Abstract
The development and use of information and communications technology (ICT) are growing at a rapid speed across the world. ICT has been the cause for new types of work arrangements, such as virtual organizations, virtual teams, teleworking, etc. Virtual teams provide organizations with competitive advantage by enabling them to hire talented people across the world and eliminating the need for physical availability in the office. However, one major issue hindering the productivity of the virtual team is knowledge sharing. The lack of proper knowledge sharing between team members may cause organizations to fail with regards to the implementation of successful strategies. The research into understanding knowledge sharing in virtual teams (VT) in the Middle East is lacking. While such studies have been done in the United States and Europe, the Middle East has been overlooked. In this study, the authors assume that there are some specific behavioral aspects of VT in the Middle East that create the need for specific scientific solutions. Accordingly, this study was conducted in the Middle East in order to gain scientific knowledge on the region’s specificity. The objective of this article is to create a model for the evaluation of the effect on knowledge sharing in virtual teams in the Middle East. For analysis, the selection of companies includes United Arab Emirates (UAE)-based companies in the IT industry whose businesses engage in VT. The results show that the following factors have a direct effect on knowledge sharing in VT: Culture, motivation, conflict, ICT, trust, and leadership. Conversely, the results do not demonstrate that language has any impact on knowledge sharing. The methodology used is as follows: Literature review, survey methods, and structural equation modeling.
Highlights
Change in organizations occurs for several reasons; e.g., recession, budget reductions, market pressure, or advances in information and communications technology (ICT) [1]
A total of 23.15% (47) of the respondents have less than one year of experience in virtual teams (VT); 42.03% (85) have 1–5 years of experience; 24.63% (50) have 6–10 years of experience working in VTs; and 8.18% (21) have worked in VTs for over ten years
The following are the types of services that the companies provide according to the responses: 37.5% of companies provide enterprise resource planning (ERP) services; 28.4%— business intelligence (BI) services; and 65.9% provide both types of services, as presented in Table 2 below
Summary
Change in organizations occurs for several reasons; e.g., recession, budget reductions, market pressure, or advances in information and communications technology (ICT) [1]. Many organizations responded to these changes by introducing virtual teams (VT) whose members are geographically dispersed, and their work is organized and communicated through ICT tools [3]. Virtual teams are important for organizations because they allow the team members to communicate despite the constraints of time and distance. They allow organizations to hire the most talented people to join the team regardless of their location, which in turn increases the efficiency of the team [5]. The four key characteristics of virtual teams are as follows: They are temporary (organized for a particular task), culturally diverse (different nationalities and languages), geographically dispersed (working from remote locations), and electronically connected (using ICT for communication) [6]. Knowledge sharing is a salient aspect of virtual teams, and it is important to study and measure it within the virtual teams
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