Working Across Boundaries: Current and Future Perspectives on Global Virtual Teams

Global Virtual Teams (GVTs) are a commonplace in contemporary organizations, and an already established topic of research in international management. While we have a good understanding of advantages and challenges associated with this ubiquitous form of work groups, this special issue aims to contribute to theory development by focusing on key drivers that influence the success of GVTs, along with ways for mitigating their challenges. We briefly review current knowledge on GVTs and propose a structuring framework that can help with both organizing what we know about GVTs, and with guiding the conversation on where the research on this topic might focus next. We then introduce four special issue articles that illustrate avenues for generating new empirical evidence towards uncovering key characteristics and dynamics underlying GVTs complexities, providing useful insights for both theory development and managerial practice

Virtual Organizations in Practice: A European Perspective

The paper reports results from a European Union (EU) project dedicated to Virtual Organization (VO) research. It aims to consolidate VO reference models and related modeling methodologies based on experiences acquired in thirty relevant EU funded research projects. The research reveals the complex reality of deployment and adoption of VO practices and identifies a number of organizational, legal, economic, socio-cultural, and technical challenges faced by VOs, presented in the form of open questions for the research community

Finding the ‘I’ in team:the moderating effects of team boundary management on the relationship between team personality traits and team performance

With a rapidly changing landscape creating highly permeable team boundaries, the traditional team form has become the exception rather than the norm in contemporary organisations. A consequence of this is that management practitioners urgently need clarification of the considerations required to compose teams to positively influence team performance. Service Sector organisations whose main activities are rooted in knowledge work are prominent examples, as are other organisational forms whose dynamics create similarly challenging contextual conditions. With a century long tradition, team research has become a broad church and scholarly investigations have reported that boundary management improves performance through coordination, knowledge sharing, and access to scarce resources. Through the theoretical lenses of Trait Activation and Similarity Attraction, this research study investigated the relationships between Team Personality Traits and various Team Outcomes moderated by Team Boundary Management and Interdependence. Addressing calls for researchers to take a more nuanced approach to investigating the Personality and Performance relationship, this study applied a complex analytic strategy and evaluated a number of permutations of the variables in focus. In doing so it identified significant main, interaction and quadratic effects between Team Personality and Team Outcomes moderated by Team Boundary Management, including some of the conditions under which those relationships hold true. These results, and the understanding emanating from the analysis, contribute to theory and practice by extending existing knowledge and providing some new insights into the complexities and trade-offs associated with team composition where team personality traits are the team composition input variables

Workspace methodologies : studying communication, collaboration and workscapes

This report consists of descriptions of methods, which are used for studying, evaluating and developing workplaces. Work environments are analyzed as layers or imbedded levels: as physical, virtual and mental/social spaces. In this analysis, Kurt Lewin's classical psychological concept 'Life Space' is used as well as the concept 'ba' provided by Nonaka, Toyama and Konno. 'Ba' refers to socially shared space, where people create, share and use knowledge. The concept of Ba unifies the physical space, such as an office space, the virtual space, such as e-mail, and the mental or social space, such as common experiences, ideas, values, and ideals shared by people with common goals as a working context. A hypothesis is that the support and/or hindrances of these spaces have a crucial influence on the activities of employees, groups and organizations. To design and develop workplaces it is fundamental to identify these facilitating and hindering work context characteristics. For this purpose, various methods are needed to collect data, to analyze it, to describe and model the environments, and to analyze their quality. In this report, some only methods are described. They are: social network analysis, sketching and photographing methods, communication analysis, work requirement and well-being analysis, simulation game method and multidisciplinary workplace study methodology. The described methods are examples of approaches and methods meant to cling to the challenges of workplace design.Tämä raportti koostuu työtilojen tutkimisessa, arvioinnissa ja kehittämisessä käytettyjen tiedonkeruu- ja analysointimenetelmien kuvauksista. Työn toimintaympäristöä eritellään eri tasoina tai kerrostumina: fyysisinä, virtuaalisina ja henkisinä/sosiaalisina tiloina. Tasoerittelyssä hyödynnetään Kurt Lewinin klassista, yksilöpsykologista 'elämäntila' käsitettä sekä Nonakan, Toyaman ja Konnon käsitettä 'ba'. Ba tarkoittaa sosiaalisesti jaettua tilaa, jossa olevat ihmiset luovat, jakavat ja käyttävät tietoa. 'Ba' yhdistää fyysisen tilan, kuten toimisto, virtuaalisen tilan, kuten sähköposti, ja henkisen tai sosiaalisen tilan, kuten yhteisesti jaetut kokemukset, ideat ja ihanteet. Oletuksena on, että näiden tilojen tarjoama tuki ja esteet vaikuttavat keskeisellä tavalla yksittäisten työntekijöiden, ryhmien ja organisaatioiden toimintaan. Työpaikkojen suunnittelun ja kehittämisen kannalta on olennaista tunnistaa toimintaa helpottavia ja estäviä tekijöitä. Tähän tarvitaan erilaisia menetelmiä kerätä työtiloja koskevaa tietoa, analysoida sitä, kuvata näitä ympäristöjä ja arvioida niiden laatua. Raportin kirjoituksissa kuvataan joitakin menetelmiä. Kuvatut menetelmät ovat: sosiaalisten verkostojen analyysimenetelmät, piirros- ja valokuvamenetelmä, kommunikaatioanalyysi, kuormitustekijä- ja hyvinvointianalyysi, simulaatiopelimenetelmä ja monitieteinen työpaikkojen tutkimusmetodologia. Esitellyt menetelmät ovat esimerkkejä tavoista paneutua työpaikkojen tutkimuksen haasteisiin

