As
a manager or a senior executive of a company imagine
that you are forming, coordinating and managing a team
that you cannot see. Moreover, this invisible team must
deliver value to your company and you are responsible
to get the work done. And to do this, all you have is
more technology and less people. Confused? Welcome to
today's new organizational reality diverse virtual teams.
In
today's business and organizational context, it is common
to see a work group or a team, whose members are placed
in different parts of the globe and yet work together.
First,
let us try to understand what exactly is a `virtual
team'. Virtual teams are members of a group of who work
closely together electronically even if they are based
in different countries. The members might have different
functions and work across organizational boundaries.
The
evolution of virtual working and subsequently virtual
teams has its roots in the intertwined trends of globalizations
and information technology revolution. Globalization
has enabled organizations to operate across, national
boundaries. Advances in telecommunications, such as
the Internet, e-mails, cellphones, and videoconferencing
made virtual teams a reality. In turn, market factors
such as shorter product life cycles, rapidly shifting
customer tastes and international competitive pressures
provided the driving force for the use of newly developed
advanced technology to form virtual teams. Microsoft
for example may have some of its product designers in
one part of the US, its product development engineers
and product test engineers in some other parts of the
world. Texas Instruments has offices spread across the
world including the US and India and these offices are
linked through the same computing infrastructure like
servers and other development tools. Majority of IT
firms in India are having their mother servers installed
in the US and all other teams and offices linked and
working through it. |
