Implementing Virtual Teams

A Guide to Organizational and Human Factors

Abigail Edwards, John R. Wilson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9780566084683
• eBook ISBN: 9781317118350
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

Many organizations worldwide are currently exploring the potential gains to be made from working with virtual teams. Although many different things are meant by use of 'virtual' (and indeed by 'teams'), usually it denotes groups of people with common purpose and goals working in different locations and often different time zones; they will be interconnected via a variety of telecommunications networks, perhaps including the Internet and intranet, video conferencing, shared white boards, as well as telephone, mail and e-mail. For organizations implementing such virtual teams there is a great need for guidance, in terms of the organizational structure and support which needs to be put in place. This book offers a practical guide to developing virtual teams, providing both an overview of what is involved and also a clear simple framework around which organizations can build their own implementation process. Although the different support technologies are discussed (at a generic level), the thrust of the book is on the organizational and human factors issues which must be addressed to make virtual teams a success. It contains detailed case studies to show how virtual teams work and where they can go wrong.

PART I When Should We Use Virtual Teams?

CHAPTER 1 The Move Towards Virtual Working

Organizations across the world are constantly searching for better ways to plan and carry out their business. Although serving very different markets and with very different sets of operations, the needs expressed by companies in manufacturing, gas, oil and chemicals, transport, finance and services show marked similarities. With various priorities, and in various ways, they are constantly looking to improve on key indicators such as:

• reduced time to market
• on-time delivery
• flexibility
• reduced costs
• quality
• supply chain integration
• responsiveness
• concurrent enterprise
• efficient production of output
• reduced waste
• innovation and growth
• retention of skilled staff.

Most of the innovations in industrial and commercial technical systems, and in organizational theories and approaches, have some or all of the above needs as their intended (and claimed) focus. Now we are seeing fast-growing interest in another way of working, which combines changes in technical and organizational systems of choice. This is virtual working and, by extension, virtual teams.

It is easy to see some of the drivers behind virtual working and virtual teams. The supply chain is critical to many modern businesses. The external supply chain, and often also the internal supply chain, will comprise people and departments who are distributed in space and time, as well as some who are co-located, and better ways have to be found for these members of the supply chain to work together with mutual methods and goals. The need to respond to customer and market needs, and in particular to reduce product life-cycle times and costs, means that ways must be found to aid rapid and frequent information-sharing and quality decision-making amongst people who may work in a number of different places.

As markets widen and customer bases become increasingly global, companies must respond by ensuring that they can extend their resources to cover all business-building opportunities and thus avoid relinquishing them to their competitors. Financial limitations constrain the extent to which companies can construct new offices around the world and fund large-scale relocation projects, thus reducing the competitiveness of certain project proposals.

Today, many people working in Europe, North America, Australasia and South-east Asia are touched by virtual working in one form or another – relying, at the very least, on the telephone, fax or e-mail for contact with colleagues at other locations. In more sophisticated and defined set-ups they may commute electronically from a virtual office, using a suite of communication tools. This increase in remote working is primarily a consequence of the transition in the organization of the work being performed – from stable and co-located functions and teams to increasingly dynamic groups, connected electronically across the locations where the competencies reside. Few traditional, stable teams in the same fixed location can offer all the skills required to meet the diversity of demands placed upon them. The continuous improvement environment in which businesses now operate gives the impetus for forming teams within a virtual forum and the range of problems such teams can solve will expand through the application of the advanced communication technologies available.

A diversity of talents and expertise can be made available in response to every market demand, regardless of its source or focus, through the application of virtual teams. By avoiding the costly and inefficient relocation of employees in response to rapidly changing market needs, the organization can make the most effective use of its human resources, enhancing its competitive edge.

Virtual working has increasingly been identified as a financially viable and effective solution to meet the needs of globally distributed customers. Nowadays, many companies can accommodate many, if not all, of such technically demanding organizational solutions within their already advanced computer networks. However, if we can be comparatively comfortable about the availability of technical systems of communications and information handling to support virtual working, we can be less so regarding the associated human factors.

From a human resource and behavioural perspective, companies face great difficulties that require increasing attention as they begin to rely on virtual solutions. Even when human and organizational support systems have been established and are responding well to both the demands of new ways of working and new technologies, the rapid development of communications media can lead to the human and organizational accommodations to these advances lagging behind to a certain degree.

