Virtual Teams: The use of technology as a tool in teamwork.

CHAPTER I – INTRODUCTION

1.1 Global and virtual Business

Companies will need to balance their necessity for a unified global culture with local strategic and cultural differences and make core global values locally relevant and easily understandable for all employees. Operating in a global economy will create even more demand for leaders with global and multicultural experience. This means it will be more important for key talent to have expatriate experience. Companies will find their best people anywhere in the world, so successful workers will be willing to work outside their home country.The concept of off-shoring will not exist in the future and talent will exist globally and companies will go where the talent is. The purpose will not be to get the lowest-cost labor, but rather the highest-quality talent. This will be especially true with technical and creative workers. Global companies will become more adept at managing a global enterprise on a 24/7 basis, with more management and technology systems in place to allow work to be easily passed around the world. There will be a more progressive use of partnerships and alliances across functions, organizations and customers to build more collaborative and innovative ways to compete and win market share.Societies throughout the world will focus on work as a more important crucible for social progress and values. The memory of today’s financial crisis will leave a legacy of greater scrutiny and regulation of issues such as fairness, pay differentials and ethics, particularly in traditional Western economies(Workforce Management, December 2008);millennials will redefine work, doing work at home and taking home to work;this means blurring the boundaries of life and work; More workforce mobility will allow people to work from home at different hours.

1.2 Relevance

In the information technology (IT) century the distances get shorter and the languages have broken the walls because the technology has changed more easily everything in the e-business world. The use of IT tools is growing every year in different processes in the companies. “Recruitment and development will increasingly be seen as part of an integrated workforce-supply optimization process. Both will become virtual, global and just-in-time, but they will also be transformed through an increasing emphasis on optimization, differentiation and return on investment”. (Workforce Management, December 2008), social networks and wikis will to support building strong relationships and collaboration between the virtual teams and face-to-face members of the companies; the structure of work will become more adaptive, more informal and less focused on formal structures and static design solutions. The HR professionals will have competencies in finding and retaining talent and in managing contract and freelance workers locally and internationally.

Technological progress and the evolution of virtual networks and social vetting—that is, using formal networks such as LinkedIn or social networks as twitter or facebookto establish trust and research people’s backgrounds—will increase workplace flexibility. The trends will increase the use of emerging work structures that involve engaging professional and social networks through means such as "crowd sourcing"—when an organization invites the public to help solve a problem (Qualman, 2010).

The talent market will look a lot more like eBay than Monster or Yahoo HotJobs. Candidates will put themselves up for bid for specific work;hours and duration will name their minimum price, including benefits and perks;employers will contract with each worker for what will be delivered (Workforce Management, December 2008).

1.3 Objective of study

The present research have as objective to find the way about how the leader share the leadership with persons who arenot physically in the same place and have to work virtually, detect which e-tools are used in virtual teamwork by teammates; exploring the different ways for share leadership, Knowledge and develop trust between teammates.

If is only one person who take important decisions or is by consensus in the team, and how is the interrelationship between the members who are sharing the leadership and finally find the strategy used when the original leader need to be on charge for present the result landed or commissioned by the top management.

In sum, this study aims to address the following questions:

How is the leadership in the virtual teams who use the technology as tool in teamwork?

Is the Time an important factor forcreating trust between team members?

What happens if the virtual team members get in touch by social networks before start to work?

Is recommended that virtual teamwork have face-to-face meetings when the project is for long time? How should be for the projects in short time?

Is virtual teamwork recording evidence of their work?

If you saw the profile (In whatever social network) of one of yours teammate before of sharing information, Could be an important factor in faithfulness on the kind information is it sharing? And what happen when that information come from the team leader?

