Literature Review on Virtual Teams, Essay Example

Brief Introduction

Businesses worldwide are challenged daily by competition that threatens to phase them out of the ever-changing market. This has called for flexibility and strategies for coping with the revolution if any enterprise maintains its competitive edge in the market.  This competitiveness has emerged with the birth of the new technology, and now managers are considering virtual teams to take advantage of this paradigm. In this review, I have considered communications, leadership styles, and technology as the priority areas where virtual teams make a real difference in successes and failures. The arguments for and against are given to shed more light on the suitability of virtual teams in the current era, which is typically accentuated with the lucrative virtualization of meetings.

Communication in Virtual Teams

The ability to communicate effectively is imperative for the growth and success of any organization working in a physical office. The same is equally true for a team working on a virtual platform.  A team distributed over a wider geographical ought to communicate well in a remote environment to realize its ability to improve productivity and bring about a positive growth of the team (Holtz et al., 2020). A team that communicates well can work seamlessly without waiting for directions and saves on time, and improving the quality and quantity of the work. Business enterprises are constantly moving to create and maintain a relationship with other partners in the realm of business to ensure their productivity and competitiveness (Newman, Ford, and Marshall, 2019). Hence, proper articulation of personal etiquette regarding cultural diversity is at the helm of building formidable cohesion. Poor display of these attributes may damage a team relationship forever. Communication in virtual teams is essential as people need to share their opinions, pass commands, and report across the team organ structure.

Although virtual meetups in businesses have been positively adopted across all enterprises, it has been received with the varied opinion by employees and employers. Partly because it challenges the natural way of working and antagonizes the level of interaction inculcated in employees’ minds for so long (Holtz et al., 2020). According to Newman and colleagues (2019), the familiar face to face communication that often dominates in physical offices working environment has offered the team members the advantage of gathering non-verbal communication registered by a person through gestures, and this feature is often missed in virtual teams where the video are turned off. Another social hue missed in virtual engagement is the tone that characterizes the speaker’s attitude, primarily when the virtual platform only supports messaging as the mode of communication (Newman, Ford, and Marshall, 2019).

Davidavi?ien? et al., 2020 posits a different perception of how language and communication skills affect the virtual team in an organization. Their study found that language hindrances seemed to affect only organizations with diverse people. For example, in the middle east, where language is similar, language was positively correlated with information sharing. Although the authors delved on hindrances that affect the knowledge sharing process, the results can be extrapolated to other indices of virtual team successes. Cultural sensitivity has also been a hindrance in adopting virtual teams in businesses. Some people see virtual teams as intrusions into personal spaces (Newman, Ford, and Marshall, 2019). This has a far-reaching repercussion as the team member who feels threatened by this perceived intrusion will be less productive and may only contribute the bare minimum to the team.

Whereas most virtual teams were born out of necessity, it can diminish the organization culture, where employees and employers face face-to-face meetings and create rapport. Since the norms of any team are very critical to the growth and development of the business in any setting, a change of context should reflect the tradition of the team as continuity of the physical office. Furthermore, a virtual team might make the members feel isolated and out of touch despite the remote connection through communication tools (Holtz et al., 2020). The researchers have assessed the variables that affect communication in a virtual team in various studies in different countries with different outcomes. However, Taras et al. 2020, argues that an individual parameter such as cultural diversity and cultural sensitivity may negatively affect the virtual team from a singular perspective. However, a multivariate analysis posits a different phenomenon. This finding explains previous finding problematic to a certain extent and diminishes the power of extrapolating a study from one team and another.

