corporate, organizational and native cultural variations need to be recognized, respected, learned and assimilated for the team to be successful. The teams’ leadership needs to be prepared to address whatever functional processes he deems crucial to its performance. These can be as basic as assigning roles and preferences for meeting facilitation to team and individual recognition processes, training, managing the level of social presence, i.e., when to meet face to face and knowledge and contribution competencies. The goal being to create a team “micro-climate” that ultimately builds trust within the team so that the team can be successful.
These three factors encompass many of the concerns and challenges in virtual team building. Taken individually, these elements are functional attributes. Combined, these elements include the logistical as well as the human necessities of virtual team building.
The technology methods that a virtual team chooses must relate to the functions, locations and training available to the team. The structural components of technology, including broadband connections, hardware and software are expensive, still not universally available and require appropriate training to use effectively. When collaboration is needed, an electronic whiteboard with live video-conferencing is ideal as a synchronous tool. If some of the team members though are not using broadband speed, this is not a good choice. They would need to rely on less robust technologies, such as chat. The choice of technology depends more on the feasible use to the team than to the most advanced products available.
Cultural dimensions, including power distance, uncertainty avoidance, individualism versus collectivism, masculine versus feminine, long-term and short-term values and contextual perceptions are all featured prominently in a virtual team’s characteristics and outcome. These dimensions are certainly present in a traditional team with modifications based on local culture norms and individual members’ backgrounds. To a lesser extent than would occur in a multinational virtual team, it is conceivable and likely that some individuals would not be stereotypical to their native culture in some areas. For example, the members of a local team may have been born and reared in the same city, but have differences in education, religion or lifestyle that cause them to perceive their power distance, uncertainty expectations or long- or short-term values different from other members. A competent manager should be able to build trust and unite a team, whether it’s virtual or traditional.