Virtual Teamwork Research Articles

Managing emergent knowledge through deferred action design principles

PurposeThe aim of this paper is to examine empirically the relevance of the theory of deferred action for knowledge management systems (KMS) design in practice.Design/methodology/approachThe study adopts a case study approach to examine knowledge work and knowledge management in virtual teamwork in a large UK telecommunications company to understand the occurrence of emergent knowledge and how it is managed by virtual team leaders. The section in the company studied is described as a “knowledge intensive organization” dealing with the company's e‐commerce activities.FindingsThe analysis confirms the complex adaptive system hypothesis – a complex system adapts to its environment through self‐organization. The data reveal the behaviour of the virtual team to be self‐organizing and adaptive to its environment. It confirms the knowledge tacitness hypothesis and social embeddedness of knowledge hypothesis as important determinants of knowledge sharing. Specifically, the data reveal the main issues concerning knowledge sharing practices of virtual team workers and the crucial team leader's role in the effectiveness of the teams' capability to develop social links to externalise and share tacit knowledge to accomplish tasks.Research limitations/implicationsIn this paper, the authors contribute “emergent knowledge” as a third category of organizational knowledge in addition to the existing tacit and explicit knowledge that needs to be considered when designing KMS. It also derives socio‐technical systems design principles based on the theory of deferred action, and a tentative development process with metrics is then proposed for KMS design that caters for emergent, tacit, and explicit knowledge.Practical implicationsExisting models such as the SECI model do not acknowledge emergent knowledge or its conversion into explicit knowledge. The theory of deferred action is invoked to derive design principles, termed deferred systems design principles, to depict how explicit knowledge, tacit knowledge, and emergent knowledge can be represented to design knowledge management systems for “emergent organizations”.Originality/valueThe study contributes to the limited research and lack of consideration of emergent knowledge as an integral part of organizational knowledge, especially in an era of emergent organizations.

International e-benchmarking: flexible peer development of authentic learning principles in higher education

More and more, social technologies and virtual work methods are facilitating new ways of crossing boundaries in professional development and international collaborations. This paper examines the peer development of higher education teachers through the experiences of the IVBM project (International Virtual Benchmarking, 2009–2010). The e-benchmarking process in which teachers applied authentic learning criteria is described, as are the e-tools (Ning, ACP) and the methods employed collaboratively to develop e-learning competence. Cases came from Finland, Korea, Canada, Belgium and Great Britain. The project formed an international virtual learning community for teachers. In peer development, elements of authentic learning were assigned meaning, development alternatives were considered and the interpretation of authentic learning in different situations and cultures was made concrete. The results promote and inform the planning of e-benchmarking communities and flexible virtual teamwork in professional development and education contexts.

Vertical Integration: Results From a Cross-Course Student Collaboration

The authors report the results of a cross-class project involving sophomore-level students in an Operations Analysis (OA) class with junior-level students in an Operations Management (OM) class. The students formed virtual teams and developed a simulation model of a call center. The OM students provided the management expertise, while the OA students provided the technical background. Our objective was to reinforce concepts from both courses while providing an opportunity to work in virtual teams. Results suggest great dissatisfaction with virtual teams. Many communication and technology challenges need to be overcome to make this approach a practical one.

Industry Perspective

Rising travel costs, coupled with the global dispersion of talent, are two of the reasons that organizations have migrated toward virtual teamwork. While numerous organizations have made significant investments in virtual teams and the technology to support them, a surprising number of virtual teams are not reaching their full potential. A new study conducted by OnPoint surveyed 48 virtual teams across industries and found that there are specific practices that are the key ingredients for optimal virtual team performance. If organizations want to maximize their return on investment, they should ensure that these core practices are in place and continually assess the performance of their virtual teams against these factors over time.

