MMM 211 - Team Dynamics: Dispersion, Impacts & Overcoming Challenges

This essay provides a comprehensive analysis of team dynamics, particularly focusing on the concept of dispersion within teams. It begins by defining dispersion and outlining its various forms, including geographical, temporal, and cultural dispersion. The essay then delves into the positive and negative impacts of dispersion on team performance, highlighting benefits such as access to diverse talent pools, expanded business hours, and reduced office costs, while also addressing challenges like communication difficulties, coordination issues, and potential conflicts arising from physical distance and cultural differences. Furthermore, the essay discusses potential approaches to mitigate the negative impacts of dispersion, such as emphasizing teamwork skills, promoting self-leadership, fostering a global culture, and utilizing face-to-face meetings when possible. It evaluates the success of these approaches based on examples of their past application, emphasizing the importance of adapting strategies to suit the specific context and needs of the virtual team. The essay concludes by underscoring the necessity for managers to carefully balance the advantages and disadvantages of dispersion to maximize team performance and achieve organizational goals.

Running head: TEAM DYNAMIC
Team Dynamic
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author Note:

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Introduction:
The essay aims at providing an insight into team dynamic by outlining how dispersion
applies to the team. The essay also puts forward a discussion on the positive and the negative
impacts of dispersion. In addition, there is also discussion about potential approaches that helps
in overcoming the negative impact of dispersion in respect to the team along with an evaluation
of their success within teams depending on their past application. Teams are simply the building
blocks of the organization and provide companies with means that combines talents, perspectives
and skills of the individual group in achieving the corporate goals. Previously, the managers
collocated team members due to the higher levels of interdependencies inherent within the group
work. In recent times, increasing number of companies have started to organize their project over
the distance, manage teams consisting of people in dispersed location, different cultural
background, language and the varied values systems. In the last 10 years, investigations have put
forward the difference between the performance of the collocated and the dispersed teams with
the assumption that the members of dispersed team never met face to face in person. Dispersion
is matter of kind and not degree and most of the teams remains dispersed at certain level. They
either remain temporally separated, spatially separated, culturally diverse and configurationally
uneven. In this essay, the discussion revolves around geographical distributed team also referred
as the virtual team where the members belong to the different countries. It has been found that
the virtual teams seem to put forward opportunities despite the immense managerial challenges.
Besides, the appropriate processes allow the dispersed team in significantly outperforming their
counterparts.

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Discussion:
How Dispersion Applies to the Team and Its Positive and Negative Impacts
The level of dispersion of the team is neither fixed nor predetermined; it represents an
organizational design parameter that allows the organization in adjusting and setting themselves
(Siebdrat, Hoegl and Ernst 2009). While making decisions, the managers should therefore
consider the various advantages and disadvantages of dispersion. Several studies have put
forward that the collaboration across countries is more difficult compared to the collocated
environment (Charlier et al. 2016). The issues involve the difficulties in coordination and
communication, enhanced inability in establishing common ground and reduced trust. Proximity
however tend to promote frequent communication and development of more positive and closer
interpersonal relationships. Besides, the physical presence of the coworkers at regular intervals
also helps in improving the feelings of fondness, familiarity, and informal interactions that serves
in strengthening the social ties (Hoch and Kozlowski 2014). Physical distance on the other hand
decreases affinity and closeness that results in the greater potential for the conflict (Bathelt and
Turi 2013). Besides, other issues also come up with distance that includes the negotiation of the
team members with the multiple time zones and requiring them in recognizing the workdays for
accommodating the work schedule of the others. These situations might result in confusion and
frustration especially when the coworkers remain regularly unavailable for clarification or
discussion of issues related to task.
There are also certain advantages of dispersion. First, it allows the team in accomplishing
the complex activities such as the research and the development (Lilian 2014). Clustering of
competencies by larger companies in varied areas of excellence helps in reducing the cost and