CHAPTER II LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1 Virtual teamwork

Organizational teams can be defined as a set of individuals who perceive themselves and whom outsiders perceive as constituting an identifiable social aggregate within the organization (Richter, Scully, & West, 2005); teamwork is considered to be some of the more important work done in today’s organizations, (Parker 1996). In fact, organizations presuppose teamwork. Without teamwork at some level of cooperation, organizations cannot exist. Teams are considered to be the “standard operating procedure” in most high tech organizations and teams have become an important topic of study in the last decade. Advances in information and communications technology have enabled teams to work together in a virtual environment on tasks that at one time were assumed to require face-to-face meetings. The enabling of virtual team work occurred in parallel with competitive pressures that have forced many companies to shorten product development windows and reduce costs by outsourcing internationally. Organizations increasingly view virtual teams as a means to increase their flexibility and responsiveness while reducing costs (Haywood, 1998); (Hoefling, 2001); (Karolak, 1998);(Mitchell, 2001).

One of the defining characteristics of avirtual team is the computationally enabled andenhanced nature of its communication (Cummings &Kiesler, 2008). Defining characteristics of a virtual team is that it has a distribution of team members across time, geography or both. Virtual teams rarely (or never) meet face-to-face and depend on information and communications technology for their coordination and collaboration (Bell, 2002). Virtual teams can be characterized by their cultural or geographic similarity, temporal distribution and life cycle (Bell, 2002); (Kristof, 1995).

A rapid growing trend in the era of information technology is the increased prevalence of virtual teams in which members work collaboratively in geographically dispersed locations, given that advances in IT facilitate communication and the sharing of information among virtual team members (Shachaf, 2008).Virtual teams may range dramatically in termsof the degree to which they utilize virtuality, with someonly communicating using highly virtual tools such asinstant messaging and teleconferencing, while othersare less virtual, making use of videoconferencing andregularly scheduled face to face meetings.

As good communication and interaction add to the depth and richness of mutual understanding between the members of virtual teams, management should keep upgrading IT facilities and tools that help communication and interaction so that shared vision, perceived trust, and perceivedbenefit can be enhanced to the anticipated extent. Managementshould keep in mind that there is no ‘‘one size fits all” solutionfor enhanced perceived job effectiveness, by purely, for example,encouraging cooperative attitude and discarding competitive conflict.Virtualteams count heavily on e-mail, chat tools, social networks, online conference, instantmessaging or other online systems to accomplish their teamwork.

Companies need to have in mind that is necessary considered the following factor for excellent job effectiveness like a good leadership, trust between team members, knowledge sharing, cooperative attitude and competitive conflict it must avoided as they can when its mean individual selfinterest,may favor cooperation even if all members of a groupwould benefit in their cooperation with one another according tothe prisoner’s dilemma from game theory. Competitive conflict isdefined as a perceived state of discord due to a rivalry betweenteam members for benefits, resources or territory. Although traditionaltheories suggest that competitive conflict among teammembers is likely to undermine their job performance due to itscatalysis to increased tension (e.g.,Passos& Caetano, 2005; Richteret al., 2005).

2.2 Sharing Knowledge

Knowledge sharing is defined as individuals’ sharing organizationally relevant experiences and information with one another in collaboration, increasing the resources of an organization or a team and reducing time wasted in trial-and-error (Lin, 2007a; Lin, 2007b).

However, we cannot say that simply by assigning formal facilitators will contribute to a high performance team. What the literature found is that it was the way the facilitators performed their role that mattered most than the mere availability of facilitators.

The competence and skills of a facilitator, formal or informal, in bringing individuals together and in encouraging the use of collaborative technologies and the development of shared understanding can foster an atmosphere of collaboration and trust building within the virtual team environment and allowed to be distributed effectively.

Knowledgesharing across team members can be both competitive andcooperative in nature (Luo et al., 2006). The competitive nature often happens since knowledge can generate private gains for individualsto outperform their counterparts (Luo et al., 2006). Cooperative attitude involves the recognition that individualteam members may benefit from working complementarily (Brandenburger&Nalebuff, 1996). Put differently, those memberswhose knowledge adds value to the work of their co-workers arelikely to share knowledge (Levy et al., 2003), Developinga shared vision strategically among individual members of theteams is critical in team collaboration (Ferioli&Migliarese,1996), because a shared vision reflects an important agreementof beliefs and assumptions that consequently bring about internalstability to the cooperative attitude (Henderson &Sifonis, 1988),suggesting its positive influence on cooperative attitude.