Internet of robotic things : converging sensing/actuating, hypoconnectivity, artificial intelligence and IoT Platforms

The Internet of Things (IoT) concept is evolving rapidly and influencing newdevelopments in various application domains, such as the Internet of MobileThings (IoMT), Autonomous Internet of Things (A-IoT), Autonomous Systemof Things (ASoT), Internet of Autonomous Things (IoAT), Internetof Things Clouds (IoT-C) and the Internet of Robotic Things (IoRT) etc.that are progressing/advancing by using IoT technology. The IoT influencerepresents new development and deployment challenges in different areassuch as seamless platform integration, context based cognitive network integration,new mobile sensor/actuator network paradigms, things identification(addressing, naming in IoT) and dynamic things discoverability and manyothers. The IoRT represents new convergence challenges and their need to be addressed, in one side the programmability and the communication ofmultiple heterogeneous mobile/autonomous/robotic things for cooperating,their coordination, configuration, exchange of information, security, safetyand protection. Developments in IoT heterogeneous parallel processing/communication and dynamic systems based on parallelism and concurrencyrequire new ideas for integrating the intelligent “devices”, collaborativerobots (COBOTS), into IoT applications. Dynamic maintainability, selfhealing,self-repair of resources, changing resource state, (re-) configurationand context based IoT systems for service implementation and integrationwith IoT network service composition are of paramount importance whennew “cognitive devices” are becoming active participants in IoT applications.This chapter aims to be an overview of the IoRT concept, technologies,architectures and applications and to provide a comprehensive coverage offuture challenges, developments and applications

E-leadership in Practice: The Components of Transformational Leadership in Virtual Business Environments

Today more and more organizations increasingly conduct business using globally distributed teams, also called virtual teams, because of the availability and ubiquity of information and communication technology. E-leadership refers to leading through computer-mediated communication. In the field of e-leadership, transformational leadership has been studied for the past two decades and has been the most-often-cited leadership theory. The literature review discusses how transformational leadership behaviors affect team performance in the context of virtuality, in particular interpersonal trust and organizational commitment of the virtual team members. The researcher conducted a quantitative research study to examine (a) the relationships between transformational leadership and interpersonal trust and organizational commitment of virtual team members, (b) the impacts of the four constructs of transformational leadership via computer-mediated communication, and (c) the moderating effect of the degree of virtuality on such relationships. Study results indicate that transformational leadership behaviors positively affected interpersonal trust and organizational commitment of virtual team members. Among its four constructs, one particular construct—individualized consideration—had a more prominent role. Variety of practices moderated the relationship between transformational leadership and interpersonal trust. Practical implications and future research directions in the emerging field of transformational e-leadership are discussed. Future research directions are suggested

