scholarly journals Challenges for Romanian Entrepreneurs in Managing Remote Workers

Author(s):  
Xiaoyu Zhan ◽  
◽  
Delia Mioara Popescu ◽  
Valentin Radu ◽  
◽  
...  

In an increasingly globalized society managing remote work allows entrepreneurs to compete favorably and increase profit. Moreover, with the rapid development of information and electronic media, decentralized work has become much more comfortable, faster, and more efficient in response to the globalization of work processes. Dynamic environments have introduced virtual work teams that collaborate through communication technologies across geographical, temporal, cultural, and organizational boundaries to achieve a common goal in the results of their organizations. Remote working grows in popularity, but with it also increases the need of the organization to demand high performance from their members through their projects and activities. All over the world, statistics showed in 2019 a steep increase in the number of virtual workers. Both managers and companies face a high number of challenges to keep their employees satisfied and their “numbers” up. This article focuses on the emergence of Virtual Teams in Romania, primarily through the real necessity of remote workers. We highly discuss the advantages and disadvantages of working from home for Romanian Entrepreneurs, especially in the current pandemic state of the entire world.

Author(s):  
Ivan Gjorgjievski ◽  
◽  
Daniela Karadakov ◽  

Ever since the onset of the Internet and the rapid development in communications, a paradigm shift has been occurring between the human resources and the management systems in place. That shift has already rendered plenty of legacy management systems obsolete and ineffective. Evidently, the acceleration of data transfer speeds has produced a side effect in decreasing the location dependency of the average worker in certain industries, which in turn created a new challenge for the contemporary manager especially when dealing with remote teams and time-management of the same. This work-location decoupling meant that new systems had to be created, new studies to be introduced and plenty of modernization to the legacy control systems had to be implemented. And fast! This paper contains a systematic review of available software solutions for time management, location independency, virtual work and work teams and will provide analytic insight.


Author(s):  
Matti Vartiainen

“Telework” and “remote work” have both increased sharply in recent years during and after the pandemic. The basic difference between telework and remote work is that a teleworker uses personal electronic devices in addition to working physically remotely from a place other than an office or company premises, whereas remote work does not require visits to the main workplace or the use of electronic personal devices. “Mobile tele- and remote workers” use several other places in addition to home for working. “Digital online telework” is a global form of employment that uses online platforms to enable individuals, teams, and organizations to access other individuals or organizations to solve problems or to provide services in exchange for payment. Often tele- and remote workers cowork in virtual teams and projects. The prevalence of various types of tele- and remote working vary. Although there are conceptual challenges to operationalizing the concept, it is estimated that hundreds of millions—and possibly more—people today earn their living working at and from their home or other places using digital tools and platforms. In the future, it is expected that new hybrid modes of working will emerge enabled by digital technologies. These changes in working increase the complexity of job demands because of the increased variety of contextual job characteristics. The main benefits of these new ways of working are organizational flexibility and individual autonomy; at the same time, unclear social relations may increase feelings of isolation and challenge the work-life balance.


Author(s):  
David Croasdell ◽  
Andrea Fox ◽  
Suprateek Sarker

Business organizations and global partners are increasing their utilization of virtual project teams to enhance competitive advantages in the global market. More than ever, organizations are using virtual teamwork to bridge time zones and geographic distances. The use of virtual work environments has spurred interest in understanding how team members interact and collaborate over the life of a project. Not surprisingly, organizations are trying to understand what factors are determinants of success with respect to virtual teams. Increasing network bandwidth, continuously improving communication technologies, shifting global economies, and changes in social practices have caused business managers to reconsider traditional practices. This paper provides a comparative case study of four cross-cultural virtual project teams as they analyze, design, and develop information systems.


Author(s):  
Ian K. Wong ◽  
D. Sandy Staples

In the past several decades, we have seen tremendous advancements in the development of communication technology. Since the invention of the Internet in 1969, there has been rapid development of Internet-based communication tools and technologies. This technology has revolutionized business practices by offering another important and effective channel for communication (Foo & Lim, 1997) and has allowed people to work on projects irrespective of their physical location. One resulting business practice that has been adopted in recent years is virtual teamwork. Virtual teams are groups of individuals who work together in different locations (i.e., are geographically dispersed), work at interdependent tasks, share responsibilities for outcomes, and rely on technology for much of their communication (Cohen & Gibson, 2003). The use of virtual teams has become widespread in organizations, and its use is expected to grow (Martins, Gilson, & Maynard, 2004; Powell, Piccoli, & Ives, 2004).