E-Learning and M-Learning

This research explores the relationship between e-learning and m-learning by investigating distance education students’ use of a learning management system, “Interact,” for virtual team work. The paper explores their experience of online collaborative group assignments in the subject “Information Management in Organisations.” International and local students were grouped. Each group undertook a case study project to propose solutions for identified problems in their chosen organisations. Students developed their assignment in wikis and used various tools for communication and document storage. An anonymous web-based survey was conducted after students completed the group assessment. The results reflected a wide range of factors including technology use, working with students from a different country, and challenges they faced completing group assessment online. Their feedback on their e-learning experience indicated the need for m-learning to address their concerns. The findings indicate a need for m-learning to support e-learning further, which could significantly improve the facilitation of online collaborative group assignments.

Managing and training for virtual teams in India

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to investigate the current and potential use of virtual teams in the Indian context.Design/methodology/approachThe use of virtual styles and strategies was assessed through a series of questionnaires, focusing on managerial aspects. The sample consisted of companies and individuals from Europe, who work on virtual assignments. The results were analysed, paying particular attention to the actual usage and potential future usage of virtual assignments.FindingsIt was found that a disparity between the actual and the potential use of virtual delegates exists. Furthermore, the increasing use of virtual delegates requires tailored intercultural training, which meets the specific demands of these delegates and the requirements of virtual teamwork. The paper goes on to discuss how traditional training can be adapted for the training of virtual assignees.Originality/valueThe findings have implications for both academics and practitioners, as they indicate that there is significant potential for further growth in the use of virtual assignments. In particular, the paper highlights the need for specific, dedicated training in virtual assignments, as this has a substantial impact on their success.

Self-Governance Through Group Discussion in Wikipedia

Virtual teams and other online groups can find it challenging to establish norms that allow them to effectively balance task and relational aspects of their discussions. Yet, in our reliance on organizational and team theories, small group scholars have overlooked the potential for learning from examples offered by online communities. Theories of deliberation in small groups offer scholars a way to assess such discussion-centered self-governance in online groups. The study operationalizes the conceptual definition of deliberative discussion offered by Gastil and Black (2008) to examine the small group discussions that undergird policy-making processes in a well-established online community, Wikipedia. Content analysis shows that these discussions demonstrated a relatively high level of problem analysis and providing of information, but results were mixed in the group’s demonstration of respect, consideration, and mutual comprehension. Network visualizations reveal structural patterns that can be useful in examining equality, influence, and group member roles. The combination of measures has implications for future research in deliberative discussion and virtual teamwork.

Virtual Teams: a Literature Review

In the competitive market , virtual teams represent a growing response to the need for fasting time-to- market, low-cost and rapid solutions to complex organizational problems. Virtual teams enable organizations to pool the talents and expertise of employees and non-employees by eliminating time and space barriers . Nowadays, companies are heavily investing in virtual team to enhance their performance and competitiveness. Despite virtual teams growing prevalence, relatively little is known about this new form of team. Hence the study offers an extensive literature review with definitions o f virtual teams and a structured analysis of the present body of knowledge of virtual teams. First, we distinguish virtual teams from conventional teams , different types of virtual teams to identify where current knowledge applies. Second, we distinguish what is needed for effective virtual team considering the people, process and technology point of view and underlying characteristics of virtual teams and challenges they entail. Finally, we have identified an d extended 12 key factors that need to be considered, and describes a methodology focused on supporting virtual team working, with a new approach that has not been specifically addressed in the existing literature and some guide line for future research extracted.

Determinants of cultural adaptation, communication quality, and trust in virtual teams' performance

A virtual team is a network group where team members from different cultures are temporarily gathered together for the period of a mission. The present research proposes a general model of virtual teams to investigate how cultural adaptation, communication quality, and trust affect the performance of virtual teams and their interaction with each other. A qualitative method is applied in the study. Four virtual team members from diverse teams are interviewed in order to explore how virtual teams work and whether propositions are confirmed in practice. The analysis results reveal that cultural adaptation, communication quality, and trust have positive effects on the performance of virtual teams. For virtual teams, research findings imply that team leaders should be aware of cultural differences as well as project issues within teams.

