1.2 Virtual teamwork, an introduction

Today working in a virtual environment is ubiquitous, and for this reason many researchers have proposed moving away from the dichotomy of virtual as opposed to face-to-face teamwork, preferring to consider the level of virtuality involved, as well as the specific nature of teams and the challenges to be overcome. With this in mind, the aim of this session is to analyse and classify the central characteristics of virtual teams as well as outline the associated challenges and the impact they have on teamwork.

Before we get started, let's listen to a few voices explaining what has changed for them in their work environments and why it is beneficial and necessary to work in virtual teams.

At first glance, working in teams appears to be quite a straightforward activity: A group of people get together and are responsible for tackling a specific task. This could be creating a product, accruing knowledge or providing a support function. When the team does this predominantly by using the internet as a support system, they are a virtual team. However, on closer inspection it is a little more complex.

This complexity relates to the team itself, which can take various forms. So, for example, what ties the team together? Also, with regard to virtuality, how virtual does a virtual team need to be in order to be considered virtual? Answering these questions and outlining the associated challenges is the objective of this session.

Every time you open a business magazine, you are likely to read about a new tool for video conferencing or managing virtual teams. Although the worldwide corona pandemic accelerated the trend towards virtual teamwork, it had already been gaining momentum long before that. According to a survey carried out among more than a 1000 executives in 80 countries in 2016, 85% were working in at least one virtual team (Trends in Global Virtual Teams (PDF document))

But what exactly is a virtual team? Let us start by exploring some of the general characteristics of a work team. According to Köppel (2007, p.10), a work team is:

A collective of individuals can be as small as two persons (which is a very special type of team), and as large as 25 or more. What is important in this context is that the size of the group will have an influence on the potential and possibility for interaction. The larger the group, the more likely it is that sub-groups will emerge within the team. Also, specific group dynamics will be relevant depending on the number of members. So a five-member team, for example, will experience quite different communicative dynamics than a three-member team.

There are in fact many reasons for forming a team and teams may be short lived or relatively permanent. Whereas work teams tend to endure over a longer period of time, project or ad hoc teams are created for a specific purpose and are disbanded when the work has been completed. Reasons for establishing a team may include for example solving a problem collaboratively, generating innovative new ways of working, implementing services and managing organisational entities.

Having a common purpose supports the 'we-feeling' and each member's identification with the team as a social entity. This mini social system thus supports the development of a feeling of cohesion, while creating a boundary to the outside world. The team is acknowledged as such by outsiders, while the permeability of the boundaries depends on various factors. 

The extent to which members of a team feel interdependent and influence each other depends on factors such as the task to be accomplished, the size and location of the team as well as the personalities involved.

Work teams are embedded in one or more social systems. This means that they are usually part of a larger system such as an organisational unit and/or company. However, members of different organisational units can form a team which is then embedded in further systems. A work team in a university context is embedded in a course structure and this course is embedded in the university structure, for example. Considering that teams are part of larger social systems helps us understand the possible constraints as well as opportunities the team might face, such as the availability of resources.

Recent advances in information and communication technologies including their affordability have changed the way teams work, while supercharging the development of virtual teams. Generally speaking, these can be understood as teams in which members are geographically dispersed and interact using technology-mediated communication in order to achieve their goals. Because virtual working ranges from writing emails with colleagues next door to working from home or communicating across national borders, the line between a face-to-face-team and a virtual team is blurred. Virtuality should hence rather be seen as a continuum, whereby a higher degree of geographic dispersion and dependency on technology-mediated communication correlates with a higher degree of virtuality. In this context it is therefore important to unpack the characteristics of ‘virtuality’ in more detail in order to understand the challenges linked to virtual teamwork.