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global know how (Jang 2013). Each of the competence centres tends to enhance the depth of the
expertise to be strong while diversity of the functional background remains relatively weak due
to the aspect of specialization. Managers are also able to take certain advantage of the
organizational structure through gathering employees from the different locations in certain
networks for the creation of the team that enables in optimally integrating different expertise
pools for performing a specific task (Erez et al. 2013). Besides, the companies can remain in an
advantageous position due to the enhanced heterogeneity that remains inherent within nature of
the dispersed teams. In other words, virtual teams have a tendency of incorporating higher levels
of demographic and structural diversity compared to the collocated teams where both the types
of the diversity seem beneficial (Hoegl and Muethel 2016). Team members from multiple
locations having association with various business units and reporting to the different managers
also results in the structural diversity (Pinjani and Palvia 2013). This type of diversity is valuable
for the team as it exposed the members to the heterogeneous sources of the feedback, work
experience and the networking opportunities. Further, the team members belonging to the virtual
team also remain nationally diverse. However, such diversity might complicate the team
dynamics but it enhances the problems solving capacity of group.
Let us now look into how dispersion is advantageous to our team. We have a virtually
dispersed team with one member living in Vietnam and the others in Australia and Srilanka. One
of the benefits of having a virtually dispersed team remains in gathering a wider variety of
talent. This is because looking at the local applicants might not provide the manager with the
ideal solution (Eubanks et al. 2016). Expansion of the hiring pool to the national and the
international search brings in increasing number of candidates that exceeds or meets the job
qualification (Scott and Wildman 2015). These candidates are unable to either relocate or require

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a hefty relocation fee to appear for the interview. Hiring such candidates as the virtual team
members acts feasible in choosing from diverse array of talent and skills. This will help the
business in transforming into the best one irrespective of the talent. It will also result in a higher
degree of job satisfaction as dispersion provides the workers to have work life balance along
with flexibility (Golden 2013). It also allows the team members to work in telecommute
situation. It also results in enhanced productivity as the employees can have a preference of
working from their own location. In other words, dispersed team shows a better overall job
performance (Hill and Bartol 2016). Besides, the virtual meetings are held quickly and
efficiently thereby saving the work duties of the others. Dispersion of team will also result in
educational and cultural diversity (Nielsen and Nielsen 2013). In global market scenario, the
knowledge of the different cultures acts as the key for understanding the client base and thereby
gaining newer business. Hiring virtual workers in the different locations allows adding more
people to the team from diverse backgrounds and culture (Boud, Cohen and Sampson 2014).
Besides, there are also people from diverse educational background who focuses on specific
degree and training programs focused on the desirable skills thereby resulting in increased
innovation and creativity. Dispersion will allow the team in having expanded hours of business
(Klitmøller and Lauring 2013). This is because hiring employees from different locations not
only leads to the expansion of the service hours but also the work hours of the concerned
location. Dispersion also puts forward the benefit of accessing the newer market (Mykhaylenko
et al. 2015). This is because the dispersed team can make connections with the clients in their
specific location. This implies that it is not only a new market but also a new business that will
opens up for the team. The new wave of people interested in the new product or service will also
act as a boost for the growth of the company (Huxham and Vangen 2013). Having a dispersed

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team also reduces the office cost. Hiring employees from dispersed locations outweighs the
downsides. Video conferencing facilities allow the dispersed team to not only become social but
also remain close knit and stay in touch. Thus, virtual employees on board not only expand the
reach and enhance productivity but also reduce cost. In other words, companies however need to
balance the pros and cons of dispersion in a manner so that they are able to take advantage of the
opportunities and minimize the liabilities (Laudon and Laudon 2015).
In order to boost team’s performance it is necessary for a company to implement
appropriate mechanisms in order to boost the task related and the socio emotional process. I
believe that for the virtual teams it is necessary for the managers to pay required attention to the
task related process that would capitalize on specialized knowledge and the expertise of the
group. Various approaches help in maximizing the performance of the virtual teams by
overcoming negative impacts. This involves emphasizing the skills for teamwork, promotion of
self-leadership across the team, undertaking face-to-face meetings and fostering a global culture.
In emphasizing the teamwork skills, I believe that one of the sole reason for organizing
the dispersed team remains in drawing superior knowledge residing in the remote locations
(Chen 2014). But the manager should first consider the social skills as a major prerequisite for
better teamwork in meeting the requirements instead of simply staffing the teams. This is
because it is unrealistic to imagine that individuals from different locations will collaborate
automatically. It is found that the groups with enhanced levels of dispersion are increasingly
dependent on the level of the teamwork that ensures the ability of performing the key process
such as coordination, communication and the mutual support. However, in order to achieve
greater potential in terms of the structural and functional diversity, the members of the virtual
team should set up a base for exchange of the varying capabilities that required skills related to

