MGT200 Organizational Behavior - Information and Communication Technol
1 Pages / 172 Words
The group assignment is to summarise and evaluate an OB debate. The group assignment will be presented during tutorials.
Your tutor will assign each group a debate topic. Work as a group to research the topic and the debate, drawing from both academic and practitioner perspectives.
The poster and portfolio require that your group has read academic research other than what is provided in the textbook and in class. The academic research should be high quality and must be referenced appropriately.
You should also find high quality sources that provide information primarily for management practitioners. Tips for finding will be posted on Moodle and further assistance is available from the library. Note that Wikipedia and similar sources are not acceptable for this assignment.
Work as a group to prepare a group poster and group portfolio summarising the debate and your group’s research. There will be some time allocated during tutorials to work on the group assignment. The group should maintain copies of specific meeting materials to include in the group portfolio .
Answer
Are virtual teams more trouble than they’re worth
In contemporary business environment, a powerful structure named virtual teams have emerged that are characterised by different elements of Information and Communication Technology (ICT). Virtual teams are capable of making radical changes in organisational structure as well as disposition of multicultural workforce ( Morley, et al., 2015). In essence, organisations emphasise that every element is connected with each other and its worthwhile to formulate business processes in regards to flows and feedback barriers. For the same, systems approach to organisational behaviour prove beneficial in virtual teams as it has the capability to make teams more united, composed of interrelated elements and purposeful. This approach not only gives virtual team members way of looking business as a whole, but also looking teams as a single entity (Kondalkar, 2007). Virtual teams have capacity to deliver broader strategic and operational projects that involves diversified concurrent and consecutive activities among team members spread in different geographical localities. For example, Mandy at Los Angeles can form a virtual team with Sam at Mexico and Sara at Sydney, thereby working all together for one common objective where communication is made totally through digital technology. Virtual team formation proves most useful for those organisations where pooling of talented employees or trading partners becomes vital for remaining ahead in this competitive global environment. When team members start operating towards one common goal, they start perceiving each other’s behaviour that is very significant for 21st century workforce (Törmänen, 2017). Therefore, the above statement is proved negative and according to me, virtual teams are worth facing troubles for benefiting contemporary organisational behaviour.
According to Dailey (2012), organisational behaviour can be related to the concept of knowledge related to how individuals perform in organisation to serve external environment through effective operative system. To manage individuals, leaders or mangers are appointed who transfer authority to team member, however, the process becomes crucial while working with virtual teams. Virtual teams are quite often described as teams that have high degree of autonomy where organisational leadership is focused more on integrated people development instead of controlling directly ( Leede, et al., 2008). Ebrahim, et al. further supports the above statement and states that shift in organisational decision making through virtual teams can hamper overall behaviour of other employees also who restrains themselves in taking instructions from their superior. Coordination and trust are strongly required by virtual teams especially the ones who are associated with innovation behaviour (Gazor, 2012). For example, one team of a company is situated in Philadelphia whereas the other members are situated in other parts of the world. Naturally, team members of Philadelphia will develop stronger relationship and authority as compared to the others who are scattered around different parts of the globe as they work outside the main hub. Furthermore, a strong emphasis in employees’ behaviour by coordinating them can generally imply bringing strong intolerance that results in making errors. Therefore, it is often seen that virtual teams’ comprising of people belonging to different background or cognitive experience becomes the source of miscommunication and conflict in organisation ( Carpenter, et al., 2012). Under this context, I would say that instead of getting troubled for virtual teams, organisations must focus more on physical appearance since virtual teams are more trouble than they are worth for it.
References
Carpenter, M., Bauer, T. & Erdogan, B., 2012. Management Principles. s.l.:Creative Commons.
Dailey, R., 2012. Organisational Behaviour. s.l.:Edinburgh Business School .
Ebrahim, N. A., Ahmed, S. & Taha, Z., n.d. Virtual Teams and Management Challenges. [Online]
Available at: https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/11436798.pdf
[Accessed 20 09 2018].
Gazor, H., 2012. A Literature Review on Challenges of Virtual Team's Leadership. Journal of Sociological Research, 03(02), pp. 134-145.
Leede, J. D., Kraan , K. . O., Hengst , M. D. & Hooff, M. . L., 2008. Conditions for innovation behaviour of virtual team members: a ‘high-road’ for internationally dispersed virtual teams. The Journal of E-working , Volume 02, pp. 22-46.
Morley, S., Cormican, . K. & Folan, . P., 2015. An Analysis of Virtual Team Characteristics: A Model for Virtual Project Managers. Journal of Technology Management & Innovation, 10(01), pp. 188-203.
Kondalkar, V., 2007. Organizational Behaviour. s.l.:New Age International.
Törmänen, M., 2017. Virtual Teams: Considerations, Advantages and Disadvantages. [Online]
Available at: https://www.doria.fi/bitstream/handle/10024/135203/Virtual%20Teams%20Considerations%2C%20Advantages%20and%20Disadvantages.pdf?sequence=2
[Accessed 20 09 2018].
