Management Communication: Operating Virtual Teams

This report discusses the opportunities and limitations of managing a virtual team consisting of members from different regions across the world. It identifies the scopes of mitigating issues related to managerial aspects of operating a team virtually. The report also provides ways to mitigate the issues and accomplish organizational objectives.

Running head: MANAGEMENT COMMUNICATION: OPERATING VIRTUAL TEAMS
Management Communication: Operating Virtual Teams
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1MANAGEMENT COMMUNICATION: OPERATING VIRTUAL TEAMS
To The Marketing Director
From
Date
Subject Management Communication
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

2MANAGEMENT COMMUNICATION: OPERATING VIRTUAL TEAMS
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

3MANAGEMENT COMMUNICATION: OPERATING VIRTUAL TEAMS
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.

4MANAGEMENT COMMUNICATION: OPERATING VIRTUAL TEAMS
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.