Case Study: Virtual Team
Teams are the typical building blocks of an organization: They provide companies with the means to combine the various skills, talents and perspectives of a group of individuals to achieve goals. While a virtual team has many advantages over a physical one, it is far from perfect. Today, most of the documentation which is available on teams focuses on the traditional team, the group of people that work together in a co- location with the goal of finishing a specific project.
Virtual teams are increasingly global, creating challenges for communication and coordination due to greater distances, multiple time zones, and cultural differences. There options when it comes to work design and leadership of virtual teams as noted below.
Designs
Wheel design
Modular design
Iterative approach
Modular design
As stated in Mapping out the creative process and work design approach the most common work design approaches used during the creative process of these virtual teams was the modular approach. “In this approach, team members met initially to decide on the need, task, or project to be pursued. Then, as a group, the work was parceled out or distributed among team members, usually based on each individual team member’s expertise or interest. Team members then went off to work on their “pieces of the pie,” sometimes by themselves, sometimes with one or two other members of the team.” Mapping (2004)
In a virtual setting a centralized leader serves the team well, such as the one used in the Wheel design. The wheel is a classic type of communication network (Katz and Kahn, 1978), in which there is one key person who communicates to all team members. Members on two different status levels make up the network—a high-status member (the leader or supervisor) and lower-level members or assistants. Mapping (2004)
Simplex
Simplex is a creativity tool developed by Min Basadur. Simplex (2007) this system is used by various teams across the spectrum collocated and
Virtual teams are increasingly global, creating challenges for communication and coordination due to greater distances, multiple time zones, and cultural differences. There options when it comes to work design and leadership of virtual teams as noted below.
Designs
Wheel design
Modular design
Iterative approach
Modular design
As stated in Mapping out the creative process and work design approach the most common work design approaches used during the creative process of these virtual teams was the modular approach. “In this approach, team members met initially to decide on the need, task, or project to be pursued. Then, as a group, the work was parceled out or distributed among team members, usually based on each individual team member’s expertise or interest. Team members then went off to work on their “pieces of the pie,” sometimes by themselves, sometimes with one or two other members of the team.” Mapping (2004)
In a virtual setting a centralized leader serves the team well, such as the one used in the Wheel design. The wheel is a classic type of communication network (Katz and Kahn, 1978), in which there is one key person who communicates to all team members. Members on two different status levels make up the network—a high-status member (the leader or supervisor) and lower-level members or assistants. Mapping (2004)
Simplex
Simplex is a creativity tool developed by Min Basadur. Simplex (2007) this system is used by various teams across the spectrum collocated and
References: Malhotra, A., Majchrzak, A., and Rosen, B. (2007) Leading virtual teams. Academy of Management Perspectives, 21(1), 60-70. Mapping out the creative process and work design approach. Retrieved from http://media.wiley.com/product_data/excerpt/46/07879711/0787971146.pdf Simplex. A powerful integrating problem-solving process. (2007) Retrieved from http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newCT_10.htm