ost people are familiar with the main types ofteam structures that are traditionally used tocoordinate and control people and processes in com-plex organizations. Collaborative structures such aswork teams, virtual teams, project teams, and top-managementteamshavelongbeenconsideredcriticalto the effectiveness of contemporary organizations.Today, however, the increasing demands and oppor-tunities created by complex and rapidly changingdemographics, markets and information technologiesmeanthatthese traditionalforms of team working arealso evolving, creating a whole new environment forcollaborative work and, in turn, placing a new set ofdemands on leaders.Agoodexampleoftherapidevolutionofteamworkis the rise of the global virtual team (GVT) as a majorfeature of contemporary organizational life. GVTs nowpermeate all levels of most large organizations, fromthe operating core to the strategic apex of the orga-nization,supplantinginmanyinstancesthetraditionalface-to-faceteam.Suchteamsbringwiththemarangeof well-documented leadership challenges that stemfrom the need to deal with issues arising from theirgeographicdispersion,relianceonelectronicmediaforcommunication, and nationality diversity.Increasingly, however, even the GVT must be trea-ted as an evolving team concept, and it is possible todistinguish between different forms of GVTs that areemergingin contemporaryorganizationallife.To date,much of the literature on GVTs has treated them asglobal, virtual analogues of work, project or manage-ment teams. However, we examined an importantnewly developing collective structure, one whose clo-sest analogue is the parallel team. Parallel teams areongoingteamswhichoperateoutsidetheformalorga-nizational structure, and which are typically focusedon innovation and improvement activities. Once pop-ular and widespread in a variety of forms, for exampleas quality circles or continuous improvement teams,they have received less attention than other types oforganizational teams in the recent academic and pop-ular management literature.Parallelteamsarestartingtoattractrenewedinter-est in part as a consequence of the growing popularityof ‘‘communities of practice,’’ whose development hasin turn been facilitated by the widespread use ofInternet-based communication technologies overrecent years. In its purest form, a community of prac-tice (COP) is a group of people who share interests,concerns, or problems in a topic area, and voluntarilychoose to interact with each other in order to furthertheirknowledgeandexpertise.ThepoweroftheInter-net has enabled these collective forms to flourish andto morph into virtual communities of practice, whoseboundaries transcend national and organizationalboundaries. Interestingly, many of the first COPs werecomposedofscientists,engineers,andacademics situ-ated in a variety of public and private sector organiza-tions and connected by their common interests.Noticingthesecommunitiesdeveloping,andrecogniz-ing their potential as both innovation incubators andas knowledge transfer mechanisms, some organiza-tions have begun to attempt to find a place for themwithin the organization’s direct view or ‘‘space.’’ IBMCorp., Shell Oil Co., MicrosoftCorp., AccentureLtd. andAlcoa are among the many organizations that havesought to capitalize on the benefits of communities ofpractice via the formation of parallel team structures.As we have observed them in operation at Alcoa,parallel global virtual teams (pGVTs), have propertiesassociated with parallel teams, GVTs, and commu-nities of practice. They meet all of the design criterianormally associated with an organizational team. Forinstance, they have a formally assigned organizationalmission,a designatedleader,anddefinedmembershipboundaries(basedonfunctionalexpertise).Taskinter-dependenceisalsohigh,inthesensethatfortheteamsto function effectively in identifying and proselytizingbest practices, knowledge and experiences must besharedanddiscussed,andagreementreachedonwhatto implement and where. The performance of each
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Open Access
Dec 28, 2023
Donald E Casey 
