Global Teamwork And Management Through Network Technologies Are Now Available To All Companies, Large Or Small.

Global Teamwork And Management Through Network Technologies Are Now Available To All Companies, Large Or Small.

Virtual teams are very important aspects in a business organization and in many years it has promoted a rapid development and growth in many growing companies. Due to declining cost of virtual team technology and the increasing power of networks, more virtual teams are formed all the point in time and will be formed more in the coming years. Teams are the building blocks of every given organization, this is because the team members can work in different shifts as they are allocated and provides most companies with the talents and to recruit most skilled people available to achieve the set goals of the company. Therefore virtual teams are formed to obtain advantage of distributed time and expertise. Virtual teams are thus groups of people who work together by electronic means and meets occasionally to air out certain agenda that may

exist (Carolyn C. Wise pg 347).

In this case, members are not situated in similar physical places but they may be in different States, cities or even in different countries, virtual teams is significantly formed for the advantage of lowering the labor costs in different organizations. Examples of the virtual teams include people who work in a given geographical area and members of the project team who telecommute. In the recent days the nature of team members has changed, this is because of the changes in different organizations taking place. Many Organizations has rapidly developed and the relationships among people within the organization for example customers, collaborating organizations and other stakeholders are much of importance hence Successful teams make the companies to gain competitive advantage.

Formation of virtual teams has both its advantages and disadvantages, in that anything bringing members to a closer understanding should be a good thing even if it is via social networking technology on public or private networks, secondly, team members who are talented and skilled can avoid working in shifts but can work at the same time on the different projects which are specified to them. It also translates into a quicker time to market new products and technological innovations in the market. Virtual teams also lead to rise in productivity, as a result of individual flexibility as commute time is condensed and work schedule is not restricted to the normal traditional program. Geographically, detached teams enjoy direct access to diverse market opportunities, rather when work teams are positioned in different locations in the world; it allows institutions to have a direct market existence with clients worldwide. The other advantage is that, the business organizations benefits from great reduce costs as a result of huge decline in travel expenses amounting to immense cost savings. There is an improved job satisfaction brought about by a virtual team building process. Lastly, workers are permitted to work often hence they become contented with their jobs. This is because they have direct control over the number of hours spent in their work places. It translates into better individual performance.

On the other hand there are various disadvantages to the formation of the virtual teams in that, team members do not only communicate by words but they use gestures and mimicry, in this case these members cannot communicate virtually well as in real meetings. Another disadvantage is the problem of communication efficiency; several studies and research show that what people say to one another is not based on the verbal language they speak but are based on non-verbal language.

Poor Leadership Management is also a disadvantage to the virtual teams, for example poor leadership may cause teams to fail even if it is physical or digital ,this issue is sensitive when dealing with virtual teams, in the other hand many managers of the virtual teams are poor communicators and has got no good leadership qualities since they don’t response to the message to messages as it is supposed to be and cannot make a good decision to themselves in terms of setting ways in which the project should function. A good leadership should know what is right and what is wrong or what should be done to meet the organizations goals and objectives. A good leadership should also be in a position of helping the team members on any issues that may arise and set the members to follow the right path as he or she acts as the role model to the people but they need not to take them into his or her own wishing destination without the whereabouts of the team members. The quality of a good leadership for the virtual team plays an important role in its success of failure, for a project to become successful everyone within the organization should know their roles and skilled in all areas which they are expert in and should never challenge team leader of the project.

Another disadvantage which is led by the formation of virtual teams is the problem of incompetent team members. All Virtual team members should be competent since the project may be doomed to fail if the members are not competent. Team members should not be lazy or be slow on duties they are assigned, these make members of the team to lose morale in what they do hence poor performance in the organization. Even though the formation of virtual teams has got both its benefits and disadvantages, it still has some challenges. Research shows that as much as communication occurs among people, these are the same things other than the actual words that are still used. Many people still use body movements and facial expressions than they say it in words. Examples of body gestures include voice tone, body language and the speed in which one speaks (Ricki W. Griffin pg 173).

Communication failure has also been a challenge to the virtual teams. In digital world non-verbal communication often existed hence misinterpretation is highly to occur when it comes to terms of communication for example one can write and send an email to a friend but this email sent can be interpreted differently by the one whom the email has been sent to. In business, effective communication is very important and by any chance it happens that the team members are not in a position to communicate with each other efficiently then there could be a very good chance that the project might fail or may end up in a disaster. Virtual team members should have high ability to construct a good relationship.

Other challenges can be limited ability to build relationships among the virtual teams and this is the biggest challenge which happens to separate the members of the virtual teams. It sometimes happen to be very difficult on building a relationship with other team members or getting to know other team members in details this is because there sometimes happens to be no enough time to get to know each other on a personal basis. Poor building of team relationship occurs only when there are many team members and these team members are assigned to do multiple projects without getting a chance to get to know more people whom they work with.

Another challenge to the formation of the virtual teams is the distant communication complexity. Things which happen to be very simple for traditional teams happen to be more of difficult to the virtual team. In some cases, Scheduling of meetings in traditional team is easier this is because the team members live in the same area as compared to scheduling of meeting in virtual teams which is very difficult this is because, one will have to set the time zones of every country to comply with the team members who are from different geographical areas, cities, states and different countries. Take for instance if one of the team members in Singapore and the other team member comes from St. Louis, one member will be sleeping while the other member will be a wake by that time hence this will make putting together a team for a meeting to be difficult(Mohini Singh pg 192).

Another challenge of virtual teams is building trust. Can it be really possible for the team members to deliver the outcome just as they would in face-to-face? This question has been a challenge to the virtual teams and if so can members have trust in one another while doing what they had planned to do. It has been noticed that, most companies often invest in bringing a virtual team together so that members get to know each other and trust one another

Finally, communication is very important in virtual teams, communication can be done by use of e-mail, phone calls, conference calls, or project management tools that help organize work. If individuals in a virtual team are not fully engaged and tend to avoid conflict, team performance can suffer. Essentially, the document remains available for team members to access and amend at any time. The most famous example is Wikipedia, which is gaining traction as a way to structure project work globally and get information into the hands of those that need it. Virtual teams are a basic foundation of a business organization in that they are an essential aspect in the development of a business organization. This is the vital reason why they are recommended in the business fraternity world in the future. Business organizations requires conducive environment for the implementation of their strategies in the market thus necessitating the need for the building teams. Lastly, communication being important aspects encourages communication among the business fraternity and the clientele base. This is easily made possible by the virtual teams as they enhance relationships in the business world.

Work cited

Carolyn C.Wise, Stephanie Hauser. The Business School Buzz Book. London: Vault Inc.,, 2007.

Ricky W. Griffin, Gregory Moorhead. Organizational Behavior: Managing People and Organizations. New York: Cengage Learning, 2011.

Susan Segal-Horn, David Faulkner. Understanding global strategy: London: Cengage Learning EMEA, 2010

Mohini Singh, Dianne WaddellEditorsMohini Singh, Dianne Waddell. E-business innovations and change management. New York: Idea Group Inc, 2004.

Daft, Kendrick, M., Vershinina, N. Management-International. London: Cengage Learning EMEA, 2010.