The Role of Leadership in Virtual Teams

2011 ◽  
pp. 540-546
Author(s):  
Kristi M. Lewis Tyran ◽  
Craig K. Tyran
Keyword(s):  
Organizational Structure ◽  
Task Performance ◽  
Virtual Teams ◽  
Communication Technology ◽  
Team Performance ◽  
Electronic Communication ◽  
Team Leadership ◽  
Team Members ◽  
Rapid Pace

As globalization and the prevalence of electronic communication technology has become more widespread, organizations are adapting and changing at a rapid pace. Many organizations are using “virtual teams” of people working across space and time as an organizational structure to enhance organizational flexibility and creativity in this changing environment (Duarte & Snyder, 1999; Townsend, DeMarie, & Hendrickson, 1998). As virtual teams become a more popular organizational tool, many researchers have begun to explore ways in which the performance of such teams may be enhanced (Cohen & Gibson, 2003). One aspect of teamwork that has traditionally had an important impact on team performance is team leadership. Leaders often facilitate effective task performance within a team. By assigning tasks to individuals with the skills, knowledge and abilities to perform best, as well as structuring the team to best accomplish its tasks, a leader can greatly increase the effectiveness and efficiency of a team (Hooijberg, Hunt, & Dodge, 1997; McGrath, 1984; O’Connell, Doverspike, & Cober, 2002). In addition to task-focused behaviors, leaders also motivate, coach and mentor team members toward higher levels of performance (Bass, 1985; Conger & Kanungo, 1998).

Managing Virtual Teams: Strategies for Team Leaders

2009 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 8-13 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca Lyons ◽  
Heather A. Priest ◽  
Jessica L. Wildman ◽  
Eduardo Salas ◽  
David Carnegie
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Teams ◽  
Team Leadership ◽  
Virtual Team ◽  
Team Leaders ◽  
Team Members ◽  
Support Tools ◽  
Virtual Team Leadership ◽  
Collaborative Support ◽  
And Training

Organizations' increasing use of virtual teams has emphasized the importance of effective virtual team leadership. Yet the distribution of team members complicates typical leader functions, such as supervision and support, which the leader must now perform through technology. In this article, we present 10 strategies for managing virtual teams, focusing on the role of technology and training. Our hope is that these strategies will inform designers and guide them in developing collaborative support tools and procedures for these tools and in designing training for the use of these tools.

Getting Things Done, Virtually! - The Role of Virtual Team Leadership in Virtual Team Effectiveness

2017 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 13-20
Author(s):  
Jude Ashmi E
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Teams ◽  
Team Effectiveness ◽  
Team Leadership ◽  
Virtual Team ◽  
Leadership Roles ◽  
Team Members ◽  
Virtual Team Leadership ◽  
Effective Performance ◽  
Traditional Work

A virtual team’s success depends on the team's effectiveness. Accomplishing such a team’s effectiveness is far more difficult when compared with traditional work teams. This article is a result of an exploratory study of the role of leadership in virtual teams. Virtual teams’ leadership is seemingly situational and supervisory, depending on the task. This study reveals that (1) individual virtual team members act as leaders based on the specific requirements for getting things done, (2) classifies virtual team leadership under supervisory and facilitating leadership, (3) suggests that both leadership roles are essential for virtual team effectiveness and functioning and (4) recommends exploration of leadership-oriented communication competency, shared understanding and virtual team citizenship behaviour as these are required for the effective performance of a virtual team.

Are All Lockdown Teams Created Equally? Work Characteristics and Team Perceived Virtuality

2021 ◽  
pp. 104649642199789
Author(s):  
Patrícia L. Costa ◽  
Lisa Handke ◽  
Thomas A. O’Neill
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Teams ◽  
Organizational Support ◽  
Latent Profile Analysis ◽  
Profile Analysis ◽  
Structural Features ◽  
Pivotal Role ◽  
Work Characteristics ◽  
Team Members ◽  
Latent Profile

Team virtuality has been mostly conceptualized as structural features, such as the percentage of time team members communicate via technology. However, the perception of distance and of information deficits (team perceived virtuality, TPV) may be an indispensable construct to understand virtual teams’ functioning. The lockdowns imposed on most countries due to COVID-19 created virtual teams with high degrees of structural virtuality. With structural virtuality held constant among teams, we explore configurations of work characteristics (autonomy, interdependence, and organizational support) that influence TPV. With a sample of 296 multinational workers, a Latent Profile Analysis identified four distinct profiles of those work characteristics. Those profiles related differently to TPV. Contrary to previous findings, interdependence seems to play an important role in these teams high in structural virtuality when their autonomy is also high, highlighting the pivotal role of frequent interaction among team members, under conditions of high structural virtuality.