2.3 Trust between virtual team members

Trust can be defined as a relationship of reliance among membersof a team or an organization. The importance of trust in successfulinterpersonal relationships has been discussed in previousresearch (Neves& Caetano, 2009; Sargeant& Lee, 2004). Individualsaim to practice cooperation with other team members whenthey perceive the members to be trustworthy. The cooperation thatcaptures the level of coordinated actions between team membersin their efforts to achieve mutual goals cannot be realized withouttrust among the members (Palmatier, Dant, Grewal, & Evans,2006). Indeed, given that perceived trust can be defined as a member’s expectation thatanother member desires co-ordination, willfulfill obligations, and will pull weight in the relationship (Dwyer,Schurr, & Oh, 1987; Peters &Karren, 2009), team members whopossess trust on their peers are perceived to be under obligationnot to undermine their team collaboration (Morris et al., 2007),indicating thepositive relationship between perceived trust andcooperative attitude.

Moreover, studies suggests that shared goals may be used to minimize power imbalances and the exercise of coercive power, by driving progress through the pursuit of mutually beneficial objectives based on a perceived  equity of return. It is important to highlight that knowledge is becoming the source of power in the current digital age and this power moves to the knowledge source. When virtual team relationships are damaged and internal confusion exists, managers need to begin the task of rebuilding trust in the pursuit of developing as best as possible collaborative global virtual teams.

Management attempting to boost cooperationin their teams within a short period should arrange a gettogetheror workshop so that team trust can be built efficiently given thatvirtual teams are sometimes temporary ones and have no sufficienttime for members to foster trust with each other. As good communication and interactionadd to the depth and richness of mutual understanding betweenthe members of virtual teams, management should keepupgrading IT facilities and tools that help communication andinteraction so that shared vision, perceived trust, and perceivedbenefit can be enhanced to the anticipated extent.

Jarvenpaa and Leidner(1998) studied in detail theelectronic communications of the highest and lowesttrust teams in their study of global virtual teams. Thehigh trust teams sent early, positive email messages and kept a strong, sustained focus on action and task results, reinforced by frequent communication. Incontrast, the low trust teams were markedly less activethroughout their life cycle.People may tend to start out trustingothers, but members of both types of teams need tomeet work expectations early in order to maintain thetrusting environment.

2.4 Leadership in virtual teamwork

In order to keep a team on track andfulfilling its potential, a leadership function that must be performed is the monitoring of the team. This functionis not limited to only monitoring team members’processes and performance, but also extends to monitoringthe environment (Hackman & Walton, 1986;McGrath, 1962; Tukl, 1989). Team monitoring providescritical information to team members that influencethe impact of subsequent leadership functions.When team monitoring is present, team leaders areseen as more effective and the team is more cohesive(Kane, Zaccaro, Tremble, & Masuda, 2002).

Due to increased complexity in ensuringeffective team processes when faced with virtualand distributed team environments, leadership behaviors may often be shared among members. Sharedleadership has been defined multiple ways, but acrossresearchers there appears to be a unified agreementthat shared leadership involves team members distributingleadership responsibilities amongst themselves,without negating the possibility of vertical leadership(Pearce & Conger, 2003). As with the broader leadershipliterature there have been a variety of leadershipbehaviors and/or functions which have been argued tobe the content of shared leadership (Morgeson, DeRue,&Karam, 2009). Many researchers have looked at thecomponents that predict the success of these sharedleadership behaviors and the impact it has in a varietyof environments (Carson, Tesluk, &Marrone, 2007;Merkens& Spencer, 1998) and is most effective when tasks are interdependent and complex (Pearce, 2004).