VPN solutions and network monitoring to support virtual teams work in virtual enterprises

In order to be competitive enterprises continuously implement ICT strategies & architectures to improve manufacture, research, products quality, sales, services and costs control. All large enterprises have a local area network, a virtual private network, an Intranet and Internet, servers and workstations for operations, administration and management working together for the same objective: profits. The virtual enterprise and the virtual team?s concepts are discussed in this article. This work analyzes the network architecture for geographically dispersed enterprises (seen as virtual enterprises) as support for virtual project development by virtual teams work. In addition, the paper presents an enterprise networks monitoring solution using open source software (OSS).

Performance and Learning in Virtual Work Teams: Comparing Brazilians and Argentineans.

The objective of this study was to analyze virtual teams from Brazil and Argentina. 181 Brazilians and 84 Argentineans responded to an electronic survey. Differences were found regarding the use of learning strategies, the need for training, and the perceived quality of interactions and effectiveness of virtual teams. The belief that the differences are more easily overcome in virtual teams than in traditional (co-located) teams explains to a greater extent the variance in the responses of Brazilians than Argentineans.

Information Systems Skills Differences Between High-Wage and Low-Wage Regions: Implications for Global Sourcing

Developing Information Systems (IS) skills for a company's workforce has always been challenging, but global sourcing growth has caused the determination of needed IS skills to be more complex. The increased use of outsourcing to an IS service provider and from high-wage regions to low-wage regions has affected what IS skills are required globally and how to distribute the workforce to meet these needs. To understand what skills are needed in locations that seek and those that provide outsourcing, we surveyed IS service provider managers in global locations. Results from 126 reporting units provide empirical evidence that provider units in low-wage regions value technical skills more than those in high-wage regions. Despite the emphasis on commodity skills in low-wage areas, high- and low-wage providers value project management skills. Low-wage regions note global and virtual teamwork more than high-wage regions do. The mix of skills and the variation by region have implications for domestic and offshore sourcing. Service providers can vary their staffing models in global regions which has consequences for recruiting, corporate training, and curriculum.

Supporting virtual teamwork in Collaborative Product Development

The increasing product complexity and the continuous need of improving product quality and services force companies to join into distributed and extended networks. Collaborative product development triggers research toward the development of new methods and tools to manage virtual teamwork to reduce time to market. In this context, the paper proposes a novel approach and a supporting co-design platform to manage interrelations across organisations. Experimentations into four product design chains show improvements in communication, information sharing, knowledge distribution, time saving and easiness of team management. They demonstrate that collaborative product development can be usefully enhanced only if tools and procedures are designed for the specific needs of the virtual network.

Should I e-collaborate with this group? A multilevel model of usage intentions

The use of online collaboration tools for virtual teamwork has been studied extensively, but mainly at the individual-level. We decided to examine the effect of macro-level factors (i.e., team attributes) and applied hierarchical linear modeling analysis to a sample of data collected from 96 individuals nested in 34 virtual teams. Our results suggested that the development of behavioral e-collaboration intentions by individual virtual team members was affected by their perceptions about the system, as described by individual-level IT use theories, and macro-level factors pertaining to the team. The collaboration technology was perceived to be less useful when employed to communicate with social loafers; and collective social loafing negatively influenced the teams’ potency assessments. After controlling for individual-level perceptions of system usefulness, team potency augmented team members’ intentions to use the online collaboration technology with similar teams. It also improved team performance.

