Organizational behavior: concepts, theories, and workplace applications

Organizational Behavior

In 1984, the movie The Gods Must be Crazy depicted a Kalahari bushman who finds a Coca-Cola bottle that was discarded from an airplane into the desert. The bushman does not recognize the bottle or the brand, and the situation leads to all manner of confusion among the tribe, who try to decipher the meaning of the bottle. Such a story would be rather incomprehensible today, that there would be anywhere in the world where people would not recognize a Coca-Cola bottle. Indeed, not long after the movie was made, the process of globalization began in earnest with the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement, followed by waves of other bilateral and multilateral free trade agreements, and then followed further by the invention of the Internet. If the era of globalization had not been officially declared before, by the time the 1999 WTO protests in Seattle occurred, globalization was a household word.

Globalization is one of the major driving forces in business. The processes by which globalization has occurred are technological advancements in communication, improved transportation infrastructure and trade liberalization. On the first, communication has improved substantially since the Internet went public in 1994, creating a world where people are increasingly interconnected. Transportation advancements have allowed for easier movement of goods and people around the globe. Trade liberalization has encouraged such movements, especially of goods and capital. The customs union in Europe, then later the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement and its successor NAFTA, spurred the era of trade liberalization that occurred with GATT evolved into the WTO.

What these forces have done is allowed businesses to emerge that are truly global in nature. Prior to this era of globalization, companies tended to operate in one country or region, and few were globally powerful. Even the most powerful organizations in the world -- oil companies, mining concerns and automakers -- were not truly global during this era. However, successive waves of liberalization have brought us to this point, where a company can be truly global. Even the companies that are not global themselves interact with the rest of the world as though the entire planet was a singular market. People are in constant communication with other people around the world, and communications advances have given rise to an era where virtual teams, intercultural collaboration and global business are the norm.

This trend has had significant implications for the world of business and for the companies that operate in this world. Many industries have engaged in multiple rounds of consolidation in order to leverage economies of scale. More products are being sold all over the world, to the point where hundreds of brands are now recognized almost everywhere. Moreover, as trade barriers come down, even companies that do not want to operate internationally are in a position where they face competition from those companies that do.

The implications for business are considerable. Businesses must now think and act globally. There are inherent challenges for this. Many companies must alter their organizational design. Most companies have organizational cultures that are reflective of where they are from, something that may or may not make sense in a globalized world. For business, and for the study of organizational behavior, the task is to keep up with the current study of globalization, and how it is affecting businesses. The winners in globalization are the companies and the countries that are best equipped to manage in a globalized world, and this paper will examine what the implications of globalization are for the modern corporate organization.

Relevance to Organizational Behavior

The forces that are driving globalization are having a profound impact on organizational behavior, in several critical ways. First, organizations must deal in a multicultural business environment. Their customer and supply chain webs spread around the world, even if their operations do not. Companies must collaborate with partners all over the world as well. Yet, cultural differences still exist. Whatever effect the rise of the global corporation might have on the global culture is not yet known, and will take time to emerge. The reality is that these changes are already being reflected in organizational behavior. Companies have long sought to instil a common corporate culture, and this is still evident in the global business environment. The difference is that the common culture must both incorporate local cultural norms while at the same time transcending the differences between cultures. Corporations are conflicted between pushing their own cultural norms on their workforces and strategic partners while simultaneously recognizing and dealing with the influences that local cultures have on the mechanisms of organizational behavior.

Different cultures are different -- this is self-evident fact. But for global organizations, part of the job is to recognize what those differences are and how much they matter. The role that hierarchy, communications styles and organization design play can be quite different in different countries, but within one corporation there should only be a singular structure. How to make this work is a significant dilemma for the global organization. Resolving this dilemma requires understanding the different elements of organizational behavior -- motivations, negotiations, power structures, organizational design and communication -- and how they each can be used to resolve the dilemma. There is no one right answer, and most organizations are struggling to keep up with the rapidly-moving forces of globalization.

The rapid pace of change in communication has brought with it its own set of problems. While there are clear benefits from reducing communications barriers and from democratizing knowledge, there are risks inherent in global virtual communications. Managing these risks in order to extract the benefits is one of the central tasks for managers of organizational behavior. The virtual work team is an emerging field of particular interest, since labor has become dispersed around the world globally, and many other nations outside of the west are starting to make high-level contributions to business.

