MNG81001 Session 3: Virtual Team Memo - Communication Strategies

This memo explores the concept of virtual teams, defining them as groups distributed across different geographical locations, such as the example given of a marketing department with members in Sydney, New York, Beijing, and Mumbai. The memo highlights the advantages of virtual teams, including the ability to scale teams and reduce travel costs, and the ability to have real-time conversations. It also addresses the disadvantages, such as coordination difficulties, poor employee relationships, and challenges arising from time differences, language barriers, and cultural diversity. The memo emphasizes the need for organizations to design strategies to maximize the benefits of virtual teams by addressing these challenges, referencing key research in the field. The memo concludes by presenting a list of references for further reading.

Management
Communicati
on

Virtual Team
Virtual team supports the communication
between groups from different geographical
locations (Hoch and Kozlowski, 2014). From this
understanding a new virtual marketing
department can be introduced in Sydney
(Purvanova, 2017). The team members are
distributed at different geographical areas like
New York, Beijing, Mumbai and Sydney. This
memo will depict the use of virtual team in an
organisation so that communication between the
members

Advantages and
Disadvantages
 Advantages- It is found that hiring flexible remote teams’
support in scaling up or scaling down the team so that
business runs at a fixed location (Hoch and Kozlowski,
2014). It reduces the travelling cost and accommodation
cost for conducting physical meetings. It allows having a
real time conversation at anytime from anywhere.
 Disadvantages- There are various challenges that are
associated with virtual team. It becomes difficult in
coordinating the time so that meetings could be conducted.
The other issue that is faced while working with virtual
teams is poor employee to employee relation as there is
lack of face to face interaction. This builds lower level of
trust that act as a hindrance in the productivity of team.

Continue
 The major issues that may arise due to
virtual team are time related issue,
language difference, diverse cultural
background and absence of interpersonal
relationship between the team members
(Ferrazzi, 2014). Thus, strategies need to
be designed by the organisation to
resolve the concerns and maximize the
benefit from the planned endeavour.

References
 Purvanova, R.K., 2017. The Role of Time in Virtual
Teams: Development and a Meta-Analytic Test of a
Temporal Model. In Academy of Management
Proceedings Vol. 2017, No. 1, pp. 17757. Briarcliff
Manor, NY 10510: Academy of Management.
 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), pp. 390.
 Ferrazzi, K. 2014 Getting Virtual Teams Right. [online]
Available from: https://hbr.org/2014/12/getting-virtual-
teams-right [Accessed on 10/08/18].