Managing Virtual Team Performance: An Exploratory Study of Social Loafing and Social Comparison

INTRODUCTION Virtual teams and are pervasive organization phenomenon nowadays (Cohen & Gibson, 2003; Powell, Piccoli, & Ives, 2004). Virtual teams have been used to perform different tasks such as software development, project management, and etc. (Chen, Romano, & Nunamaker, 2006). A team can be viewed as group of people who work towards a common goal, the process that a team employs (including both individual and group activities that team members engage in) to achieve that goal. (Chen & Sager, 2007) Some researchers regard a team the same as a distributed team. Others define a team as a team that relies heavily on computer-mediated communication (CMC) regardless of the geographical locations of the members. Moreover, some researchers define virtuality as a continuum rather than a point, and the level of virtuality can be determined by three dimensions: the degree of synchronization, the presence of nonverbal and para-verbal cues, and the extent of using CMC (Baltes, Dickson, Sherman, Bauer, & LaGanke, 2002; Kirkman & Mathieu, 2005; Jong, Schalk, & Curseu, 2008). In this paper, we use the term virtual teamwork to refer to that is conducted via CMC regardless of team members' geographical locations. As a result, is an integral part of any teams, even for teams that are co-located. Previous studies show that conducted through electronic meetings can become more efficient and effective than traditional oral discussions (Aiken & Park, 2009). However, understanding how virtuality affects team performance is far from well-established. Organizations often use trial-and-error to determine what managerial practices work best in team environment (Oakley, 1999). In this study, we investigate how virtuality affects team productivity when teams are engaged in an ideation process. Ideation, also known as idea generation or brainstorming, is one of the fundamental mechanisms of decision making or problem-solving process (Briggs, Vreede, & Reinig, 2003) that involves coming to understand the problem, generating possible solutions, generating objective assessment criteria, and evaluating and selecting the best solution (Robbins & Judge, 2007). Existing literature on and ideation indicates that anonymous input increases team performance. However, these studies were frequently conducted in a face-to-face (FtF) setting, and they only focused on two effects: evaluation apprehension and social loafing. When teams engage in ideation in an asynchronous environment, there could be factors that impact the effect of anonymity, making it more or less effective than in FtF interactions. In this study, we investigate how the effects of social loafing and social comparison affect team performance when teams engage in anonymous and asynchronous electronic ideation. In the next section, we summarize previous studies of ideation in team research, and explain the theoretical foundations, research hypotheses, and research questions. Then we describe the study design followed by the study results. Finally, we discuss the managerial implications, limitations, and future research. RESEARCH BACKGROUND AND HYPOTHESES Organizations are increasingly employing teams as a new form of due to the need to collaborate quickly and efficiently within and across organizational boundaries (Oakley, 1999). Virtual teams potentially offer a major advantage over traditional teams for problem-solving. The organization can draw in people from a wider pool to build a team with diverse expertise, experiences, and backgrounds, and therefore a wider variety of perspectives. Such teams may be able to work in broader problem and solution space as they seek and implement solutions. In other words, teams may have a higher possibility for better problem solving. …

How to address virtual teamwork in SMEs by an innovative co-design platform

Collaborative product development is crucial for extended enterprises in order to promote innovation facing market competitiveness. Co-design software platforms aim at facilitating companies networking to achieve common design goals. A successful cooperation depends on tools' ability to effectively manage communication, data sharing in distributed teams and specific interaction requirements. In the context of small and medium enterprises (SMEs), the integration of design and supply chains is not a trivial task. Their highly flexible organisation makes difficult to manage multidisciplinary teamwork and advanced co-design software implementation. This paper presents a structured method for defining an innovative co-design platform for SMEs. System architecture can be defined by applying suitable metrics based on collaborative process characteristics in order to assess functionalities performance of available tools. Benchmarking is based on different levels of collaboration recognised in typical SMEs product development process. Correlation between process metrics, software functionalities and specific collaboration needs is managed by adopting quality function deployment (QFD) techniques.

