ABSTRACT
This study will investigate how team conditions of goals, empowerment, and communication, as perceived by team members, affect team performance in Virtual Teams. It posits that when there is goal alignment versus divergence, harmonious communication versus team friction, and dispersed empowerment versus concentrated power, then the performance of virtual teams displays more self-organizing intelligence. Data on team conditions will be collected through the Internet using standardized questionnaires. There will be 600 subjects from 150 teams, and each subject will need only five minutes to respond to the Likert-type questions. Team performance on process improvement and customer satisfaction will be evaluated by data from the managerial systems as the study’s findings can be useful to organizations working virtually to identify potential strategies for enhancing process improvement and customer service outcomes from the working of virtual teams.
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION Purpose of The Study
Ideally, the existence of virtual teams are now evolving so great, taking the world into the next level of globalization as there is imposing of technology transformation as inspired to drive effectiveness and ideal performance of such teams, virtual teams to be specific. Presently, people and the society are more inclined as well as influenced to such digital technology, it’s rapidly changing stance and dominance as the world embraces the shifting of basic idealism from customary down to modern idealism, resulting into what is called the ‘’internet age’’, society ruled by modern posits of technology leading to the birth of virtual teams such as those at IBM.
The study proposes to measure two dimensions of VT as the response variables: process improvement and customer satisfaction. The proposed study will employ standardized questionnaires to measure these three explanatory variables — goals, empowerment and communication, and their relationship to measures of the performance of VT. The proposed research can make an original contribution to understanding the dynamics of successful team performance in the new reality of virtual teamwork. It posits that when there is goal alignment versus divergence, harmonious communication versus team friction, and dispersed empowerment versus concentrated power, then the performance of virtual teams displays more self-organizing intelligence. The findings of this research have the potential to directly benefit virtual teamwork productivity, develop training programs in human resources, and add value to collaboration software tools.
Problem Statement
Virtual Teams (VT) are defined as groups of employees with unique skills, situated in distant locations, whose members must collaborate using technology across space and time to accomplish important organizational tasks. According to (Lipnack & Stamps, 1999) advances in information technology and the expansion and internationalization of organizations have created new challenges in building and managing virtual teamwork. Successful VT depend more on people than they do on technology. Technology will not work unless the people issues are addressed first. Working in a virtual environment requires a new kind of organization, a new kind of management, and a new kind of organizational paradigm.
Organizational behavior in Virtual Teams is different phenomenon than industrial workplace that had been studied in the twentieth century. In today’s environment of distributed teams, new research is needed to investigate what factors determine how effectively these teams work together. The challenge of virtual teamwork these days is not simply to execute existing processes efficiently. It’s to implement new processes as quickly as possible, empowering the members by actively managing the groups’ learning efforts to become adept at creating learning environments (Edmondson et al., 2001).
Among the main challenges of VT is the maintenance of high work motivation due to reduced face-to-face interaction (Hertel et al., 2004). Their lack of face-to-face cues creates challenges in developing the collaboration know-how; challenges that can be overcome by communicating not just content, but also context. Individual members of structurally diverse distributed teams need to develop their collaboration know-how to work effectively with others on their team (Majchrzak et al., 2005). This concept of psychological safe communication climate focuses more specifically on communications behavior and virtual team members’ interactions, as constituted by messages and messages related events. The problem can be that, “new research is needed to investigate what factors determine how effectively these teams work together and the study aims to contribute the new research to understand Virtual teams and improve team performance.
There should be coordination of such leading IT company particularly, IBM Company in order to realize such research relevance towards effectiveness of virtual teams, IBM’s role for this research is essential for the acquisition of primary data and information and will take a big factor to put into application the essence of this research. Data on team conditions will be collected through the Internet using standardized questionnaires. There will be 600 subjects from 150 teams, and each subject will need only five minutes to respond to the Likert-type questions. Team performance on process improvement and customer satisfaction will be evaluated by data from the managerial systems, or by member’s self-evaluation.
Definition of Terms
Virtual Teams are defined as groups of employees with unique skills, situated in distant locations, whose members do collaborate using technology across space and time to accomplish important organizational tasks. Like any team, a virtual team works on interdependent tasks guided by a common purpose. But unlike traditional, collocated teams, a virtual team works across space, time, and organizational and geographic boundaries (Lipnack & Stamps, 2000). Traditionally, teams have operated in personal, face-to-face settings, but with the proliferation of advanced communications and information technologies (IT), VT have become commonplace. Virtual teamwork groups, in which members collaborate from distant locations, predominantly based on electronic communication media. VT are increasingly introduced in organizations due to new opportunities of electronic communication media and recent trends of globalization and teamwork (Leinonen et al., 2005). Principles of complex adaptive systems help us to understand how virtual teams can organize themselves. Searching for a dynamic self-organized system that integrates goal setting, empowerment and communication can identify strategies for enhancing process improvement and customer satisfaction within virtual team work environments. For this particular study, Team effectiveness is defined in terms of two outcomes: customer satisfaction and process improvement. The leading IT Company, the IBM in which this research is planned to utilize has existing internal systems for measurement of these performance outcomes. Thus, Kirkman et al (2004) defines team effectiveness in terms of the teams’ ability to deliver timely, high-quality products and services, while satisfying internal and external customers. Since VT increasingly span departmental boundaries or organizations, satisfying key internal and external customers is paramount to virtual team success (Lipnack & Stamps, 2000).
Limitations
Limitations can be outlined in terms of 4 kinds of validity: external, internal, construct, statistical conclusion. In the proposal stage you can’t discuss limitations of your statistical conclusions, but you can address the others. Scope means where you draw boundaries of what is and is not in your study. For example, you r measures of team effectiveness do include customer satisfaction but do not include individual satisfaction (unless you decide now to add a measure of job satisfaction). Another scope boundary is with reference to sample, which relates to external validity limitation.
This study suggests that effective self-organization in VT is achieved through a balance between two principles of management systems: top down and bottom up to distribute knowledge and to produce new products from developing technology. The search for this balance point in organizations emerges from three factors: (1) goals (2) empowerment, and (3) communication. These factors support self-purification and self-regulation within VT system: This process of striving for balance within self-organizing management system creates innovation and effective performance within virtual teams.
Significance
Speaking of significance, it can be posited with ample access to such standards and norms of research upon creating this study as there may serve as good linkage in bridging such gaps in research towards the academe and such development of the theory specifically pointing to team effectiveness and performance of virtual teams along with such theory and concept integration. Thus, the research calls for precise sequence of factual knowledge supporting VT. Henceforth, the recognition of resources to research and its evidences will amiably be a part of the whole research continuum respectively.
Overview
Chapter one will introduce the overall context of the study as a form of detailed study overview along with some relevant research information on the topic in focus with certain research questions and objectives and other points. Chapter two will cover wide range of related studies in reviewing posits of literature pointing and reflecting effectiveness and performance of VT upon gathering of relevant data upon realizing the whole study. Chapter three will present such methodologies used in the research along with desirable details for research application in evidence basis through such primary as well as secondary data. Chapter four will present, explain in brief and analyze study findings based on such gathered data and information from appropriate research sources and materials. The chapter will include interpretation of qualitative and quantitative data if needed as acquired. Finally, Chapter five will provide reflective and ideal conclusions of the study as well as useful recommendations as precise as possible.
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