Virtual Team Effectiveness

2017 ◽  
pp. 687-706 ◽  
Author(s):  
John R. Carlson ◽  
Dawn S. Carlson ◽  
Emily M. Hunter ◽  
Randal L. Vaughn ◽  
Joey F. George
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Teams ◽  
Team Effectiveness ◽  
Survey Methodology ◽  
Instant Messaging ◽  
Virtual Team ◽  
Interpersonal Processes ◽  
Mediated Communication ◽  
Team Members ◽  
Main Effect

The work of virtual teams is increasingly important to today's organizations, work that is accomplished predominantly via computer-mediated communication. The authors investigate the moderating role of experience with instant messaging on the team interpersonal processes (cohesion and openness) to team effectiveness relationship in virtual teams. Data were obtained from 365 virtual team members using survey methodology and analyzed using hierarchical moderated regression and multilevel analyses. They found that team cohesion has a main effect on team effectiveness. Team openness has a main effect and is moderated by experience with instant messaging, i.e., strengthens the relationship. Understanding the role of team interpersonal processes and the role of the communication media will allow managers to more effectively build virtual teams and provide effective training and support. Using the theoretical lens of channel expansion theory the authors expand theoretical, empirical and practical knowledge of this area.

The Role of Virtual Multicultural Teams in Corporate Culture

2011 ◽  
pp. 62-86 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amira El Guindi ◽  
Sherif Kamel
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Teams ◽  
Corporate Culture ◽  
Multicultural Teams ◽  
Cultural Backgrounds ◽  
Global Organizations ◽  
Team Members ◽  
The World ◽  
Information And Communication ◽  
Multicultural Team

Information and communication technologies are impacting today’s organizations and businesses in many diverse ways. The implications are perceived at the individual, organizational, and national levels. The old accustomed-to boundaries of national economies and markets are giving way to globalization and newly emerging trends. Competition is increasing, and due to the forces of change, the world market will sweep aside the small market players to make way for global organizations that are capable of penetrating the world markets through a massive global outreach strategy. In that respect, there is a need to invest in innovative business models such as virtual multicultural teams that are capable of handling the pressures of growing competition while capitalizing on the evolution of information and communication technology. Global organizations need to operate through a very flexible structure that allows freedom and speed, and replaces the hierarchical models with structures that are flatter and adequate for stronger and more efficient communication. Such a structure will allow bottom-up decision making and self-management and will capitalize on the advantages of employing multicultural teams; the diversified capacities, knowledge and business perception of these teams will be conducive to more in-depth innovation and creativity. Virtual teams can provide an organization with a solid opportunity to compete, making it easier to adapt to different situations and reducing conflicts. This chapter reflects the results of a study conducted in Egypt that targeted the determination of the possibility of reducing multicultural team conflicts by establishing a corporate culture that could have a strong influence on team members using virtual teams. The study covered six organizations operating through virtual multicultural teams and describes the analysis of the findings that relate to the role of corporate culture, the management style, and conflict resolution, among other elements. Global organizations face the challenge of operating through global multicultural teams whose members—coming from different cultural backgrounds—often stumble into conflicts that influence the overall performance of the organization. The core issue of this study is the impact of multicultural team conflicts on the overall organizational performance. Therefore, the objective of the study was to examine the relationship between corporate culture and multicultural team conflicts and to determine whether it is possible to reduce multicultural team conflicts by building a corporate culture in which all individual cultures would fit and where the management plays a vital role in transmitting the corporate culture to different teams in order to help global organizations become more efficient using virtual multicultural teams.