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teamwork as the critical ingredient. Therefore, it is important for the managers to consider skills
related to teamwork as the necessary attribute while selecting the virtual team members. This
will help in motivating my team through fostering loyalty and friendship. The close-knit
relationships developed will motivate the employees and encourage them in to work hard, be
supportive and cooperative of each other and act as positive impact. I have found that individuals
possess diverse weakness, talents, strength and habits. Lack of teamwork environment will pose
challenge towards the achievement of the overall objectives and goals. This leads to the creation
of an environment that leads to the insufficient and unhealthy working environment.
Potential Approaches in Overcoming the Negative Impacts of Dispersion in the Team and
Evaluation on How they are Successful for the Team
To overcome the negative impacts of dispersion it is necessary for promoting self-
leadership across team (Pinjani and Palvia 2013). Beyond the social skills, it is important for the
managers of various other firms to put forward that the dispersed teams possess broader
capabilities of leadership. I have seen in other companies that when a group remains closely
collocated an individual leader can easily detect deficiencies in the teamwork and addresses them
with hands on managerial style. For instance, talking in person with the different parties within
informal setting helps in resolving interpersonal conflict. I find this approach to be hugely
nonexistent for the virtual teams. Cultural diversity and geographic dispersion makes it difficult
for the individual leader in ensuring effective functioning of the team. Advanced use of
communication technologies and latest information might not be capable of creating the magical
solution for managing the people across time zones and countries. However, I have only found
the experienced team leader to handle such challenges thereby ensuring the success of the team.
By observing the scenario, I believe that in order to succeed, the members of the virtual teams

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needed to be aware of difficulties of the dispersed collaboration and thereby search for effective
ways of overcoming the obstacles by themselves. This will help in highlighting the need of the
people in becoming more self sufficient in the ways they managed work since the team leaders
remains in a lesser position for extending help. Besides, I believe that for ensuring virtual
collaboration it is also necessary in observing the efforts of the human resource in designating
the team members as well as the team leaders so that the individuals can develop required skill
sets necessary for working in virtual setting.
I can say that development of self-leadership provided greater insight into the personal
behaviours and the way they hinder or influence the results in the team. For instance, when once
when I tried to put across a message to the non-financial managers about the consequences of
excess spending, the message fell in into on the deaf ears but the accountant with self-leadership
skills noticed the start and adopted varied approaches in influencing non-financial managers. It
will also help in the development of the personal drive and commitment to keep going in spite of
insurmountable obstacles or setbacks. Self-leadership helps in putting clear plans and help the
team achieve what they want. This approach will also help in taking decisions and getting into
the actions instead of becoming a procrastinator. Besides, it will also help the team in becoming
personally effective. I believe this will allow the virtual teams to focus some time on what they
do best.
Face-to-face meeting is an approach that contributes in overcoming the negative impacts
of dispersion. Cyclic face-to-face meetings of the dispersed team members remains effective in
maintaining and initiating the key process that helps in encouraging informal communication,
cohesion and team identification(Verburg, Bosch-Sijtsema and Vartiainen 2013). For example, I
have seen that companies used kick-off meeting for project that brought everyone together into