2000 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 173-182 ◽  
Author(s):  
Violina Ratcheva ◽  
Shailendra Vyakarnam

Virtual teams formed across organizational boundaries and organized around an opportunity are a relatively new area of research. A review of previous research shows that, although virtual teams have been well defined as a concept, only a few studies have contributed to developing an understanding of the mechanisms of assembling and maintaining effective inter-organizational teams enabled by new modes of communication. By pointing out the need for a multidisciplinary perspective and a more holistic approach to research in this area, this study presents an initial attempt to understand the phenomenon by emphasizing the interaction patterns required for virtual work. The results presented confirm that virtual teams are not simply evolutionary forms of the traditional collocated entrepreneurial teams, but they represent novel patterns of interactions of social and organizational factors and specific team formation processes characterized by collaboration across organizational and country boundaries.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arianna Costantini ◽  
Serena Rubini

In this chapter, we adopt a psychological perspective to the study of workplace innovation in Italy. Framing our contribution in the context of remote working and workplace innovation before, during, and after the COVID-19 emergency, we investigate how proactive behaviours (i.e., job crafting) transforming remote work processes resulted in different levels of work engagement during the pandemic. Three-wave longitudinal data were collected from a final sample of 35 remote workers (N=105 observations). Results from multilevel analyses with Bayesian estimator showed that remote working was associated with higher frequencies of behaviours aimed at actively distancing by one’s work role, which in turn was associated with lower work engagement. On the other side, employees reporting more efforts to optimise their work processes proactively reported higher engagement than those displaying less proactivity towards remote work organisation. These findings highlight the need for remote working solutions to account for individual proactivity in enacting remote work processes, since such behaviours are significant predictors of work engagement, a key factor to allow higher organisational performance and work-related well-being.


2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (7) ◽  
pp. 9-17 ◽  
Author(s):  
F. Konobevtsev ◽  
N. Laas ◽  
E. Gurova ◽  
I. Romanova

The types of remote employment (distance work and freelance) have been considered. Directions of use of modern information technologies at the organization of remote employment have been indicated and their developed characteristic has been given. The activity of freelancers has been described in detail. The mechanisms of functioning of international online labor exchanges and Russian platforms have been revealed. The results of a study on the practice of remote work in modern domestic organizations have been adduced. According to the results of the study, conclusions have been made about the areas of remote employment, its advantages and disadvantages for the organization and employees; about the software and hardware used by employers; about the problems of regulatory regulation of remote employment; about the competencies of remote workers and freelancers.


Author(s):  
France Bélanger

The paper by Bélanger, Watson-Manheim, and Jordan (2002) addresses the gap between research conducted and practitioner concerns in virtual work. One of the key difficulties in conducting research in this area is the overlap between terms used (McCloskey & Igbaria, 1998; Pinsonneault & Boisvert, 2001). While there are other distributed work arrangements such as hotelling, neighborhood work centers and flextime, most of the previous literature has focused on telecommuting (telework) and virtual teams/ organizations. In this article, the term virtual work represents work environments where individuals spend some time working in a non-face-to-face (FTF) mode, using information and communication technologies to perform work activities. Virtual work environments are increasingly employed by organizations. While there is increased complexity and potential for problems, virtual work strategies allow organizations a great deal of flexibility to compete in a rapidly changing business environment. While existing research provides insights into such environments, it does not clearly deal with major concerns faced by managers (referred to as the “gap” between research and practice). One of the potential reasons for this gap is that practicing managers are concerned with current challenges in their own work setting while academics are concerned with developing more generalizable rules and understanding.


Author(s):  
Ian K. Wong ◽  
D. Sandy Staples

In the past several decades, we have seen tremendous advancements in the development of communication technology. Since the invention of the Internet in 1969, there has been rapid development of Internet-based communication tools and technologies. This technology has revolutionized business practices by offering another important and effective channel for communication (Foo & Lim, 1997), and has allowed people to work on projects irrespective of their physical location. One resulting business practice that has been adopted in recent years is virtual teamwork. Virtual teams are groups of individuals who work at interdependent tasks, who share responsibility for outcomes, and who work together from different locations. Recently, the use of teams as fundamental building blocks in organizations is increasing, as is the use of virtual teamwork (Furst, Blackburn & Rosen, 1999). This article identifies the characteristics of high performing virtual teams.


2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 398-409 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anita Juliana De Bruyn

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to bridge the void in virtual teams’ (VTs) lived experiences on the high-performance work process theme by exploring process alignment best practices for the functioning of effective VTs in the software sector of the technology industry of South Africa. Design/methodology/approach A qualitative, interpretivist case study was used to gain insight into the lived experiences of VT members. A purposive sample was selected, and data were collected through an electronic questionnaire and analysed by means of content analysis. Findings International literature corpus informed the process theme. Empirical evidence suggests that a value-driven work orientation to combat cybercrime linked with the pre-existence to specific architecture effectively contribute to the practice of VT expertise by delivering innovative new paths instead of aligning to traditional processes. Research limitations/implications The qualitative approach of this paper limits the replication possibilities beyond the information and communication technology (ICT) VTs who participated in the study. The themes, elements and the virtual nature of the study could be generalised across various technology-infused organisations in other VTs and within other knowledge working fields. Practical implications An exemplary questionnaire and method to obtain deep knowledge from the lived experiences of the virtually dispersed participants could be utilised for similar future studies. Social implications ICT software organisations trading on the African, within VT environments and South Africa, people practitioners and risk managers would benefit from the process alignment practices suggested in this study. Originality/value This paper complements seminal VT theorists, and presents suggestions towards a practical implementable novel framework for the implementation of VT processes alignment.


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