Intercultural communication competence in a global virtual team

Abstract In recent years, the global prevalence of remote work has rapidly increased. This has been caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the effects of globalisation. A specific form of remote work is a global virtual team (GVT). A GVT refers to a team that uses computer-mediated technology to communicate in order to work towards a common goal, and is temporary, multicultural, and geographically dispersed. The communication in such a team also involves interactions among people of different cultures, intercultural communication. This can be characterised by misunderstandings and communication failures. However, intercultural communication competence (ICC) can aid in achieving mutual understanding. ICC refers to the ability to effectively and appropriately interact with people of different cultural backgrounds. The purpose of this study is to answer the research question: How can intercultural communication competence be applied in a global virtual team? Answering to the question involves descriptions and categorisations of intercultural communication and collaboration challenges, and of solutions to the challenges in the form of ways of applying ICC. The research design of this study included an expert interview, and a single case study of a GVT. The GVT consisted of students at multiple universities. The interview findings indicated that making assumptions related to culturally different others based on insufficient information was the basis of all intercultural communication challenges in a GVT. One solution to this challenge was extending the time of analysing one another’s communication. The case study findings indicated that the most pronounced and common challenges faced by the GVT were related to coordination, particularly to some members’ lack of commitment, which led to other challenges. One solution to the challenge was starting an interaction in order to involve team members in collaboration. Many of the challenges can be related to one another. Furthermore, solutions in the form of ways of applying ICC can be devised, if not to all, at least to nearly all communication and collaboration challenges faced in a GVT. Knowledge of these challenges and ways may allow companies and their employees to overcome and prevent such challenges, improve their intercultural communication and collaboration, as well as ultimately experience increases in task and relationship outcomes.Tiivistelmä Viime vuosina etätyö on nopeasti yleistynyt maailmanlaajuisesti. Syinä tähän ovat olleet COVID-19-pandemia sekä globalisaation vaikutukset. Etätyön erityinen muoto on globaali virtuaalitiimi (GVT). GVT viittaa tiimiin, joka viestii tietotekniikan välityksellä työskennelläkseen yhteisen tavoitteen hyväksi, ja on väliaikainen, monikulttuurinen, ja maantieteellisesti hajautunut. Tällaiseen viestintään kuuluu eri kulttuurien edustajien välistä vuorovaikuttamista, kulttuurienvälistä viestintää. Tähän voi liittyä väärinymmärryksiä ja viestinnän epäonnistumisia. Kuitenkin, kulttuurienvälinen viestintäkompetenssi (KVK) voi auttaa molemminpuolisen ymmärryksen saavuttamisessa. KVK viittaa kykyyn viestiä tehokkaasti ja soveliaasti eri kulttuuritaustaisten ihmisten kanssa. Tämän tutkimuksen tarkoituksena on vastata tutkimuskysymykseen: Miten kulttuurienvälistä viestintäkompetenssia voidaan soveltaa globaalissa virtuaalitiimissä? Tähän kysymykseen vastaamiseen liittyy kulttuurienvälisen viestinnän ja yhteistyön haasteiden, ja näiden ratkaisujen kuvailuja ja luokitteluja. Ratkaisut viittaavat tapoihin soveltaa KVK:ta näihin haasteisiin. Tämän tutkimuksen tutkimusasetelmaan sisältyi asiantuntijahaastattelu, ja yksittäistapaustutkimus GVT:stä. Haastattelulöydökset viittasivat siihen, että oletusten tekeminen liittyen kulttuurisesti erilaisiin toisiin perustuen riittämättömään informaatioon oli kaikkien kulttuurienvälisten haasteiden perusta GVT:ssä. Yksi ratkaisu tähän haasteeseen oli osapuolten toistensa viestinnän analysointiajan pidentäminen. Tapaustutkimuslöydökset viittasivat siihen, että korostuneimmat ja yleisimmät haasteet, jotka GVT kohtasi, liittyivät koordinaatioon, erityisesti joidenkin jäsenten sitoutumisen puutteeseen, joka johti muihin haasteisiin. Yksi ratkaisu haasteeseen oli vuorovaikutuksen aloittaminen tiimiläisten osallistamiseksi yhteistyöhön. Monet haasteista voivat liittyä toisiinsa. Lisäksi, ratkaisuja voidaan löytää KVK:n soveltamisen tapojen muodossa, jos ei kaikkiin, ainakin lähes kaikkiin GVT:ssä kohdattujen viestinnän ja yhteistyön haasteisiin. Tieto näistä haasteista ja tavoista voi mahdollistaa yritysten ja näiden työntekijöiden selviytyä näistä haasteista ja ehkäistä näitä haasteita, edistää heidän kulttuurienvälistä viestintäänsä ja yhteistyötänsä, sekä lopulta parantaa tehtävätuloksia ja ihmissuhteita

How intra-firm networks create value and liabilities in micro-level processes of global virtual teams

Research on organisational networks is abundant, yet understanding about the positive and negative effects of networks in global business settings remains relatively limited. This dissertation analyses the network mechanisms that add value to global virtual teams (GVTs). More specifically, it examines the role of (i) network structure, (ii) individuals’ network position, and (iii) the types of relationships which people share as both value-adding mechanisms as well as sources of potential liabilities. Added value in this study refers to interpersonal benefits which may help GVTs realise their full potential, meaning an increased knowledge flow, decreased levels of conflict and a higher degree of integration among diverse team members, amongst other things. The theoretical underpinning of this study lies within the intersection of network theory, international business, and virtual team management. The empirical analysis is conducted within a social network data set collected from 160 GVT members from three multinational companies working in a high technology sector. Statistical analyses of these data suggest that network mechanisms such as the types of ties people share (i.e. friendship), reciprocity (i.e. two-way interaction), the structure of ties (i.e. cliques), and an individual’s network positions (i.e. brokerage over structural holes) have important effects on knowledge sharing and potential for conflict. Surprisingly, the GVTs are found to show little tendency for homophily (tendency for similar others) and no support is found for the argument that cultural dissimilarities or geographical distance would negatively affect interpersonal interactions. It is concluded that network-based theories need to be more rigorously tested in global contexts in order to truly evaluate their generalisability for international business