Shared leadership may be particularly important tovirtual teams and has emerged as a critical component in the modern organizational world, where team members’ separation fromthe leader and from one another may necessitate thedistribution of leadership functions. While the sharing of leadership has proven to be advantageous to moretraditional forms of vertical leadership (Pearce, Yoo, &Alvai, 2004),Klein et al (2006) found that inshared leadership work environments, teams that weremore effective had leaders that were able to recognizewhen it was necessary to either delegate responsibilitiesor directly intervene to maintain high levels ofperformance.Shared leadershipmay be particularly important to virtual teams, whereteam members’ separation from the leader and fromone another may necessitate the distribution of leadershipfunctions.

Arecent review of the leadership literature proposes foursources of leadership, broken down into two structuraldimensions: locus of leadership (internal vs. external)and formality of leadership (informal vs. formal). Inthis review, Morgeson, DeRue, and Karam (2009)describe an external leader as one that is not involvedin day-to-day tasks, while an internal leader is seen asan equal within the group. A formal leader is directlyassigned to be a leader (e.g., immediate supervisor,project lead, and the like), while an informal leader isdescribed more as an advisor, someone that does notcome into the leadership position by direct assignment. These classifications permit four sources of leadership, with vertical leadership being classified as external-formal and shared leadership falling under the internal-informal source.

 Shared leadership has been conceptualized in manyways (Carson, Tesluk, &Marrone, 2007; Friedrich, etal. 2009), but the underlying theme among these definitionsis that shared leadership involves the distributionof the leadership responsibilities within the team(see Jackson, 2000; Lambert, 2002; Pearce & Conger,2003),there has been someempirical research suggesting that when virtual teamleaders provide evaluative and systematic feedback,there is a greater degree of team identification andcommitment (Sivunen, 2006).

There are some research who has put forth several competencies that are to foster shared leadership for example Lambert (2002)suggests the ability to: negotiate win winsolutions through team learning, influence follower behavior, problem solve within a systems framework, and use shared visioning to empower members.Additionally, an examination of the role theory literature by Carson and Tesluk (2007) produced four roles (e.g., navigator, engineer, social integrator, and liaison)which yielded utility to team members without formaltitle or position of authority, as is often the case with shared leadership. When these roles manifest within ateam there appears to be a clear team direction and purpose(navigator), structuring of team roles, functions, and responsibilities (engineer), development and maintenanceof team coherence (social integrator), anddevelopment of relationships with key external stakeholders(liaison).

Besides work on the models and frameworks of shared leadership, research has delineated some conditionswhich may impact the emergence of shared leadership.For example, Pearce, Perry, and Sims (1999) identify five conditions: geographic dispersion, demographicheterogeneity, team size, skill heterogeneity,and maturity. Geographic dispersion, large team size,and demographic heterogeneity are expected to negativelyimpact the likelihood of shared leadershipemerging as coordination and communication. Conversely, skill heterogeneity should facilitate theemergence of shared leadership as different skills areoften needed based on the temporal point in the team’s life cycle. Teams with breadth in their abilities are more likely to be positioned to effectively engage inshared leadership, given the right climate and that members are comfortable with and cognizant of thepossession of different skills.

CHAPTER III - THEORETICAL MODEL AND HYPOTHESES

3.1 Theoretical Model

Due to advances in technology and the globalization of organizations, teams may often be distributed geographically,making use of virtuality in order to accomplishtasks. Similarly,teams can range in their degree of distribution, with some teams having all members fully distributed inseparate locations or, more commonly, teams withsome degree of partial distribution, such as the leader, in the same location as two or three team members andthe remaining team members spread out in variouslocations. While much has been done to advance ourunderstanding of virtuality and distribution’s impacts on team processes and performance, capturing thenuances of these differing degrees of virtuality and distributionremains challenging for researchers(Connaughton& Shuffler, 2007; Gibson & Gibbs,2006).

My theoretical model is going try to answer if is only one person who take important decisions or is by consensus in the team, and how is the interrelationship between the members who are sharing the leadership and finally find the strategy used when the original leader need to be on charge for present the result landed or commissioned by the top management and have fundament in a preview studies about share leadership functions in virtual teams Marissa L. Shuffler et al. 2010.

