HookGlobal virtual teams have been described as being valuable but “fraught with problems,” (Gordon, 2017, p. 1). Many of the issues confounding virtual teams are not technological issues such as network security but rather, are related to social and psychological factors. The failure of virtual teams to achieve stated goals may be due to any number of challenges, ranging from the lack of face-to-face interaction that provides the nonverbal communication context (Quisenberry, 2018) to the different means by which each member of the team uses or interacts with the technology and with team members (German, 2017). Global virtual teams are instrumental, necessitating further research into how to formally improve their operations via improvements to leadership models or to the actual technological instruments used to facilitate communication.
Anchor
Recent literature has been abundant on virtual teams and how to make them more effective. Quisenberry (2018) demonstrates the importance of emotional intelligence to highly functioning virtual teams. This research can be used to underscore the importance of providing emotional intelligence skills training to all employees who become members of virtual teams and especially to group leaders. Likewise, German (2017) found that emotional intelligence is strongly correlated with factors...
Gordon (2017) shows how the same types of leadership strategies used in face-to-face teams do not transfer easily to the virtual environment, noting how roles and tasks both need to be adapted to encourage greater empathy and emotional intelligence. As the literature on emotional intelligence as a key variable on virtual teams becomes more robust, some research like that of Orta-Castanon, Urbina-Coronado, Ahuett-Garza, et al (2018) demonstrate how the technologies used in virtual environments can itself be changed to facilitate emotionally intelligent communications. Likewise, Malcondo da Cruz, Moriya-Huzita & Feltrim (2018) show how technology and user experiences impact the development of trust on virtual teams.
General Business Problem
The general business problem is how to make virtual teams more predictable as well as more effective, offering leaders specific strategies they can employ when recruiting team members, forming the team and creating its virtual culture, and mobilizing the team to achieve its goals. Specifically, the problems that need to be addressed with regards to improving virtual teams are related to communication and to how to stimulate emotionally intelligent interactions in…
Hook: When poet, artist, and punk rock star Patti Smith moved into the Chelsea Hotel with her beau and fellow artist Robert Mapplethorpe in 1970, she recognized the power of networking for increasing productivity and propelling individual and group success: "The Chelsea hotel network made anything possible. Everything changed," (Olaisen & Revang, 2017, p. 1441). The example of Patti Smith shows how networking is a critical component of success in
An important limitation of the study was that team members and their experiences of team leadership were not included in the study. A team leader's perception of effective communication may, for example, not be experienced in the same way as a team member receiving the communication. On the other hand, the results of effective team work appear to imply that certain categories of communication are experienced as more effective than
Virtual Teams? Reference used will be: DuFrene, D. D., & Lehman, C. M. (2016). Managing virtual teams. Business Expert Press. Although virtual teams can become an integral part of an organization, the lack of evidence-based practice has led to the inability of most organizations to successfully implement virtual teams. There is a need to discover evidence-based practice to allow for increased implementation of virtual teams; research in the topic of virtual teams
Lipnack & Stamps (1999) conducted a study in which they examined the emergence of virtual teams as a new modality for working. The study was carried out on the premise that the emergence of the Information Age has contributed to the advent of a working culture where people must no longer be in the same location in order to work together. The Information Age is characterized by the development and
Globalization and Management All people are global citizens now. But what does this mean? What is this process of globalization that has quite literally swept over our globe? And what will be the effects of globalization during our lifetime on the ways in which business will be done and especially in how information will be managed? Not only does each person have to consider the implications of such questions on an
" According to Short, Williams, and Christie (1976; cited by Van Den Hooff, Groot & De Jonge, 2005), Social Presence Theory notes that "communication media differ in the degree to which they can communicate (or simulate) the social presence of the communication partners through the use of social cues (both verbal and nonverbal cues)." This theory purports that if a medium can only communicate limited social cues, communication partners do