Successful Communication in Virtual Teams and the Role of the Virtual Team Leader

2011 ◽  
pp. 39-52 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jamie S. Switzer
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Teams ◽  
Communication Strategies ◽  
Team Leadership ◽  
Virtual Team ◽  
Team Leaders ◽  
Organizational Boundaries ◽  
Successful Communication ◽  
Virtual Team Leadership ◽  
The World

The world now lives and works in cyberspace. Often, organizations have their people perform functional tasks by working in virtual teams, where members use technology to cooperate across geographic and organizational boundaries. As the use of virtual teams in the workforce becomes more prevalent, those involved must have the knowledge to communicate efficiently and effectively, especially the virtual team leaders. This chapter provides a general overview of virtual teams and virtual team leadership, and discusses specific communication strategies and competencies necessary for virtual team leaders to be effective and successful communicators.

Virtual Team Performance and Wellbeing for Event Management

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohamed Salama ◽  
Cakil Angew ◽  
Gregory Fantham
Keyword(s):  
Performance Management ◽  
Virtual Teams ◽  
Team Performance ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Digital Transformation ◽  
Event Management ◽  
Cultural Variations ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Compare And Contrast

This chapter falls in two parts. Part 1 discusses team issues with emphasis on virtual teams. The first few sections briefly compare and contrast the different types of team and how team performance should be planned and managed, in line with set goals and detailed deliverables. This will cover a wide range of concepts that come into play under performance management and measurement. The following sections focus on the challenges that virtual teams face amid the prevailing digital transformation and suggest effective measures to address those challenges. The presented concepts are generic, thus can be readily applied to the context of event management. Part 2 comprises two sections; the first discusses well-being and cross-cultural variations in relation to event management, while the second section is focused on the role of social psychology in devising event experiences.

The Impact of Trust on Virtual Team Effectiveness

2014 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 11-28 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yasser A. El-Kassrawy
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Teams ◽  
Team Performance ◽  
Team Effectiveness ◽  
Virtual Team ◽  
Structural Equations ◽  
Team Members ◽  
Competitive Environments ◽  
Team Satisfaction ◽  
And Performance ◽  
The Impact

Given the important role of information technology, virtuality has become crucial issue in contemporary organizations. Virtual teams are comprised of members who are located in more than one physical location. They need to be effectively collaborating to harness their full performance capabilities in order to compete in the highly competitive environments. However, virtual team effectiveness is affected by determinants of trust which include three types; personality, cognitive and institutional-based trust. Therefore, this paper examines the impact of trust determinants on virtual team effectiveness represented in virtual team satisfaction and performance. Through a survey of 125 virtual team members who had experienced at least two years in this field, the results indicated that determinants of trust positively influence virtual team satisfaction and virtual team performance. The authors' structural equations modeling findings also support our hypothetical predictions that personality- based trust, cognitive- based trust and institutional- based trust have a dramatic impact on both of virtual team satisfaction and virtual team performance. Moreover, institutional- based trust is the uppermost driver of virtual team effectiveness. This study provides novel insights into virtual team behaviours, managerial and research implications for effective virtual team.

scholarly journals Team Dispersion and Performance: The Role of Team Communication and Transformational Leadership

2019 ◽  
Vol 50 (3) ◽  
pp. 348-380 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julia Eisenberg ◽  
Corinne Post ◽  
Nancy DiTomaso
Keyword(s):  
Transformational Leadership ◽  
Virtual Teams ◽  
Team Performance ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Team Communication ◽  
Negative Effects ◽  
Geographic Dispersion ◽  
Highly Dispersed ◽  
Dispersed Teams

Organizations increasingly rely on virtual teams to access geographically dispersed expertise. Yet, team dispersion introduces challenges to team communication that may negatively influence team performance. Using a sample of 53 innovation teams representing a variety of geographic dispersion configurations from completely collocated to highly dispersed, we examined the moderating role of transformational leadership on the relationship between team dispersion, team communication, and team performance. Our findings suggest that while transformational leadership is effective in reducing the negative effects of dispersion in collocated teams or ones with low levels of geographic dispersion, it is less effective helping improve the performance of highly dispersed teams. This effect may be due to a transformational leader’s difficulty in facilitating team communication in highly dispersed teams, where his or her influence might actually have counterproductive effects. We discuss the implications of our findings for theory, future research, and practice.

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