Organizational behavior therefore lies at the fore of extracting the benefits of globalization. When organizations expand their size, they must build into their structures the fact that within the organization is an ever more-diverse group of people, and these people are going to have very different perspectives on the nature of organizational behavior, and very different norms. Communication is a huge challenge, not only because of language barriers but communications style. For the organization, getting people all around the world pulling in one direction is a massive challenge. Understanding how the drivers of organizational behavior are changing and responding to the globalized business environment is critical to the success of the modern globalized organization. Thus, this topic is of utmost importance for organizational behavior -- it is arguable the most important issue in the organizational behavior of large corporations today.

Literature Review -- Globalization & Business

There are two schools of thought with respect to the influence of globalization on global business culture. The prevailing wisdom, in particular during the earlier stages of globalization, is that globalization was simply a manifestation or extension of colonialism and that Western business culture was resulting in global homogenization. This view seems reasonable, primarily because the forces that drive globalization were driven by Western interests. The West started the process of trade liberalization and it was Western agenda that ran the first couple of rounds of WTO negotiation. Further, the world's transportation and communication advances arose in the West as well. So much of globalization seemed to be about allowing Western companies to pursue their interests around the world.

That is a fair argument to make, but there is another perspective on the impact that globalization has had on global business culture. Hooker (2012) argues that what is occurring is in fact a process of what he terms "deglobalization." The term is sort of nonsensical, but the concept makes a lot of sense to anyone who has observed the evolution of the globalized business culture. Instead of the West running roughshod over the rest of the world, what has occurred is the rise of many other cultures in the global business milieu and this has significant impacts on global business culture. A multinational or international corporation today will bear the cultural influences of its markets and its employee bases, and increasingly these are not just Anglo-American but Chinese, Korean, Indian, Arab and Eastern European. Traditional sources of business culture influence have been joined by new influencers. A CEO can come from anywhere -- India in the case of Pepsi, Lebanon in the case of Renault-Nissan (itself a global mutt), and Brazil in the case of AB-InBev (another global mutt). Globalization's influence on business culture is not about the dominance of Anglo-American or Germanic cultural values so much as it is about absorbing different cultural values from all over the world, and fusing them into what will one day become, maybe, a singular global culture.

As Hooker notes, there will be more influence from those cultures that have comparative advantage in certain attributes conducive to business. Cultures with higher degrees of xenophobia or discomfort with multiculturalism -- whether those cultures are in parts of the U.S.A. Or parts of the Middle East -- will struggle in the global business environment compared with the parts of the world that are better able to adapt to a multicultural business environment and whose strengths lie in the critical areas of communication, negotiation and cultural competence.

The most globalized nations are the ones best poised for success. Consider the Globalization Index -- the leading countries for economic globalization like Singapore, the UAE, Ireland and Mauritius are all experiencing strong growth, while the most globalized socially are many of the same countries, along with economic powerhouses like the UK, France and Canada (KOF, 2015). The most globalized cities are often the world's most powerful -- consider the high number of foreign-born residents in places like New York, Hong Kong, London, Sydney, Dubai and Toronto and where those cities rank in terms of global power. There are few outliers -- there is a direct correlation between the ability to manage globalization on a cultural level and the ability to manage globalization on an economic level.

Kale & Pedgaonkar (2007) have examined the role that globalization has played on Indian culture. They note that while many people are not truly affected by globalization, those who are have seen mutual cultural exchange. International business culture has affected Indian business culture, but there has been some cultural exchange because of the major role that India plays in global culture, lending credence to Hooker's ideas. Expanding of mindsets is a critical part of this process. Because globalization brings people around the world into greater contact with each other, there is mutual exchange of culture. In the developing world, the global mindset can reflect in increasing Westernization, but Srinivas (1995) also notes that the developing world can influence culture, when it gains in economic strength. Managers need to be aware of how the different cultures in the workplace can affect organizational behavior, rather than simply assuming that different cultures can easily be fused into a unified corporate culture.

Markovic (2012) covers some specific cultural dimensions with respect to how globalization affects business culture. She notes that gender roles are one of the areas where different cultures can vary significantly, and this has interesting implications for global business. The most classic case is the proverbial female CEO going on a business trip to Saudi Arabia. Most cases are less extreme, of course, but the reality is that there are cultural clashes with respect to gender roles in particular, but other traits of culture as well. These issues challenge business organizations, because the organization must strike a balance between respecting cultures and promoting business objectives.

