Mng81001 | Management | A Assessment Answers
Your Sydney HQ is developing a new marketing team with team members located in Sydney, New York, Beijing and Mumbai. This will necessitate the establishment of a virtual team spread over four different time zones using both synchronous (real time) and asynchronous (not concurrent) communication. One of the primary advantages of virtual teams is the ability to assemble the most talented group of people to complete a complex project through creativity and innovation.
On a practical level the virtual team can also save employees' time and cut travel expenses. However, virtual teams also present unique challenges. A number of the team have expressed concerns about how it will all work, and whether meetings might be scheduled when one part of the team is about to go to lunch, while the other part is asleep. Other concerns include: language difficulties, time-and-distance challenges, the absence of face-to-face contact, as well as the barriers posed by cultural differences such as work-pacing, communication styles, decision-making, and the perception of deadlines.
To help 'sell' the idea and persuade the team members of the advantages of the virtual team your boss, the Marketing Director, is planning a virtual meeting with all team members. She is aware of the concerns and knows that the issues raised by the staff have the potential to provide rich soil for misunderstandings and conflict. To that end she understands how important this presentation will be in creating a favourable association with virtual teams, as well as a good opportunity to start to build engagement, trust and candour among the team members.
To prepare for the virtual meeting she has asked you to prepare two documents:
- a short report (using the memo format) identifying some of the critical areas that need to be addressed when leading and managing virtual teams; and
- (ii) a PowerPoint slide presentation comprising no more than five slides highlighting three practices for establishing effective virtual teams and solutions for achieving such practices (recommendations or how it's done).
Answer:
The massive development of information technologies has helped the organisations to establish outsourcing projects by introducing virtual team management. Team members from different locations collaborate with the organisations via virtual team communication techniques. There are two types of virtual team: Global and Local. The essential parts of the virtual team management are assembling, constructing, organising and supervising. Although it often proves to be disadvantageous, the number of benefits are relatively high.
The virtual team management helps the organisations to increase their adaptability and competence in the global market. The organisations can recruit global talent through various communication skills, maintain flexibility within the workforce, multiply the productivity, open global work ambience with ultra-advanced technologies, reduces the transport cost and offer exceptional support to physically disabled employees (Gilson et al. 2015). It has been surveyed that when it comes to recruiting a specialised workforce, virtual teams are never restricted by the geographical limitations. The "e- teams" have been proved to have higher potential to acquire the required skills, knowledge, and competencies to accomplish tough projects. Virtual team management takes advantage of the more magnificent global talent pool. The virtual team members can work simultaneously for different organisations which enables them to acquire their unique web of contacts (Hoch and Kozlowski 2014). They use this network of clients, constituents and customers to work more proficiently which increases the flexibility. The technological tools that are used to communicate with the virtual team members are regular web-based applications such as video conferencing, telecommunications, or messaging, and also the complex client-server setups such as Open Office, Google Drive, Office 365, and many more. Virtual Team management supports the organisation to bring out innovative ideas to develop the quality of the work.
There are numerous multinational companies where the full-fledged use of virtual teams can be seen. In IBM, there are more than 200,000 employees connected from various countries around the globe. One of the best strategies for surplus productivity is to allow the employees work at a time when they are the most productive naturally (Gilson et al. 2015). IBM utilises this strategy and offers time – flexibility to the employees by reinventing itself. The company uses the Results Oriented Work Environment (ROWE) according to which the employees can work from wherever they wish and whenever they want to giving best outcomes (Etim and Huynh 2015). The Collaborative Software, chat tools, virtual meeting software are used by the company which help to hold the employees together with trust and communication.
Another company holding the title of world’s leading inter-enterprise software company is SAP with more than 40, 000 employees from almost 60 countries (Hoch and Kozlowski 2014). The company has restructured their recruiting policies and tactics. The company has their global headquarters in China, India, United States, Germany and Israel. These headquarters choose employees with specialized expertise groups. The employees are divided into their specific teams making each team more perfect. SAP also applies a team building initiative (Sivunen, Nurmi and Koroma 2016). It is mainly a training based initiative within the groups working in a joint to build a community through online learning, briefings, conference calls and coaching sessions.
There are so many advantages of virtual teams, and similarly, there are many disadvantages too. The communication gaps between the organisation and the virtual team members are met by several technologies such as messaging, video conferencing, emails and others. Marlow, Lacerenza and Salas (2017) suggest that it has to be taken into consideration that no tool among these can bridge the gap completely. Moreover, the costs that the installation and maintenance of these tools incur are always on the higher levels. The diversity and the cultural differences between employees cause conflicts regarding language, manner and opinion. It can be referred to as cross-cultural problems. A given situation can be perceived differently by different people. This diversity gives rise to mistrust, and difficulty in collaboration which is a significant issue (Purvanova 2014). Sometimes the employees feel socially isolated because most of their interactions or communications are work oriented(Sivunen, Nurmi and Koroma 2016). Usually people exchange out of the job communications with the colleagues to build a peaceful and friendly environment. In virtual teams, the embers often get exhausted and demotivated because they do not avail the same (Simpson 2017). It affects the productivity in turn. There are other difficulties faced by the organisation such as lack of responsibility, lack of trust, absenteeism, work difference, unexpected loss and others.
Therefore, from the above discussion, it can be well observed that like any business strategy or program Virtual Team management has its drawbacks that parallels with the benefits achieved from it. Although a number of disadvantages are there, it is also true that virtual teams help bring about innovation, high productivity, global technologies, extremely talented employees within the organisation. The disadvantages can be overcome by focusing on specific issues such as leadership, trainings, communication strategies and others. Companies like IBM, SAP, WHIRLPOOL are hugely reaping the benefits of Virtual Teams, and it is a majority supported statement that Virtual Team is a long-lasting strategy and not a passing tide
References:
Etim, A.S. and Huynh, K., 2015. The use of social media and collaborative tools for virtual teaming-A global market reach out by Navibank. International Journal of Management & Information Systems, 19(1), p.1.
Gilson, L.L., Maynard, M.T., Jones Young, N.C., Vartiainen, M. and Hakonen, M., 2015. Virtual teams research: 10 years, 10 themes, and 10 opportunities. Journal of Management, 41(5), pp.1313-1337.
Hoch, J.E. and Kozlowski, S.W., 2014. Leading virtual teams: Hierarchical leadership, structural supports, and shared team leadership. Journal of applied psychology, 99(3), p.390.
Marlow, S.L., Lacerenza, C.N. and Salas, E., 2017. Communication in virtual teams: A conceptual framework and research agenda. Human Resource Management Review, 27(4), pp.575-589.
Purvanova, R.K., 2014. Face-to-face versus virtual teams: What have we really learned?. The Psychologist-Manager Journal, 17(1), p.2.
Simpson, D., 2017. Advantages and disadvantages of international virtual project teams. International Business and Global Economy, 2017(Numer 1), pp.275-287.
Sivunen, A., Nurmi, N. and Koroma, J., 2016, January. When a one-hour time difference is too much: Temporal boundaries in global virtual work. In 2016 49th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS) (pp. 511-520). IEEE.
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