Leadership styles in Virtual Teams

The suitability of the team leader is more elaborated and punctuated by the nature of the work and the environment in which the team is founded. The context of virtual teams fosters and elevates the leadership and the inherent skills to a new paradigm defined by other intellectual components. Mysirlaki and Paraskeva (2020) explored the suitability of the leader in the virtual world in the context of emotional intelligence. They considered the team effectiveness variables and found that there exists a  positive correlation between the emotional intelligence of the leaders and the success of the virtual team. This notion collaborated with the previous works in different settings in Europe and the US by Davidavi?ien? and others (2020); however, the work has several misgivings;  first, it emphasizes gender, which biases the study and renders it counter-intuitive. Although the role of the female gender in society can not be underestimated, the above study delved on and capitalized on the significant results occasioned by women’s emotional responses. Second, it also failed to consider the cultural and educational background of the virtual team, factors considered by other researchers as critical for knowledge sharing and enhancing collaboration. Finally, age and work experience were not considered, which might profoundly affect virtual team success.

The team leaders ought to be proactive and with outstanding expertise on the virtual team since it fundamentally deviates from a co-located team in certain aspects. The skill sets that make a leader outstanding majorly revolves around managing the team and creating a conducive work environment where knowledge sharing and collaboration can thrive. Although the virtue of a leader is universal, virtualization requires more than the bare minimum (Taras et al., 2020). It requires that a leader be savvy with talents within the team and always gravitate toward tapping those potentials. However, it comes at the cost of creating an environment that nurtures teamwork and collaboration. A team leader with a leadership style that considers the diversity of the personnel in the distributed virtual team has a higher chance of creating a positive impact on the team.

Another aspect of the leadership style commonly adopted by business management practices is problem-solving and conflict resolution. Conflict in business enterprises is inevitable in any competitive market paradigm. The conflict can arise from various sources; some internal while others might be external factors that crop up as a threat to the enterprise(Davidavi?ien?, Majzoub and Meidute-Kavaliauskiene, 2020). When it arises, the virtual platform should be well equipped to combat them amicably.  The cultural dimension of society tries to solve the inherent problem of erosion by interweaving the beliefs, values, and basic assumptions to generate solutions serendipitously.

The problems in business are varied from teams to teams, but the prime cause is the disintegration of shared values (Taras et al., 2020).  Therefore, the culture draws its precepts from the subjective nature of the particular individuals, and in this case, the team leader. There exist uncertainty in the way the solution is achieved and generalized. The notion that what people say is what happens in reality fall short of merits. It has been proven that a culture may be stereotyped to do something particular way while, in reality, it does not exist, and these are insights all leaders should be aware of while sharing team meetings. Realizing the need to consider culture as a learning experience on a continuum provides a paradigm for understanding each other. To this extent, a leadership style that recognizes the diversity construct as multifaceted phenomenon is more likely to succeed in harmonizing and tapping the positive energy of the team and dispelling distrust among the team members (Taras et al., 2020).

Although leadership style in managing the team and conflict resolution has been viewed positively by researchers, there is a notion that quality leadership is motivated by the enabling environment. There are hoards of researchers who suggest that leaders should transform from operating in physical offices to embrace virtual workstations to reap benefits from the competitive edge that makes a business blissful (Holtz et al., 2020; Newman, Ford, and Marshall, 2019). On the contrary, a school of thought argues that a new crop of leaders should emerge spontaneously in this new world order and occupy the open space in the market (Taras et al., 2020; Mysirlaki and Paraskeva, 2020).  The two opinions have pros and cons. The first group further posits that only the business strategies have shifted, and a more logical action for a leader to follow is to shift along and catch up with the revolution. The latter suggests that since there is a paradigm shift, and the new space is operating on entirely novel rules, a new form of engagement is warranted.

Moreover, few researchers are not satiated with these two alignments and suggest a hybrid between the two popular options if the team has to retain its competitive edge in the market (Afflerbach, 2020). This argument seems more plausible and feasible in the current market structure characterized by massive competition. In 2020, Holtz noticed that although most of the business had opted to embrace virtual team operation, some companies, such as IBM, were opting out of the lucrative field. This is a classic example of how a visionary leader charts the way forward for the benefit of the team rather than following the established norms in the market. This collaborates the common knowledge that each advancement has both the positive and negative end and may affect business enterprises differently.