Markovic's work is specific to the organizational behavior context. She discusses how gender roles affect many aspects of an organization, ranging from power structures to communications. Entrepreneurial organizational culture is discussed, because this is one of the key aspects of globalization in larger organizations, finding ways to tap into the entrepreneurial capabilities of the different people within the organization. Females, however, are often excluded from entrepreneurial activity, where in some other cultures they are the drivers of entrepreneurial activity. The different levels of empowerment and the ways that women are viewed in the workplace in different cultures seems to be one of the areas where there is the most challenge for organizations in the era of globalization. Where male-dominated cultures can set aside their differences in order to make money, there can still be significant clash with respect to the role of women. The book outlines some of the challenges that organizations face with respect to handling this issue.

Ethics are another key issue that arises in a globalized business culture. Martin (2011) examines the differences between collectivist and individualist cultures with respect to ethics. Because there are different viewpoints on the role of the individual in society, and many societies draw upon their own unique ethical frameworks, ethics is ultimately one of the biggest challenges for the global organization. Ethics should not, as Martin notes, be viewed as being the purview of one society while other societies are unethical. An example of that would be the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which essentially imposes U.S. values with respect to bribery on all American businesses in all countries, regardless of that country's values. It is as easy to engage in ethical hegemony as it is to engage in ethical relativism. At some point, however, the global organization needs to strike a balance between the different ethical perspectives found around the world, and work towards an ethical framework that works as best as possible around the world; or it needs to accept that the company will not have a uniform ethical code, which could prove to be significantly more challenging.

Even just the basic fundamentals of running a business have elements of culture embedded into them. Things like performance appraisals, which can influence behavior in an organization, can be significantly different across cultures because they reflect the superior-subordinate relationship, workplace expectations and the nature of personal criticism in a society. This is also one of the areas where there is room for national culture to influence the way a company runs its business in different countries. This highlights that in many instances, the company will need to exercise discretion, even in a globalized world, and choose which elements of the business need to be globalized and which can be held at a more national or regional cultural level (Peretz & Fried, 2011).

The coming together of different cultures in the business setting is thus clearly fraught with challenges. People have different ethical values, and different perspectives on so many issues. All of this will be reflected on the organization's behavior. This will inevitably change in response to the globalized environment. The different issues must be addressed, and in that the globalized organization will ultimately look quite a bit different from how that same organization looked before the process of globalization.

Power Structures, Leadership and Organizational Design

One of the benefits of globalization is that it has given corporations a much larger pool of leadership talent from which to draw upon. The modern, globalized firm can tap talent from anywhere in the world. Firms that wish to succeed in the global world need to adjust the structure of their leadership pipelines. An example of a traditional leadership pipeline would be where a company hires internally. All of the leadership talent is concentrated in the home country, and this talent would grow within that country, rising through the functional ranks until assuming an executive role. Today, the modern globalized company has recognized the need for a shift in the leadership development paradigm.

It is typical for the leadership pathway to begin with opening up talent identification to all foreign subsidiaries. The best leadership prospects are more likely to be identified the closer they are to home office, but ultimately the leading companies will be able to scout talent within their ranks anywhere in the world. The leadership pathway today almost always involves an international posting. Leaders need to be able to understand the different elements of international business. In many cases, the path to the CEO's office runs through a critical foreign subsidiary. For example, the head of the Chinese subsidiary in many companies is a prestige role, one only offered after successful international postings elsewhere, as managing that critical growth market is seen as a springboard to the head job.

One of the reasons for this is that future leaders of organizations need to understand how their organizations are managing the dynamics of globalization. By running foreign subsidiaries, they are able to learn about leading in different cultures, for example. There are different leadership styles, and their effectiveness in different cultures can vary, but the best leaders will be able to adapt their leadership style around the world to not only maintain effectiveness, but to lead many different people. Being able to manage in different cultures, and make use of local managers to translate your leadership throughout the subsidiary, is a critical element of the modern leader in a multinational company.

Power structures can be significantly different around the world. Organizational behavior recognizes that power structures affect the way that the organizational culture is disseminated, and they way that information is transmitted in an organization. In particular, the strategies devised must be operationalized throughout the organization. Being able to tailor power structures to the needs of different cultures is important. The global company needs to understand when to empower individuals, and when to centralize control, and the ability to read these situations is an essential component of leading in the globalized world.