3.2 Hypotheses

3.2.1 Define mission

An integral part of any team process is the presence of a clear, concise, and direct mission.How the mission gets defined is largely the part of the team leader. The outcome of this leader function is tobreak down the ultimate goal of the team into tangible,achievable, challenging tasks and assure that these tasksare shared among team members. The more ambiguous and monotonous the tasks are, the less motivated teammembers will be in achieving those tasks and the lesslikely team members will have a shared understanding of the tasks. Without a shared understanding of the mission, team members will be less likely to develop thecollaborative and cohesive relationships necessary for effective team functioning.

H1a. Virtual teams who share at the beginning of the project the principal mission will be less difficulty get goals.

H1b. Virtual teams who share the function of defining the mission between teammates will have less difficulty defining the mission than if the leadership takes alone.

H1c. Virtual teams whose leaders maximize the capabilities of virtual tools will be more successful in the defining the mission than who do not.

3.2.2 Establish Expectations and Goals.

Once a team has a common grasp on the mission, the next leadership function involves establishing performance expectations and goals relative to that mission. In shared leadershipcontexts, this function is often served by multiplemembers of the team, with individual team members typically conveying their own expectations whileadhering to a common set of goals and expectationsemerging from team interaction (Pearce & Sims, 2002). Regardless of the leadership source, teams that facilitate goal setting are associated with improved performance(Cohen, Chang, & Ledford, 1997). In the virtualteam context, the presence of expectations and goals has been shown to help develop a common team identity,which was subsequently associated with teammembers collaborating more effectively (Cramton, 2001; Javenpaa&Leidner, 1999). However, no empiricalresearch has investigated the aspects of sharedleadership that impact the emergence of such shared expectations in virtual teams.

In terms of the impact of virtuality and distribution on sharing the function of setting expectations and goals, it is likely that both the degree of distribution and virtuality may interact to negatively impact expectations and goals. As with defining the mission, distributingteam members across time and space, along with reducing the richness of their communication media, can negatively impact how well information is shared(Cramton, 2001; Burke, et al., 2005). Furthermore, asteam members in highly virtual and fully distributed teams may be from different cultures, it is likely thatdeveloping a shared understanding regarding theexpectations of the team will be more challenging, as culturally driven expectations may be distortedthrough misunderstandings or biases (Jarvenpaa,Knoll, &Leidner, 1998; Kayworth&Leidner, 2001/2002). This team member diversity can be especially difficult when the establishment of expectationsand goals is shared across team members who havediffering cultural beliefs as well.

H2a Shared leadership will be more effective in establishing expectations and goals in virtual teams when habitual routines are present early in team´s lifecycle.

H2b Virtual teams who shared expectations and goals will be reduced the competition between teammates and increase cooperation

3.2.3 Structure and Plan.

These leader functions have established how team members will work independently from one another. The structuring and planning function addresses the potential interactions between team members during the transition phase. Team members need to develop a shared understanding of how they will coordinate their actions effectively in the accomplishment of team goals (Moregson et al. 2009). In shared leadership, members of the team are involved in the day-to-day functions. Intuitively, by sharing this responsibility, members should be more effective in understanding what it the best way to the work, the temporal demands of the task, team member expertise, and how to utilize team member availability and expertise to meet temporally driven task demands. Specifically, low virtuality has the potential to hinder the effectiveness of this leadership function by providing fewer opportunities to clarify the structure and plans in dynamic contexts.

H3 Shared leadership of highly virtual and partially or fully distributed teams that utilize more informal virtual tools (e.g., instant messaging, emails) on a regular basis will be more effective at structuring and planning than if using more formal means (e.g., teleconferencing, videoconferencing) that require additional coordination.

3.2.4 Provide feedback.

This leadership function allows teams to understand previous performance cycles, adapt future behavior based on previous performance, and develop over time (Einstein & Humphreys, 2001). Within the context of shared leadership, Morgeson et al., (2009) suggest that informal internal leadership is best at providing and receiving ongoing task-related feedback, there has been some empirical research suggesting that when virtual team leaders provide evaluative and systematic feedback, there is a greater degree of team identification and commitment (Sivunen, 2006) and the effectiveness of this leadership function is highly dependent of the ease and type of information conveyed between team members.