Technology is virtual Teams

The virtual team involves collaboration based on technology in mediating interactions and information sharing. The role of technology is enormous and may range from the platforms used to the actual infrastructures that facilitate those forms of communications, such as the electronic frameworks and the gadgets used. Currently, several technologies aid in hosting meetings remotely and differ in the complexity of use (Walsh, 2019). However, each team player must be able to plug into the platform using selected devices to constructively contribute to the team. This has fundamentally differentiated the virtual teams’ profiles of success. Although technology is fast developing and enterprises worldwide are embracing the digitization era, there remains a fundamental challenge in adopting technology.

A new paradigm of virtualization has helped most businesses operate at low cost and nearly with no physical space. It has also facilitated organizations to recruit talented team players with diverse talents who work from the comfort of their countries and physical environments (Fleischmann,  Cardon, and Aritz, 2020). However, the challenges of technologies are diverse, and some have brought more harm than good. The setting of virtual meetings has been a problem for some team leaders.

Virtual Teams have developed over the years due to developing two major scientific breakthroughs in information technology and advances in internet protocols. First was the information technology saw the introduction of computer and hand-held devices, including personal computer and smartphones (Walsh, 2019). Personal computers allowed people to hold video conferencing in the distributed workstation. Personal computers and smartphones took this a notch higher by allowing individual team members to make Skype at the comfort of their offices. Both the computer and smartphones are currently the communication tools in use, and organizations augment this by adding a sophisticated computer to host the team and control the level of interaction between the team members (Afflerbach, 2020). However, the most instrumental milestone was is achieved by advances in mobile software that facilitate these connections.

The other significant advances in technology that provided the springboard for the development of the virtual team was the world wide web (WWW), hereafter referred to as the Internet. The Internet allowed people not connected by a similar network to collaborate through internet protocols which opened the avenues for expanding a virtual team to global status (Davidavi?ien?, Majzoub and Meidute-Kavaliauskiene, 2020). Currently, both arenas have skyrocketed, and business enterprises have accelerated toward embracing technology in all aspects.

In light of the evolving technologies in computing and information technology, the productivity of the industries has also increased as a result. This is due to the inherent advantage that accrues with tracking your work progress while outside the office. It has led to automation, making the workflow seamless and steady (Alward and Phelps, 2019). A team member can easily ask for assistance on a platform without physically meeting a person since the virtual team has different expertise. Technology has also allowed time-sharing and distribution of roles cost-effectively. Since any member has unlimited access to the platform interface, the delegation of duty and sharing roles for collaborative work became feasible and efficient. However, Newman, Ford, and Marshall (2019) argue that this is only possible if there is no language and cultural barrier. This means that technology alone has little effect on the growth of the virtual teams, a position that is supported by  Davidavi?ien? et al. and Holtz et al.

Despite the limitation of the working space in any organization, the virtual team has unlimited capacity to establish a network to reach all team members distributed over a wide span of geographical distance, courtesy of the recent advances in telecommunication (Davidavi?ien?, Majzoub and Meidute-Kavaliauskiene, 2020). The authors argue that this feat is necessary for any enterprise to remain relevant in the global space and retain its competitive edge. The collaborative nature of the virtual teams coupled with solid coordination of the team leaders can foster communication richness underpinning the technological advancement; Alward and Phelps (2019) agree on this position. Since the technology is easy to use for any member, the virtual interface provides aesthetic appeal and natural essence that can potentially promote trust for the good of the virtual teams.

Based on the nature of the work and the environment in which virtual teams are founded, the technology may affect business. The mix of the variant technology tools used in mediating the communication profoundly impacts the successes of the virtual teams. For example, a study by Gallego, Ortiz-Marcos, and Ruiz (2021), found that software companies and enterprises in information technology view the advancement in ICT in different lights as opposed to industries where digitization and technology are in infancy, which in turn affects the implementation phase of the virtual Teams. However, Afflerbach (2020) registered reservation on those views and suggested that virtual teams are deemed essential resources, especially in business services such as financial projects and consulting, a different perspective predominates.  To these ends, both the adoption and implementation of the virtual teams based on the technology is always on a continuum and becomes problematic when trying to measure the impact of technology in various business traditions.