Organizational design has also changed in order to reflect globalization. Organizational design has a profound effect on organizational behavior because it relates to the transmission of information, how strategy is formulated, and the degree of autonomy that exists within the structure of the organization. Organizational design has become more complex as the process of globalization has become more complex, and as global organizations become larger. Organizational design must, for example, allow the organization to have free flow of information, so that opportunities can be identified quickly even when the organization itself is becoming bigger (Foss, Lyngsie & Zahra, 2013). Foss et al. explain that the organization design affects the firm's ability to interact with external sources, which can be critical to identifying and exploiting new opportunities. Opening up channels of communication, both internal and external, is one of the most powerful forces unleashed by globalization, and ultimately for the organization to be more responsive means that it has to have a design that allows for this. It is of no value to identify new opportunities if the company is not going to be able to communicate those opportunities to the decision-makers in a timely fashion.

Innovation is another area where organizational design and globalization intersect. One of the benefits of globalization is that companies can be open to new ways of thinking. Remember what Hooker (2012) wrote about the new organizational cultures -- they are not just an imposition of Western ideas on other countries, but they are an opportunity for even a dominant Western culture to be influenced by other cultures as those cultures increase their influence. Strategic flexibility allows for a company to tap into the resource base that is knowledge in other cultures, and the perspectives of other societies. If a company is going to go to the trouble of hiring good people around the world, then it should ensure that those same people are sufficiently empowered ot make a difference. There is tremendous potential in innovation when a company has implemented an organizational design that is truly globalized -- that is to say when the organizational design has de-emphasized home country supremacy and allowed for ideas to come from anybody, anywhere in the organization (Bock et al., 2012).

Bock et al. (2012) note that traditional organization for design can be extrapolated even to the global setting, whereby barriers to innovation are reduced, and local organizations are empowered to pursue innovative ideas. A globalized business can be bound by centralized culture and themes, and brands of course, while still providing for subsidiaries around the world to pursue strategies and opportunities that they identify, without having to report back to head office. This is a difference from the more centralized organizational design structures that were prevalent in the earlier days of globalization -- the geographic structure, the product structure and the matrix structure. Decentralization, within an overarching organizational context, has become a means of adapting organizational design principles to the globalized world.

All of this does not mean that there are no risks or costs associated with globalization. Many firms fail to fully understand the complexity that globalization has brought to the world. They do not respond or adapt in the manner that they need to, and ultimately they struggle. Larsen, Manning and Pedersen (2013) studied offshoring, and the complexity that a globalized supply chain can bring to organizational design. The design has to accommodate for stronger strategic relationships with suppliers, and this can place intercultural conflict at the fore. Firms are usually aware of things like differences between legal environments, and hire local help to mitigate risk, but there are significant cultural risks associated as well. Consider that in America, business overseas tends to be contact-based, whereas many other countries see business as being relationship-based. This is a time horizon issue, one of the elements on which organizations can behave very differently around the world. American corporations are often slaves to quarterly earnings, and their behavior reflects that, while in other countries it is the long run that matters. The authors explain how some of these issues turn into conflicts in situations where there is greater integration between supply chain partners in different parts of the world.

Youssef and Luthans (2012) advise that leadership can focus on the positive, as this is more universal than other means of motivation. Positivity can help to manage complexity more effectively, and can allow leaders to approach diversity as a source of positive change, rather than negativity or a threat to be overcome. By focusing primarily on the positive, global managers can have more universal appeal, and the authors argue that this approach is going to be more productive in the long run for global organizations, and therefore should be built into leadership and organizational cultures.

As globalization is driven by communication, it is also worth taking into consideration that these increases in the flows of information make information more valuable. The people who control this information, and can more effectively process it, will be at an advantage in the organization. This has implications for leadership, in particular for traditional hierarchies that rely on formal control structures. There are many types of power within an organization, and information - referential and expertise power -- is becoming more important. For managers, it is therefore important that they possess this power in significant degree, because employees can simply use email to work around managers who are not up to speed. Information is the new power, and organizations must design not only their business models but their leadership and control models around that reality. An organization that tries to rely on formal power structures will be ill-equipped to compete in the globalized world.

