E-commerce (ECOM201): Virtual Teams Challenges and Solutions Report

This report addresses the challenges associated with virtual teams in the context of e-commerce, focusing on issues such as poor communication, lack of trust, and affected productivity. The report defines each negative factor and explains its impact on organizational growth and development. It highlights that poor communication leads to information loss and isolation, lack of trust arises from the inability to observe team members' work, and affected productivity stems from a lack of boundaries and accountability in remote work environments. The report then proposes solutions to mitigate these challenges, including fostering effective communication, building trust through awareness of contributions and supportive management, and enhancing productivity through accountability and support structures. References from sources like Harvard Extension School, Forbes, and Engage for Success are provided to support the analysis and proposed solutions. The report aims to provide a comprehensive overview of challenges and solutions for virtual teams in e-commerce, aiding in improved team performance and organizational success.

Running Head: ECOMMERCE
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Virtual Teams Challenges
E-commerce
(Student Details: )
3/1/2020

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Answer 1
Apart from benefits, virtual teams’ development creates many issues that might have
a huge negative impact on the organizational growth and development. Such concerns or
negative factors are as follows:
1. Poor communication
Communication is one of the greatest challenges faced by virtual teams. It is because
virtual teams typically lack everyday face to face communication which ultimately results in
information loss or miscommunication. Thus, a feeling of isolation among team members
always creates communication problems. Thus, poor communication acts as the main factor
hindering effectiveness, innovation, as well as decision making (Harvard Extension School,
2020).
2. Lack of trust
In this context, working with virtual teams often develops mistrust in team members.
It is because, virtual team members rarely work at the same time, as well as they cannot see
what others are doing and thereby they do not get immediate responses as well. Therefore,
lack of trust is a big problem that occurs due to distance and lack of effective communication
(Harvard Extension School, 2020).
3. Affected Productivity
It has been found that low productivity or affected productivity is a challenge for
modern organizations where employees do not work in a traditional office building. In this
context, productivity is usually getting affected, when some team members may not utilise
the official time wisely. In addition to that, low productivity is an issue for an organization as
it affects long term growth and development of the organization. It happens because when
employees work remotely into a lack of boundaries then they become careless or less
attentive towards their work (Harvard Extension School, 2020).
In this way, all of the above-mentioned reasons are indicating that all three challenges
include communication; trust and productivity are big issues and hindering the overall growth
of modern organizations (A Petrovici, 2014).

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Answer 2
It has been observed by the researchers that lack of communication, trust, and
productivity must be avoided as they act like de-motivators in an organization. It also
demoralizes other employees for showing employee engagement and dedication towards their
organization. In this way, by using progressive discipline the company can effectively
improve its employees’ morale as well as retention to a large extent (Harvard Extension
School, 2020). In other words, it can be said that a progressive discipline process with the
help of key steps must be used before terminating an employee due to their disciplinary
problems. Thus, the company can demonstrate that there are rewards for good performance
and consequences for poor performance while using the below-mentioned solutions among
virtual teams (Harvard Extension School, 2020).
There are some possible solutions for all of the above-mentioned challenges, as
follows:
1. Solutions: Lack of trust
 Lack of trust can easily be resolved or avoided by creating awareness of the
contribution as well as the achievements of all team members.
 In addition, a lack of trust can also be resolved with supportive team managers. It is
because supportive managers set clear goals as well as expectations which helps in
growing trust among all the virtual team members (Kruse, 2012).
2. Solutions: Lack of productivity
 By ensuring accountability, productivity can be enhanced and hence organizational
development will boost (Guest, 2017).
 The second possible solution is to form support structures while paying attention to
the best performers in favour of the whole team (Engage for Success, 2020).
3. Solutions: Lack of communication
 By fostering a culture of effective communication, the problem of communication can
be addressed (A Petrovici, 2014).
 By focusing on hiring the right people in the virtual teams, a lack of communication
can be averted. It is because an interview process is the best way to find out how well

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an individual communicates. Thus, employees’ communication skills act as a critical
factor in the virtual teams' success (Bodie, 2012).

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References
A Petrovici, T. D. (2014). The role of emotional intelligence in building interpersonal
communication skills. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 116, 1405-1410.
Bodie, G. (2012). Listening as positive communication. The positive side of interpersonal
communication, 109-125.
Engage for Success. (2020). What is Employee Engagement? Retrieved from Engage for
Success: https://engageforsuccess.org/what-is-employee-engagement
Guest, D. E. (2017). Human resource management and employee well‐being: Towards a new
analytic framework. . Human Resource Management Journal, 27(1), 22-38.
Harvard Extension School. (2020). Challenges to Managing Virtual Teams and How to
Overcome Them. Retrieved from Harvard Extension School:
https://www.extension.harvard.edu/professional-development/blog/challenges-
managing-virtual-teams-and-how-overcome-them
Kruse, K. (2012). What Is Employee Engagement. Retrieved from Forbes:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kevinkruse/2012/06/22/employee-engagement-what-
and-why/#4bf45d587f37