Most of the studies conducted to assess the impact of the technology in business had majored on the project management aspects. They failed to appreciate other facets of the business (Tabatabei, 2020 and Brockhoff, 2020 ). Furthermore, managerial roles are not involved in the business of project planning but are unique and critical for the success of the enterprise. In particular, the works of Nordbäck et al. (2019) and Larson et al. (2020) focused on how technology impacted leadership and leadership styles but failed to consider the impact of technology in the virtual team as a singular entity, whose successes and failures is a shared responsibility of the individual members of the Virtual Team. The extent to which technology influences the operationalization and implementation of the Virtual Team in any business setups is often a mix between the individuating technological tools and awareness among the virtual team members, rather than an individual factor (Jouzdani,  2020).

Generally, the rapid integration of ICT tools in the global market coupled with collaborative electronic frameworks has positively impacted the furtherance of virtual teams (Gallego, Ortiz-Marcos, and Ruiz,2021). Moreover, although there are numerous recognizable pieces of evidence that technological knowledge guided the processes that enabled the thriving of virtual teams, there is no universal measurement to probe these impacts or predict its behavior in the future. Additionally, the studies mentioned above used a petite sample size or considered certain population of study subjects, limiting the extent to which their study could be extrapolated to other cultures or interpreted in a different setup. Firstly, the study by Davidavi?ien? et al. (2020) almost focused on the European and the US populations; hence, the results cannot be directly extrapolated for other populations due to the ethnic differences and different environments. Secondly, although the previous studies selected leadership, communication, motivation, cultural diversity, language, and technology assets of variables derived from other studies (Holtz et al., 2020; Newman, Ford, and Marshall, 2019), it is likely they did not capture all possible confounding variables which would lead to the consequences of bias.

Reference List

Afflerbach, T., 2020. Hybrid Virtual Teams in Shared Services Organizations. Progress in IS.

Alward, E. and Phelps, Y., 2019. Impactful Leadership Traits of Virtual Leaders in Higher Education. Online Learning, 23(3), pp.72-93.

Brockhoff, K., 2020. Virtual global project management in eighteenth-century astronomy. Journal of Management History.

Fleischmann, C., Cardon, P. and Aritz, J., 2020, January. Smart collaboration in global virtual teams: The influence of culture on technology acceptance and communication effectiveness. In Proceedings of the 53rd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences.

Gallego, J.S., Ortiz-Marcos, I. and Ruiz, J.R., 2021. Main challenges during project planning when working with virtual teams. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 162, p.120353.

Holtz, K., Orengo Castella, V., Zornoza Abad, A. and González-Anta, B., 2020. Virtual team functioning: Modeling the affective and cognitive effects of an emotional management intervention. Group Dynamics: Theory, Research, and Practice, 24(3), p.153.

Jouzdani, J., 2020. Fight against COVID-19: A global outbreak response management performance view. Journal of project management, 5(3), pp.151-156.

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Larson, L. and DeChurch, L.A., 2020. Leading teams in the digital age: Four perspectives on technology and what they mean for leading teams. The Leadership Quarterly, 31(1), p.101377.

Mysirlaki, S. and Paraskeva, F., 2020. Emotional intelligence and transformational leadership in virtual teams: Lessons from MMOGs. Leadership & Organization Development Journal.

Newman, S.A., Ford, R.C. and Marshall, G.W., 2020. Virtual team leader communication: Employee perception and organizational reality. International Journal of Business Communication, 57(4), pp.452-473.

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Tabatabaei, M., 2020. Global Perceptions of Teams in Project Management. International Journal of Information Technology Project Management (IJITPM), 11(2), pp.15-22.

Taras, V., Baack, D., Caprar, D., Dow, D., Froese, F., Jimenez, A. and Magnusson, P., 2019. Diverse effects of diversity: Disaggregating effects of diversity in global virtual teams. Journal of International Management, 25(4), p.100689.