Advantages and Disadvantages of Virtual Teams in Organizational Behavior

This document discusses the advantages and disadvantages of virtual teams in organizational behavior. It explores the cost savings, productivity benefits, and global talent leverage associated with virtual teams. It also highlights the potential drawbacks such as technology costs, conflicts, and social isolation. The document concludes with a discussion on the behaviors that positively and negatively impact overall team effectiveness.

Running head: ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR
ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR
Name of the Student
Name of the Organization
Author Note

1ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR
Answer to Question 1
Advantages of Virtual Teams
 Savings of cost: The cost savings is considered to be as the biggest advantage of virtual team
which is enjoyed by any organization. The organization may do away with a large amount of
expenses on the estate and spaces of office which are real, uses bills like gas, water or
electricity and travel of the executives. A number of organizations outsource their part of
operations to all the regions which are effective of cost. Therefore, the cost of production
also reduces with the reduction of the cost of raw material, cost of operation and lesser wages
of the members in all the locations.
 Increment in the productivity: Virtual team members have high focus on the task and they do
not deal with bureaucracy unnecessarily, thereby increasing the productivity which
ultimately shows higher profits (Schmidt 2014). A wide range of skills is seen to be applied
for all kinds of practical activities as well as sharing ideas can be able to play an important in
acquiring a great depth in the understanding of a particular area of subject.
 New Opportunities: Virtual teams are responsible for creating new opportunities for the
people who are a little less mobile and hesitate a lot in relocating due to any personal issue
(Maynard and Gilson 2014).
 Development of skills: Being a part of the virtual team, it will help a lot in developing skills
which are mostly interpersonal like speaking or listening. It also helps in the development of
some other skills like leadership as well as providing motivation to others. Some of the skills
are very much useful throughout the whole career of academics and each and every skill is
valued by all the employers.

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 Knowing much more about yourself: Collaboration with others will help in identifying all the
individual strengths as well as weaknesses. A self-awareness which is much more enhanced
will help in approaching to learning to a great extent.
 Reduction in the time to market: As the members mostly span the zones of time period, there
can a separate team who will be working on a similar project throughout the whole day.
Therefore, when one of the members will sleep, there will remain some other member who
will start working where the former will leave (Alsharo, Gregg and Ramirez 2017). This will
reduce the development time of the products as well as improve the response time for
demanding markets which are both global as well as local.
 Global talent’s leverage: All the virtual teams allow the organizations for looking into the
talent which are beyond the country’s origin. This has brought together all the experts as well
as specialists throughout the globe for working together on the project. Increased sharing of
knowledge and improved innovation is seen as the human capital of organization mostly
share the understanding of markets which are both global as well as local.
Disadvantages of Virtual Teams
 Technology cost: The successful working of a virtual team is supported by the proper
utilization of several tools like emails or video conferencing. The cost which is associated
with both the installation and the maintenance of the tools is high.
 Rise of conflicts: There is a rise of a number of conflicts due to the differences in culture
between the virtual team members.
 Social isolation: Several members of the virtual teams are affected greatly by the lack of
interactions physically (Hoch and Kozlowski 2014). Most of the communications in the
environment which is virtual is oriented of task.

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Factors required by the virtual teams to be successful mostly include honesty, faith, trust,
proper collaboration, motivation among the team members and sharing of information among
them.
Answer to Question 2
The kinds of behaviors that individual team members can engage in that positively impact
overall team effectiveness are:
 Being aware about what is around us is very much important. Understanding the bigger
picture is much more significant as it leads to the development of a better making of decision
(Pangil and Moi Chan 2014). It is very much important to understand all the overall business
interests as well as aims.
 The virtual team must believe that each and every team member meet all the commitments
(Ziek and Smulowitz 2014). The high performance of the team is believed as meeting
commitments as well as deadlines together. Embracing diversity and trusting one another
must be believed.
 Each and every team member must take challenges and work collaboratively for achieving
the goal.
 Team members must have a clear focus and common goal. The team must spend a lot of time
in getting to know each other properly.
 Members of a virtual team are needed to be open as well as honest with each other.
 All of them must be motivated and should have a positive approach to the team work.
 They should also be enthusiastic and at the same time must take responsibility for their
actions.

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Answer to Question 3
The kinds of behaviors that individual team members can engage in that negatively impact
overall team effectiveness:
 Listening to music during working hours may harm the ability of the team for delivering
proper output which may lead to a delay in reaching the ultimate goal.
 If a team member isolates himself or herself from those around other members may also
disturb the flow of the work.
 Another behavior effects a lot if a member lacks enthusiasm.
Such bad behaviors which are totally inappropriate may have an impact which will be tangible
on the profitability of the team work (Saafein and Shaykhian 2014). All the objectives which are
missed and productivity which is declined will lead in diminishing the profitability. It also harms
the ability of the team in delivering the main objective, damages the team’s cohesion and also
possess a huge impact which is not necessary on one or more members in the team.
Answer to Question 4
Plans for participation will likely impact the project team to a great extent. The several
plan of participation with the use of several theories of the techniques of guidance will lead to
the gain of project success (Guntrip 2018). These lessons aims in treasuring trove the leadership
association as well as the success of the project and of the teamwork. With the help of several
plans of participation and effective team work, there is an increment in both productivity as well
as performance, development of the skills and in knowing more about each other.

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References
Alsharo, M., Gregg, D. and Ramirez, R., 2017. Virtual team effectiveness: The role of
knowledge sharing and trust. Information & Management, 54(4), pp.479-490.
Guntrip, H., 2018. Psychoanalytic theory, therapy and the self. Routledge.
Hoch, J.E. and Kozlowski, S.W., 2014. Leading virtual teams: Hierarchical leadership, structural
supports, and shared team leadership. Journal of applied psychology, 99(3), p.390.
Maynard, M.T. and Gilson, L.L., 2014. The role of shared mental model development in
understanding virtual team effectiveness. Group & Organization Management, 39(1),
pp.3-32.
Pangil, F. and Moi Chan, J., 2014. The mediating effect of knowledge sharing on the relationship
between trust and virtual team effectiveness. Journal of Knowledge Management, 18(1),
pp.92-106.
Saafein, O. and Shaykhian, G.A., 2014. Factors affecting virtual team performance in
telecommunication support environment. Telematics and Informatics, 31(3), pp.459-462.
Schmidt, G.B., 2014. Virtual leadership: An important leadership context. Industrial and
Organizational Psychology, 7(2), pp.182-187.
Ziek, P. and Smulowitz, S., 2014. The impact of emergent virtual leadership competencies on
team effectiveness. Leadership & Organization Development Journal, 35(2), pp.106-120.

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