There are valuable lessons for managers with respect to managing this sort of risk, and the authors note that institutional experience is one of those. Institutional knowledge can help an organization to function in the globalized world, because the body of knowledge built up, in particular through not only working experience but through interactions with others around the world, matters. The processes by which information is disseminated throughout the organization can help to determine how much institutional knowledge builds up in the organization, and the authors found that higher levels of experience -- institutional knowledge -- can help to mitigate some of the issues that naturally arise through the increase in business between companies in different parts of the world where the business cultures can vary significantly.

Building and Maintaining a Common Organizational Culture

One of the most important influencers on organizational behavior is the organizational culture. Organizational culture is understood in the norms, symbols and other cultural elements that are common throughout an organization. The ways in which organizational culture manifests can be significantly different, and the strength of a culture within an organization can be as well. Unions used to -- maybe they still do -- have songs and slogans to help reinforce the culture of solidarity that was essential to their ability to bargain collectively. FedEx has a slogan -- People, Service, Profit -- that embodies how the company views its employees and the way it will win in the marketplace. It then supports this with policies, and with lore of customer service heroes, intended to set the tone for new employees to understand the service culture, and how the company will support them in their service efforts. .

Developing and maintaining an organizational culture is relatively easy in small companies, and can be extended nationally when there is a strong national culture. But extending an organizational culture internationally is a significant step up in the degree of difficulty. When a company goes international, it will need to incorporate people from a much wider degree of backgrounds. In a sense, this is more difficult even than incorporating different immigrant communities within one country -- immigrants to American still have the cultural background of the U.S. In foreign countries, there is no such overarching backdrop. Yet, companies operating globally still want to present a global face to the world. They will need to have an organizational culture that promotes this, and that culture must work in the context of all of the different national and regional cultures of the areas in which the company operates. In the earlier days of internationalization of business, organizations could send managers from head office and promote organizational culture that way, via top down means. Today, it is more complex. Managers are not always from the home country, and nor should they be, since a global leadership pipeline is one of the significant benefits of globalization. The organizational culture needs to be strong enough that it permeates the entire organization, and it needs to be flexible enough that it can work in many different cultural contexts. The organizational culture should be a means by which cultural conflict is resolved, not initiated.

There are a few critical ways in which global organizational culture is manifested, then. The first is that it should be focused on the business, first and foremost. When the culture is focused on the business, this orients the employees to business issues, and customer-based resolutions to conflict. That is important, because cultural conflict is often internal, and oriented those involved in the conflict towards a third-party, usually the customer, can be an important way to break the impasse.

Complementing this idea, organizational culture to translate around the world effectively needs to be fairly neutral on controversial issues. Think for a moment about Chick-Fil -- A and its corporate views. These views serve the company well in its heartland, where the prevailing culture seems to support these views. But these views do not translate just anywhere -- that culture is not built for the company to go global, because it has too much national context. For the most part, successful global companies have an organizational culture that transcends the national context.

There will be, however, conflicts that arise inevitably. Markovic (2012) notes gender as an area where conflict can arise between cultural values. Erkutlu (2012) argues that leadership concepts and proactivity are other areas -- the organization might wish to promote a decentralized organization with flat decision-making structures, but those might not work well in cultures where people are unaccustomed to assuming that sort of personal risk and thus where leaders are expected to make all of the decisions. Erkutlu notes that this has significant implications for companies that have risen on the basis of their innovation and decentralized decision-making. Such companies have often maintained a higher degree of control from head office, and brought in talent identified elsewhere in the organization instead, leveraging the ability to communicate freely around the world.

Creating an organizational culture that can transcend national cultures is easier said than done. It requires transformational leadership and powerful change agents. It takes time to instil cultural values, and to do so without creating any sort of cognitive dissonance for people when they see organizational values conflicting with those of their culture will take even longer. Yet this should be the objective of any organization that wishes to thrive in the globalized world. Globalization provides an opportunity for a stronger culture that promotes positivity, and resolving such conflicts, and taking the best elements from each culture, is the best approach to creating a global organizational culture.

Organizational Psychologists

Many companies are employing organizational psychologists in order to address the issues and challenges of globalization. There is so much room for conflict, and the reality is that the forces of globalization are moving faster than most organizations are even capable of. The field of psychology has sought to find meaning in globalization, in understanding the ways that globalization is changing how people deal with one another (Marsella, 2012). Psychology approaches the issue of globalization looking at several issues: well-being, justice, and change. The latter comes in organizational, personal and social forms, and is arguably the most important for the globalized firm. Social change is evident in how many people are faced with a rapidly-changing world. There is almost this sense that one is a part of that world, or is being left behind, and this can result in significant stress and conflict. Just because someone is working in a global company does not mean that they themselves will have a global outlook, and thus they might be challenged to adopt one.

