Media selection and management for virtual teams

This paper examines the challenges associated with communications in virtual teams. Specifically, the study reviews challenges of selection and utilization of commuications media for use in a virtual setting. From their early inception in the 1990s, virtual teams have undergone and continue to experience significant changes. The major factors in those changes are techonolgy development in communication and the globalization of business. The advances on communication technology combined with reduced costs of those technologies have allowed more organizations to utlize virtual teams. Lacking face-to-face contact, virtual team leaders must rely on computer-mediated communication to train, develop, and motivate team members. Further, the technology a virtual team leader uses today will likely be replaced or updated during his/her tenure. The conclusion of ths paper offers a selection and management process for communications media in virtual teams

ADVANCING PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT IN DIGITAL ENTERPRISES: EXPLORING CHALLENGES, OPPORTUNITIES, AND RECOMMENDATIONS FOR THE DIGITAL AGE

This manuscript delves into the multifaceted aspects of employee performance management in digital and virtual enterprises, aiming to contribute to the existing literature in this domain. Through a comprehensive review of relevant research, employing a systematic approach, this study identifies key themes that emerge at the intersection of performance management, digital organizations, and virtual environments. By synthesizing and critically evaluating the existing literature, this article sheds light on the gaps and opportunities for future research, presenting novel perspectives on the challenges and possibilities encountered in the context of performance management in digital enterprises. The recommendations provided in this manuscript serve as a valuable resource for researchers, managers, and practitioners, facilitating their understanding and enhancement of performance management practices in diverse digital and virtual environments

Benefits and challenges of virtual teams

Virtual teams are a growing phenomenon in both the world of research and business. They have evolved as a response to development in electronic communication technology and various global trends. Businesses started utilizing virtual teams before there was any strong research on the subject. While research has increased exponentially since then, there have been few works that have collected the various results together. This thesis aims to summarize the current research on virtual teams and the various benefits and challenges faced by organizations in utilizing them and compare research with the results from an empirical study that focuses on current top management’s viewpoint. Virtual teams are teams where members rarely meet each other physically. They rely on electronic communication to collaborate and achieve their goals. The members are usually both structurally and geographically separated. The use of an unfamiliar communication medium and other characteristics lead to a number of challenges but also to surprising benefits. Significant benefits lie with cost-savings and efficiency, whereas challenges arise in leadership, communication and trust. As communication technology develops and improves, it is likely that virtual teams will also increase in abundance. Organizations must be prepared for this and be able to differentiate between traditional teams and virtual teams. The results from the study suggest that most top management acknowledge the main challenges as found via research, while stated benefits are mostly cost benefits. The study also suggests a number of targets for potential future research.fi=Opinnäytetyö kokotekstinä PDF-muodossa.|en=Thesis fulltext in PDF format.|sv=Lärdomsprov tillgängligt som fulltext i PDF-format

Single sign-on and authorization for dynamic virtual organizations

The vision of the Grid is to support the dynamic establishment and subsequent management of virtual organizations (VO). To achieve this presents many challenges for the Grid community with perhaps the greatest one being security. Whilst Public Key Infrastructures (PKI) provide a form of single sign-on through recognition of trusted certification authorities, they have numerous limitations. The Internet2 Shibboleth architecture and protocols provide an enabling technology overcoming some of the issues with PKIs however Shibboleth too suffers from various limitations that make its application for dynamic VO establishment and management difficult. In this paper we explore the limitations of PKIs and Shibboleth and present an infrastructure that incorporates single sign-on with advanced authorization of federated security infrastructures and yet is seamless and targeted to the needs of end users. We explore this infrastructure through an educational case study at the National e-Science Centre (NeSC) at the University of Glasgow and Edinburgh

The Influence of Covid – 19 on Virtual Employee Management Practices by Organisations: An Empirical Study