H4 Distribution of leaders sharing the function of providing feedback impacts the success of this feedback, such that feedback will be more successful when members sharing this function are spread across locations than when all members sharing the function are collocated.

3.2.5 Perform team task.

Leaders who are involved in day-to-day activities have a better understanding of the team process and where the team may be lacking in terms of task completion. This ground level understanding provides leaders with “the ability to get things done” (Hackman and Walton, 1986, pp. 108), which is necessary in order to perform this task, the nature of shared leadership, it is likely that the division of these roles among members instead of simply having one leader perform all these roles may be a great advantage as it spreads the cognitive load of these roles across multiple people.

H5a Virtual team with recorder information will increase the teamwork efficiency

H5b Virtual teams who more equally distribute various leadership roles (e.g., creator, contributor, completer) will be more successful at performing the team task than those who do not.

CHAPTER IV METHODOLOGY

Why use a qualitative method for this research because it permits us getting information that we cannot obtain in quantitative method for example for study human behavior and behavior changes, we enrich our results with people´s words and actions, in qualitative research the conceptual framework arises from the data rather than from preconceived hypotheses.

Qualitative research is a form of inquiry that analyzes information conveyed through language and behavior in natural settings (Lincoln, 1985). It is used to capture expressive information not conveyed in quantitative data about beliefs, values, feelings, and motivations that underlie behaviors. Qualitative methods derive from a variety of disciplines and traditions (Crabtree, 1992).

An interview with staff could begin with an open-ended, nondirective question, such as “What happened the last time someone tried to make changes in the “X” case?” and then follow through on expressions of enthusiasm, indifference, or disillusionment that emerge from initial responses whit the observation and permit us deep on a question and in that way try to ask another important question that could address us for an important topic.

Qualitative observation and interviews can provide invaluable practical information: Who teammate might improve their performance, or what e-tool is better for improve the communication. But at a deeper level qualitative encounters are also necessary to understand the “structure” of a system: how interdependent individuals, groups, and institutional components function (or fail to function) together.

Qualitative research techniques are essential for uncovering the extent of these interdependencies and the values that members throughout the system place on them and on the status quo. They provide tools for the visitor or outsider to a complex social system to characterize its important components and to anticipate and coordinate the effects of change throughout it. Whereas commonly used quantitative research methods provide information about universal circumstances, properly applied qualitative techniques yield extensive structured knowledge about these kinds of circumstances, processes, sources of meanings, values, and interactions unique to one place and one system at a specific time. Because every existing institution is simultaneously a bureaucracy, business, social system, and web of vested interests, changes that make a significant impact on such institutions may only be fully understood, prospectively or retrospectively.

Interview

An interview is a conversation between two or more people (the interviewer and the interviewee) where questions are asked by the interviewer to obtain information from theinterviewee (Wikipedia, 2010).I want to use interview because are particularly useful for getting the story behind a participant’s experiences. The interviewer can pursue in-depth information around the topic. Interviews may be useful as follow-up to certain respondents to questionnaires, e.g., to further investigate their responses. (McNamara, 1999).

Jokes and “horror stories” shared in the interview should be taken seriously because they can convey a lot about the core values, traditions, and traumatic experiences of the staff who tell them, interviews are invaluable for discovering past events and experiences that have proved influential to people in the present.

Observation

Observations could be categorized, check listed or rationed scale that bring us information (key informant in interview), permit us to understand experiences especially important to shaping perceptions and decisions (“critical incident” reports); or to generate new information from groups of subjects in focus groups. Audio taping or videotaping these interactions helps guarantee that expressive data are captured accurately and completely as they emerge. Taping also permits the researcher to carry the data to more controlled settings, where they can be transcribed, coded, analyzed for important themes and meanings, and verified using trained evaluators our observations may not answer all of our questions, but they can provide a working sense of which to investigate further, what other questions to ask, and a preliminary sense

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