Mng81001 Management Communication For Operating Assessment Answers

list several different interpretations. What are the real-life implications of each one? Which ones are likely to be most useful or beneficial? Which ones have some problems?   

Answer:

Introduction

The purpose of this report is to find out opportunities and limitations of managing a virtual team consists of members from different regions across the world (Lilian 2014). As per the requirement of the marketing director, this report will be framed based on primary issues, which are related to managerial aspects of operating a team virtually and it will further identify the scopes of mitigating those issues. There is a requirement of new marketing team raised by Sydney HQ, consists of members from Mumbai, Beijing, Sydney and New York. Despite the different time zone, cultural gaps and communicational misinterpretation, this report will provide ways, which are to be followed in order to mitigate and accomplish the organizational objectives.

Discussion of the issues related to virtual teams

Virtual workforce refers to a group of culturally diverse people working on the same objective across time and boundaries. Along with occasional face-to-face meetings, most of the operations are performed via electronic aid and project management tools. Most of the virtual teams of the multi-national companies address the lack of communication as the central problem of operating business via electronic space.  As the entire business environment is changing its nature rapidly, the companies need to transform their mode of operation according to that, in order to gain a sustainable competitive advantage in the market. The Marketing Director of Sydney HQ, although, aware of the limitations yet in the particular case she has asked to frame the issues first. Considering the case, general issues, which can be raised, are as follows.

Communication gap

It is easy to instruct and communicate with the members when leaders are sitting next to them. On the other hand, there is lack of face-to-face interactions among the virtual team members, which is the major reason behind misinterpretations of the instruction or clarification.  In this course, according to Duran and Popescu (2014), companies confront with the issues of information loss. It works as a huge hindrance before the scopes of innovation and managerial decision making. Due to lack of social bonding, team members feel isolated and less engaged with their colleague, which eventually reflects their performance in a negative way. Lack of effective communication is the reason of mistrust among the employees as well.

Cultural difference

While team members from different national backgrounds, work for the same objective a culturally diverse workforce is formed. To some extent, this practice is for the good of the company as people from diverse culture come with different sets of knowledge and perspective, however, this is the central area where possibility of conflict and misunderstanding lies (Pinjani and Palvia 2013). One side of the team, if unaware of the aspects of cultural differences like traditions, habits and language miscommunication is the only thing that will occur and will disturb the entire balance of the procedure.

Managing different time zone

Members from virtual teams belong to different time zones; therefore, they face difficulties when emergency occurs in some other country. They have to stay connected via conference calls no matter what the time is, it can be 3.30 am or it can be a holiday for any cultural reason (Gurung and Prater 2017). Project management tool helps to execute the task easily yet members feel exhausted when work schedule over-lapped due to some urgent reason and they have to work in front of electronic devices for long hours.

Misinterpretation of instruction

As the issue of communication gap has been on a huge scale, members run out of instruction, lack of clarification and a feeling of disengagement develop at times. As there is physical distance as well as social interaction is absent, despite having varied knowledge employees cannot exploit the opportunities due to the weak interpersonal skills (Gilson et al. 2015).

High cost of infrastructure

Another challenge is managing the cost of developing technological infrastructure according to the requirement of the project. Organisations sometimes might face difficulty to deliver desired outcome due to this reason. Moreover, if the members are not skilled and knowledgeable enough about latest IT technologies then the cost of training them will be included to the project budget as well.

Conclusion

After acknowledging all the possible limitations it can be concluded that, the growth of the multi-national companies lies in the success of global project. In order to make the projects successful the management has to rely on efficient virtual teams. Therefore, general issues should be resolved, whichever they are going to face while operating a virtual team of marketing. Effective communication is one of the solutions and other key strategies will be mentioned in the form of power point presentation. 

References

Duran, V. and Popescu, A.D., 2014. The challenge of multicultural communication in virtual teams. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 109, pp.365-369.

Gilson, L.L., Maynard, M.T., Jones Young, N.C., Vartiainen, M. and Hakonen, M., 2015. Virtual teams research: 10 years, 10 themes, and 10 opportunities. Journal of Management, 41(5), pp.1313-1337.

Gurung, A. and Prater, E., 2017. A research framework for the impact of cultural differences on IT outsourcing. In Global Sourcing of Services: Strategies, Issues and Challenges (pp. 49-82).

Lilian, S.C., 2014. Virtual teams: Opportunities and challenges for e-leaders. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 110, pp.1251-1261.

Pinjani, P. and Palvia, P., 2013. Trust and knowledge sharing in diverse global virtual teams. Information & Management, 50(4), pp.144-153.