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one specific location for days that helped the people in developing a shared understanding of task
and their acquaintance with team. The process will help in supporting task collaboration during a
project. Thus, the expense and time necessary for providing opportunities for the face-to-face
interaction then becomes an investment that can result in larger returns provided the virtual team
takes complete advantage of its diverse heterogeneity and expertise. It is remembered that the
informal interactions are equally important as the formal ones. Nevertheless, the face-to-face
meeting has put forward a newer perspective of advantages for the virtual team. It will help in
strengthening the bond amongst the team members, creation of the similar experience for
building comfort amongst the team members. Reinforces the importance of the work related
roles and its implications on the team members and the real people. Real world meeting also
have various benefits for the virtual team. This helps in strengthening of bond amongst the team
members and the presence of a person becomes more than just a voice as he might become friend
or a colleague. Strengthening of bonds changes the perspective of relationship amongst the team
members(Morgan, Paucar-Caceres and Wright 2014). In other words, a face-to-face meeting
simply brings the people closer to one another thereby making it easier for them to work as a
team in future. A face-to-face meeting have led to the creation of a more comfortable
communication experience amongst the members of the virtual team (Purvanova 2014). In other
words, the face-to-face meeting will act as the icebreaker for the future meetings that will make
the team more comfortable. I believe that face-to-face meeting has also reinforced the
importance of the virtual team members. Thus, through creation of bonds and raising the comfort
levels amongst the team members such meetings can actually enhance the productivity of the
virtual team. In fact, I believe that the team members will be able to feel that work done will
have real life implications on the real people that they connect.

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The approach of fostering a global culture also contributes to overcoming the negative
impacts of dispersion (Chang, Hung and Hsieh 2014). I have found that research suggested a
global mindset where people are able to view themselves as the part of the international network
that puts forward an environment conducive to the dispersed teams. It is necessary for the team
members and the managers in framing and recognizing the company based on the operations and
market of the organization. There exist various human resource strategies that help in fostering
the mindset including the temporary staff assignments at the foreign location. I have mostly
observed bigger companies like Nestle, General Electric and IBM mostly known for global reach
of the business activities. They provide examples of actively fostering the mindset of the global
employee. I have also seen the managers of Nestle to make a move to the other countries for
three or four years such that they are able to learn the specifics for each market thereby
developing global mindset from the experience. For example, the steering committee at General
Electric Co oversaw the research and development efforts where the employees remained
assigned to the different worldwide locations for facilitating the development of the informal
network across the research and development sites in China, United States, India and Germany.
Such practice I believe will help in developing diversity friendly attitudes and the ability of
working in the different contexts that helps the employees in coping with the challenges of
distance while working for the virtual teams.
Looking closely at the state of a virtually dispersed team, I have discovered that in spite
of corporative rhetoric of teamwork and communication there are certain unwritten rules that
helps the team in outshining their performance. It is therefore necessary to share the knowledge
and ideas with the people as much as possible. Thus, within weeks of joining the employees
virtually dispersed team learns to talk about the aspect of cooperation and act competitively.

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Conclusion:
On a concluding note, it can be said that the dispersed teams performs better than groups
that remain collocated. The essay however puts forward that in order to gain success the
collaboration of the virtual team is managed in a specific manner. It is also seen that the
performance of the team suffers with the rising levels of the dispersion and hence the managers
are forced to view dispersion as liability instead of the opportunity. Nevertheless, the essay
portrays that dispersion can put forward enough benefits if the firms are able to not only take
advantage of diversity but also the diverse experience of the team members at the different
locations. Thus, it is seen when managed in the right manner virtual teams outperforms the
collocated counterparts. However, a firm cannot just create a dispersed team comprising of
talented individuals and think of its best. It is necessary in ensuring that the group created should
have required task related and socio economic process in place. It is only then that the virtually
teams can integrate the dispersed knowledge and take advantage of the structural and the cultural
diversity. These enable them in avoiding some of the drawbacks of dispersion and enjoy certain
benefits.

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