From an organizational perspective, psychologists are interested in how an organization can cope with the challenges of globalization. Organizations are bound by inertia -- their established systems and cultures. This can be a powerful force, where these facets of the organization are reinforced by the people within the organization. Organizational psychologists therefore seek to find ways to help organizations adapt to the new realities, and get them to change (Prilleltensky, 2012). For many organizations, the rapid pace of change has proven to be difficult, and they are struggling to adapt. But those companies want to adapt, because otherwise they will be the losers in the globalization game.

One of the areas where organizational psychologists have sought to help is with assisting leadership in transforming organizations so that they are better equipped for the globalized world. Cultural intelligence is an emerging field, building on the ideas of general and emotional intelligence. Leadership success in the globalized world is believed to be tied to a high level of cultural intelligence. For those who are "born global," there is a naturally high level of cultural intelligence, but for many others this is not the case. In that sense, younger managers and those from global cities are perhaps more inherently capable -- or at least they have a head start. But for an organization to succeed, it needs to have a higher level of cultural competence throughout. Training on cultural intelligence, in particular the psychological aspects of dealing with uncertainty, ambiguity and change, is one of the areas where organizational psychologists are contributing to the success of firms adapting to the new globalized reality (Rockstuhl, et al., 2011).

Communication and Virtual Teams

As noted, one of the core elements of globalization is communication. Since the advent of the Internet, communication around the world has increased exponentially. We have, as a society, access to an astonishing variety of information. This has happened very quickly,, to the point where our brains are just beginning to evolve in order to process all of this information and complexity. Effortless, we can communicate with just about anyone, anywhere in the world, at any time. This has opened up significant possibilities, and challenges, for the world of organizational behavior.

The pace of communication being much more rapid has brought to light the need for organizational structures that take advantage of this. Conrad and Poole (2012) have discussed the matter of organizational communication in the global economy. They point out that as technology reduces barriers to information transmission, organizations need to respond by reducing the barriers to people using this information. The result will be decentralized decision-making, a greater degree of subordinate empowerment, and significant impacts on organizational politics that the organization needs to take into account as well.

There are significant differences between communication styles in different cultures. As globalization increases intercultural communication, it is important for organizations to recognize these differences. There are, to some extent, global communication norms emerging. Danet and Herring (2007) note that the Internet allows people not only to engage with those in their own culture, but also to simultaneously participate in this emerging global culture. While that culture is overwhelming inly English-speaking this does not mean it reflects strictly Anglo-American cultural values. Intercultural communication can be seen in the same light as risk -- it can widen gulfs that exist and it can bring people closer together. There is just that much more variability with intercultural communication (Danet & Herring, 2007).

Organizations, therefore, need to establish norms of communication, in order to facilitate fluid communication between members of the organization who are from different cultures and who may otherwise have very different norms of communication. There are issues with the level of directness (high context vs. low context communication), and there are issues with things like frequency and acceptable tone as well. In general, the ability to communicate with people around the world opens up some tremendous possibilities with respect to the flow of information throughout the company, but only when norms are established to avoid conflict. It is especially important to remember that conflict and communication issues are more likely in situations when all of the communication is online, because this removes the non-verbal communication context. Someone can be smiling when writing something, but if the person on the other end does not see that smile, they might take the communication entirely a different way.

One of the emerging issues with respect to organizational behavior is that of virtual work teams. This structure has emerged to take advantage of modern communication, and of globalization. Virtual work teams consist of team members scattered around the globe at different sites, who bring different expertise to the team. The virtual work team taps into the knowledge that the organization has, but at a high level of convenience and a low cost. The virtual work team, however, does represent one of the unique challenges for organizational behavior. First, they are unique within the concept of organizational design. A virtual work team should have some oversight, but often they are self-guiding by virtue of the way that information flows throughout the team. The advantages of having such teams is constrained by maintaining formal reporting structures, as the team must then wait for whoever is in power to be in the office. For this reason, it is sometimes quite difficult for virtual work teams to fit within a traditional organizational design concept (Gibson & Cohen, 2003).