Ecom201, 20/21 Sem 2: Report on Virtual Team Management Challenges

This report delves into the complexities of virtual team management, addressing the challenges of communication, trust, and productivity within these increasingly common organizational structures. It defines each negative factor, explaining why they pose significant issues for team performance. Communication challenges arise from the lack of face-to-face interaction, hindering relationship-building and trust. Trust, often difficult to establish remotely, requires proactive management to ensure team cohesion and effectiveness. Productivity suffers when communication and trust are compromised, leading to misunderstandings and conflict. The report proposes practical solutions for each issue, such as fostering open communication, building trust through consistent behavior, and encouraging active participation to enhance productivity and collaboration. The analysis is supported by academic references, providing a comprehensive overview of the topic. The report is part of a student's assignment submitted to Desklib, a website offering past papers and assignments.

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Introduction to E-Management
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Virtual Teams
In the world full of technology, there is creation of small temporary groups named as
virtual teams differentiated organizationally, geographically and workers time dispersed
knowledge that coordinates their work through communication technologies and electronic
information for the accomplishment of tasks in the company (Ferrazzi, 2014). In simple
words, virtual team is rise of individuals with different physical locations.
Issues
There are issues faced in the process of virtual team creation that can have a negative
impact at large on its working and within. The factors require concern at the time of creating
virtual teams is trust, communication and productivity (Ebrahim, Ahmed, & Taha, 2011).
Communication
In communication, the issue faced while creating a virtual team is that there will be no
way to interact with the co-worker face-to-face where it is not easy to rely totally on social
interactions for building relationships and rapport (Serrat, 2017). Individuals from different
cultures and countries in virtual team makes it difficult on telephone or email to interact as
there are new clues through facial expressions or body language where people can easily
understand each other along with building trust.
It is essential to make communication effective by being open and honest for avoiding
misunderstandings along with effectiveness increment. Also, it is crucial to build a reputation
for sharing information along with strengthening relationships to build trust. This will
generate breakthroughs or opportunities that can be unexpected by thinking creatively.
Trust
The issue faced in communication of social interactions rather than face-to-face
interactions makes it difficult to establish trust between the individuals. This lack of trust
needs to be managed appropriately for achieving what everything through virtual team
(McConnell, 2010).
It is essential to trust each other when communicating by listening actively and giving
attention for better understanding in terms of courtesy and respect. Further, development of
skills is crucial to resolve and manage conflicts by maintaining trust along with the team

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fairly and objectively. It is possible by collaborative work and social interaction through
responsiveness, reliability, and consistency can be named as task or ability based trust. This
demonstrates work ethic and integrity among team members with agreeing on deadline and
fulfilling the promise as made along with responding promptly for showing their importance.
Productivity
These both issues of communication and trust affects the productivity of the virtual
team to achieve something as it gets difficult to give opinion and this makes it harder to
resolve the team conflict. If there will be no understanding between the individuals in a
virtual team along with loads of tension than this will lead to not enough productivity as
expected.
In virtual team, it is important to encourage one another where individuals can give
their opinions and ask for clarity along with having understanding about cultural diversity to
enhance productivity. Moreover, there should be no unfairness and requires to listen
everybody in a team for solving such issues. In a team, being it common or virtual, it requires
extra effort to work with relationships establishment for maintain and building trusts among
each other (Rusak, 2018). Thus, make an effort by socializing and engaging among everyone
outside of work showing devotion and connections for better decision-making process and
maintaining reputation.

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References
Ebrahim, N., Ahmed, S., & Taha, Z. (2011). Virtual Teams and Management Challenges.
Academic Leadership Journal, 9(3), 1-7.
Ferrazzi, K. (2014, December). Getting Virtual Teams Right. Retrieved from Harvard
Business Review: https://hbr.org/2014/12/getting-virtual-teams-right
McConnell, E. (2010, April 29). Virtual Teams – Definition, Management, Benefits, and
Improvement. Retrieved from My Management Guide:
https://mymanagementguide.com/managing-virtual-teams-understanding-definition-
management-and-benefits/
Rusak, S. (2018, January 23). How to Overcome Challenges of Virtual Team Management.
Retrieved from CPL: https://cpl.com/cpl-insights/insight-manage/how-to-overcome-
challenges-of-virtual-team-management/
Serrat, O. (2017, May 23). Managing Virtual Teams. Retrieved from Knowledge Solutions:
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-981-10-0983-9_68