Spreading of project and virtual teams in traditional organizational cultures

Abstract

In our article we would like to give an overview of the recent literature about special present work arrangements emphasizing the differences between `traditional´ work and `(virtual) project team´ work. `Traditional work´ means that the employee has an invariable package of tasks that he/she is responsible for. In `project teams´ members have common complex goals and there are a lot of parts of assignments that one is responsible for in the team. `Project´ means that there is a specific exercise that must be carried out in defined time and budget. The nature of work is dynamically changing and there is a new view of work in project groups. There are different antecedences and emphasises than in `traditional work´. There is a lot of information, and information acquisition is not a problem, but one has to be very clever to structure the abounding information he/she gets. Due to technical development, it is possible to work at home and people do not need to go out to work every day. Working together with others has also become special: you may not know personally the persons you work together with, you may have only virtual contact with them. The goals and the conditions of project team work are really special and it is important to know because more and more project groups are appearing. There are project groups appearing in Hungary also. According to the ``Collectively for Workplaces of the Future´´ Foundation´s (``Közösen a Jövõ Munkahelyeiért`` Alapítvány) competition in 2009 we began a research related to project works in Hungarian organizations. We tried to analyze project work as an atypical type of work and we tried to also analyze how it can be appropriate to make possibilities of labour market better and ensure flexible opportunities for organizations and individuals. We analyzed such Hungarian organizations, which have one or more project teams and we tried to reveal work psychological aspects of this type of work.