Building effective virtual teams: How to overcome the problems of trust and identity in virtual teams

AbstractThis article explores some of the challenges faced when managing virtual teams, in particular the role played by trust and identity in virtual teams. It outlines why teams and virtual teams have become a valuable part of the modern organization and presents ten short case studies that illustrate the range of activities in which virtual teams can be found. Following this, the article examines some of the common problems encountered in virtual team working. It discusses two broad classes of solutions. The first are solutions that are essentially technical in nature (i.e., where changes to or improvements in technology would help to solve or ameliorate the problem); the second are more organizationally based (i.e., where the root of the problem is in people and how they are managed). The article concludes that both the technical and the organizational solutions need to be considered in parallel if an attempt to build an effective virtual team is to be successful. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Teamwork as a Precondition for Simultaneous Product Realization

This article presents the savings in time and costs achieved by a transition from sequential to simultaneous product realization. Such a transition is not possible without prior well-organized teamwork or virtual teamwork. The article demonstrates the team structure in simultaneous product realization. A two-level team structure is suitable for small companies, with a core team on the first level and several project teams in simultaneous product realization loops on the second level. In order to ensure successful work of the core team and several project teams, appropriate communication tools are suggested and a communication matrix has been developed, defining information exchange during the execution of activities in simultaneous product realization. The communication matrix is used for identifying information system connections. The results of organizing teamwork and virtual teamwork are shown on a case study of simultaneous realization of a pedal assembly.

Effects of organizational support on components of virtual project teams

PurposeVirtual project teams are teams whose members use technology to varying degrees in working across locational, temporal, and relational boundaries to accomplish an interdependent task. Work in virtual project teams is a challenge for many organizations. Having studied the issue for several years, the authors propose in this paper to delve deeper into the question from the point of view of organizational support. More specifically, this paper seeks to focus on the organizational support systems and mechanisms provided by firms to their virtual project teams and their impacts on the components of these teams. The objective is to identify the structural factors and processes related to virtual teams that are affected by organizational support systems and mechanisms.Design/methodology/approachThe paper reports exploratory empirical case studies of two Canadian‐based international high‐tech companies. In‐depth interviews were conducted with managers with experience in virtual project team management.FindingsThe same organizational support systems and mechanisms were found to exist in both companies. Functional processes were found to be the virtual team components that were most affected by the implementation of support systems and mechanisms. They are followed by communicational processes, which were substantially supported by various support systems and mechanisms in Company A but less supported in Company B. To a lesser extent, the relational processes of both firms were also affected, while structural factors affecting virtual project teams were almost entirely unsupported.Practical implicationsVirtual project teams require various kinds of commitments by corporate management. For example, we find that top management supports virtual project teams by means of human resources (HR), resource allocation, coordination, and communication support systems. These support systems facilitate project coordination and monitoring, information exchange and access, trust building and cohesion between team members. These findings enable practitioners to better understand the effects of organizational support on the components of virtual teams, so that greater attention is paid to the configuration of these components and support systems can be better designed to improve virtual project team performance.Originality/valueOrganizational support is considered to have a strong impact on project success. Few publications have examined organizational support for virtual project teams, and even fewer have focused on its effects on such teams. This paper should contribute to fostering a better understanding of the effects of organizational support on the components of virtual project teams.

KNOWLEDGE CREATING INQUIRY IN A DISTRIBUTED PROJECT-MANAGEMENT COURSE

The investigation examined how to simulate practices of distributed, partially virtual teamwork in higher education. A course was designed to engage ten teams in producing solutions to complex problems, similar to that in knowledge work. The teams researched and prepared final reports and project presentations (shared objects) based on assignments from two customers. The course design provided templates and communication structures, but the teams needed to self-organize in order to carry out their own goals. Two analyses examined how the arranged project promoted practices of distributed, hybrid knowledge work and how the students coped with the knowledge creation challenge. Based on the team interviews half-way through the course, the students were confused and even distressed with the open-ended assignment. At the end of the course, their self-reflections revealed a change to more positive appraisals of the assignment. It was concluded that there were two types of practices involved, project work and inquiry, which might be best supported with different types of scaffolding, the first pragmatic or structural and the latter epistemic. This course presents an example of how workplace practices can be modeled for education, but also points to needs for scaffolding challenging team processes.