As with many other developments in information and communications technology (ICT), there is a strong push from the developers for virtual work technology. Various kinds of computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW) system, such as video conferencing, have sought to ride the larger waves of the market, moving from being the toys of the innovators and market leaders to the work tools of the early and late adopters in the mass market. However, unlike some areas of ICT, there has also been a pull of employers wanting more flexibility in how they organize work. On the one hand there are employers who wish to maximize the productive time of their employees and, as part of this, are seeking ways to allow people to work when remote from the office or factory – at home, when abroad, or on the move. On the other hand, some employers are seeking new ways of allowing employees to have more personal freedom in deciding where and when, and even how, they work.

Because some technologies such as video conferencing and telephone conferencing have been around for some time, but without large-scale adoption, it could be argued that the organizational need is, in turn, acting as a push on the technology developers. Here the requirement is for ICT to become faster, of higher quality and of greater bandwidth, and to allow larger groups to co-operate and co-ordinate more closely.

The distinction between push and pull is not merely an interesting academic exercise, nor a historical reflection on how ICT and new work practices are developed. The nature of the application needs – the pull – will affect the type and quality of the technical systems being developed. (It is almost axiomatic that virtual working and virtual teams will require some form of networked ICT, otherwise it would be very difficult to see how they could work to the timescales and with the flexibility required.) The needs of a single peripheral worker or remote agent are different to those of a project team based in three factories and different again to those of a design group based in four countries. The requirements of a virtual team of three bankers who make daily international financial investment decisions are very different from those of a design engineer, a manufacturing engineer, a marketing manager and a client working on a new engineering design. Technical and organizational systems need to be available, and flexible enough to meet all these quite different needs.

CHAPTER 2 What are Virtual Teams?

Fundamentally, virtual teams are groups of people who find themselves separated by distance and/or time, yet have common tasks to perform.

The interactions of virtual team members will rely on electronic communications media such as e-mail, audio and video conferencing and web-based tools. The team must deliver at least the results that would be expected of a traditional, co-located team, but from their separated locations.

Virtual team members do not necessarily originate from a single organization. In fact, virtual teams often facilitate collaboration between different organizations – suppliers and customers, for instance. The ability of virtual teams to bring together a variety of individuals from a range of locations and backgrounds can deliver the agility an organization needs to respond to fast-changing market demands without losing valuable time during which a competitor might fill the gap. The far-reaching network of the team will cross organizational, cultural and functional boundaries to deliver the combined skills and knowledge required for any job, regardless of the physical location of the participants. The outcome can be new levels of productivity and creativity provided through the increased flexibility of collaborating partners.

Types of Virtual Team

It should be clear that virtual teams will normally contain greater layers of complexity than traditional co-located teams because of the different cultures and team dynamics they will usually bring together. Consequently, they will certainly benefit if they can define the purpose of their creation more clearly. Distinguishing between the following types of virtual team may enable an organization to better define the needs for type, frequency and support of collaboration between participants.

Project Teams

Project teams come together for a finite period of time in response to a project brief, not necessarily originating from any member of the team. Project teams comprise an intact group of members who stay together for the duration of the project, but who can draw on the skills of other members of the organization without necessarily integrating them into their unit. The team members will probably have formal meetings on a predefined basis and then work together in subgroups in the intervals between meetings to complete allocated modules of work. With project virtual teams, the nature of the project can be used to define the skill base that is required, and suitable members can be identified to deliver the objectives. Such a team will have measurable outputs, just like any co-located project team.

Service Teams

Service teams often exist as a resource on call – maybe across a number of locations or countries – for the resolution of problems and for advice. IT support is a typical example. The team is from a single function, and is primarily a support service. Their work and expertise is not usually tailored to the needs of a single organization or location and can be a resource for a number of departments, companies and countries. Due to time differences in working hours across locations the virtual team may need to be staffed during abnormal working hours.

Team members may not work together directly on a regular basis as their attention will be focused on problems and people outside the team itself. Each team member is required to work virtually, using the technology available to them to solve the problem they are presented with. Any work done within the group may be done face-to-face if the service team itself is co-locates for that purpose.

Process Teams

Process teams will collaborate over an undefined period to respond to ongoing needs within a certain domain. The group is likely to have fluid membership due to the indefinite nature of the need or process, and people will be called upon depending on the challenges the team is facing at any particular time. The remit of these teams is often broad and their action plan ever-evolving. The nature of their collaboration would depend on the work to be completed.

An example of a process team in a multinational ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• List of Abbreviations
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• PART I: When Should We Use Virtual Teams?
• PART II: What We Need To Know When Implementing Virtual Teams
• PART III: Case Studies of Virtual Teams in Industry
• PART IV: Guidelines and Tools for Virtual Team Success
• PART V: Epilogue
• Further Resources
• Index