In the mid of 2020, the COVID– 19 disease began rapidly disrupting lives, economies, and workplaces and continues to do so. It was when the disease was brought in a global debacle it forced the world to go into complete lockdown with strict government guidelines of social distancing. The pandemic resulted in the loss of jobs and high rate of unemployment. The COVID – 19 plagues forced organizations to make rigorous changes to the workplace leading to complete chaos to employee and employer experience. One of the most drastic changes was “Work from Home”. The human resource management department was forced to come up with new strategies to face the challenges of remote working. Scholars including Snell et al. (2002) and Ulrich et al. (2017) have argued the relevance of a strategic HR approach during such challenging times as essential in ensuring institutional competitiveness. Accordingly, institutions turned their attention to virtual employee management (VEM) as an alternative to the traditional system of employment management. According to Henderson et al. (2016), at the time, the adoption of Virtual Employee Management becomes mandatory to facilitate collaboration across isolated employees and stakeholders. Virtual Employee Management is co-dependent groups who work from the comfort of their places with the help of virtual tools or apps like Zoom, Skype and Google meet to communicate work. The major responsibility lies in making productive ‘remote teams’ a crucial challenge for human resource managers. A survey was conducted on 50 employees and lecturers from esteemed universities by providing them a questionnaire. Remote team leaders’ constant hurdles were managing projects, lack of team communication technology issues at home, geographical and cultural barriers. The virtual employee faced core challenges such as overworking after work, maximizing productivity, overcoming distractions and staying motivated. This paper is an empirical paper presenting the problems being faced in virtual employee management by the influence of COVID -19 in general and provides strategies to overcome them to face this epidemic

Project Management Skills for Highly Successful Virtual Project Teams

Virtual project teams gained wider acceptance in organizations over the past 30 years, supported by improved communications technology and spurred by global competition. Virtual working arrangements provide benefits to employers, employees, and the environment. The COVID-19 pandemic of 2020-2021 stimulated the transition from traditional to virtual project teams. Project management in the virtual environment requires different skills than leading in the collocated environment. Skills that lead to successful project outcomes in the traditional environment do not simply transfer to the virtual environment. Project managers must focus on new skills, especially those that contribute to developing open communication and building trust. This qualitative case study examined the problem that some project managers lack the skills to lead in the virtual environment, resulting in reduced project efficiency, productivity, and overall success. This case study also filled a gap in the literature, providing real-world best practices of project management leadership skills applied in the virtual environment. Seventeen (17) virtual project team managers and project team members from the MITRE Corporation, a leader in the government contracting industry, shared their experiences leading successful project teams. Through semi-structured interviews, coding, and analysis, five main themes emerged: Importance of Communication to the Success of Virtual Project Teams, Importance of Trust on the Performance of Virtual Project Teams, The Effective Implementation of Technology is Foundational to the Success of Virtual Project Teams, Virtual Project Teams Create Advantages, and Virtual Project Teams Present Challenges. The practical application of these themes resulted in nine lessons learned. Understanding these themes and applying the lessons learned should improve the practice of project management, general business, and virtual project success

Success remotely:a case study of Meskula Oy

Abstract. Digitalization has been a guiding force for change and development across multiple industries, organizations, and roles in the modern era. In the context of business studies, the varying effects of digitalization have been analysed, for example, from the perspectives of change management, digital transformation, strategy, organizational culture, and leadership. As the modern workforce relies on different technologies in increasing numbers, the relevance of effective leadership in the e-world is gaining momentum. Although leadership in the digital era, otherwise referred to as e-leadership, has been studied since the turn of the century, the Covid-19 pandemic suddenly made remote working practices drastically mundane, introducing virtual work to the everyday life for many. However, research suggests that there remains significant doubt both in managers beliefs in their own virtual management skills, as well as, in the capabilities of employees to work online. Research has proven that virtual working arrangements are hardly a sole upgrade to existing practices, but pose several challenges for effective communication, trust building, performance management, and ethics. However, companies aim to benefit from the other side of the coin in increasing numbers when scouting for the best talent across country boarders, establishing faster response and decision- making processes, implementing around the clock services, saving on office space, and reducing emissions caused by commuting. Reaping the benefits of virtual working arrangements thus calls for effective management practices to overcome the challenges presented by the e-world. Academia has presented shared forms of leadership as a solution for tackling the downsides of virtual work when increased autonomy of employees results in reduced need for formal supervision. However, the ways to ensure successful implementation of such forms of leadership as well as the role of the formal leader remain scantly explored. This study aims to contribute to the academic discussion surrounding shared forms of leadership in the context of virtual teams by examining a company where shared leadership is a strategic tool to manage a fully virtual organization. The results of the study provide further support for shared leadership as a way to tackle the challenges emerging from virtual working arrangements, while additionally shedding light into the success factors for successfully implementing shared leadership. The results also pave way for understanding what exact behaviours should remain the responsibility of formal leadership