Working in teams is not a new phenomenon, but advances in communication technologies have drastically changed the nature of teamwork. Today, many companies rely heavily upon modern communication technologies such as e-mail, telephone and video-conferencing. Traditional co-located groups are being replaced with virtual teams, spread among many time zones and dispersed through various nations. With teams being spread throughout large companies or even all over the world, it often occurs that people who work together barely meet physically and discuss the issues face-to-face. Although there are major advantages to this (such as cost and time savings), there is also a severe downside to this new form of work. This paper aims to identify some of the barriers to effective virtual team.
In order to understand the concept of virtual teams, it is critical to define what constitutes a team and what makes it virtual. The term “virtual team” applies to a physically dispersed task group that conducts its business through modern information (Kreitner and Kinicki 2001). Virtual teams are like project or traditional work teams. They work together to solve problems in their day-to-day jobs. The major difference is t
The non-technical aspect of virtual teams presents a different set of barriers to overcome. Virtual teams are made up of team members from different locations, cultures, time zone, and technical backgrounds. They often need to share work-in-progress with others, which may quire team members to adopt new attitudes and new mindsets towards work. Molding the group dynamics becomes more difficult task to manage. Team members are likely to mistrust how their information will be used; whether their contributions will be well represented outside the team; or the degree to which other team members will make an equal contribution. The lack of trust among team members may damage the teams’ productivity and willingness toward working together in the future. Conversations over e-mail can be easily misconstrued and virtual team leaders are less able to keep visual tabs on their employees because of different locations.
Response and collaboration are paramount to achieving superior speed to market or complex business problem solutions. Virtual teams need advanced computer and communication technology to share databases, spreadsheets, proposals, and presentations. What happens when technology becomes the obstacle? Technol
Example Essays Home
