MNG81001 Management Communication Essay: Virtual Team Analysis

This essay explores the advantages and disadvantages of virtual teams in contemporary organizations, focusing on their impact on efficiency and employee collaboration. The essay begins by defining virtual teams and highlighting their benefits, such as increased participation, global talent access, and round-the-clock availability. It emphasizes the importance of trust-building and mutual understanding within diverse teams, as well as the promotion of work originality and creativity. The essay then delves into the challenges associated with virtual teams, including difficulties in knowledge sharing, cultural and communication barriers, and potential psychological impacts on team members. The author recommends careful planning, clear communication strategies, and the establishment of trust and openness to maximize the benefits and mitigate the drawbacks of virtual team implementation. The essay concludes by emphasizing the need for organizations to prepare appropriate plans, time limits, goals, and communication strategies before launching virtual teams, particularly on an international level. References are provided to support the arguments presented.

Management
Communication
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Virtual teams are becoming prominent in contemporary organisations worldwide for
saving both time and money. After conducting secondary research, this essay has been
completed to find out advantages and disadvantages of virtual teams in organisations to
comprehend whether investment made in virtual teams provide companies with competitive
edge or prove challenging for the existing employees. This essay will examine and present
advantages along with drawbacks behind implementing virtual teams and then present few
recommendations in the end.
Virtual teams can be defined as multicultural groups comprising individuals that are
dispersed worldwide, relying on communicational technologies and information to work for a
specific goal. Virtual teams facilitate increased participation between team members as the
communication networks allows every member contribute on the basis of their individual
talent. Virtual teams not only provide with long term benefits like increased use of employee-
time and opportunity for leveraging expertise and knowledge around the globe but also
provides organisations with round the clock employees availability. However, the two most
advantageous factors gained by enabling virtual teams are building trust among each other
and developing mutual understanding between people belonging to diversified places and
societies that certainly provides equal opportunity to every employee even if they remain
disabled ( Morley, et al., 2015). Second important advantage recognised is promoting work
originality and creativity by increased employee participation (Simpson, 2017).
Talent, according to Bhat, Pande & Ahuja (2017) is a “fragile term” within teams and
must be dealt very carefully especially when teams are allocated in diverse places. Virtual
teams are mostly appreciated in literature as every member of virtual teams understand that
they require interacting for limited time period and can easily change their attitude for

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developing trust among each other, however, any differences seen may lead to deficit in
providing equal opportunity to disabled employees. Professionals and consultants who are
highly skilled but are disabled to join organisational teams can easily get connected with
organisations through virtual team communication that facilitates sharing of valuable
knowledge irrespective of geographical and physical barriers.
Second and most significant advantage that can be realised through virtual teams is
sharing of information, knowledge and ideas by interacting people present at distant and
diversified places which helps in promoting work related creativity and originality. The
degree of communication and interdependence among team members further depends on
amount of information that is required to be shared for organisational success and it is vital
for the firms to encourage employees to share information with each other while working for
a common objective. According to Simpson (2017), organisations communicates via virtual
teams creates new opportunities for employees also who proves very crucial for the company
but at the same time remains unavailable due to geographical factors or unfamiliar
environment (Layng, 2016). Independent and freelance workers can also be tied with the
company to fulfil the position of creative job. Nevertheless, any breakdown of information
while transferring information to one another may also prove disadvantageous and it is
recommended in literature that to create virtual environment, developed mechanisms and
technology must be used while sharing and communicating critical information’s.
While recognising advantages, its disadvantages shall not be ignored as both are
associated with work performance of virtual teams as identified in present literature. While
going through the advantages related to virtual teams, it was found that effective knowledge
sharing among virtual team members can sometimes prove very difficult as compared to
traditional teams. Since virtual team members often have diversified work areas, discipline,
culture-related barriers and certain expectancies from other team members behaviour, they

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often tend acting as ‘filters’ that makes entire virtual team process inappropriate for few team
members psychologically. The differences seen can again become a source of misconception
along with generation of conflicts among team members while communicating with each
other and hence unhealthy work environment is created. Lack of trust and communicational
barriers that makes inappropriate for many employees psychologically often creates obstacles
in organisational success. Morley, Cormican & Folan (2015) suggests that to instil cultural
self-awareness and effective communication among virtual team members, creation of trust
and openness is very significant especially in those organisations that have work dispersed
widely.
The above essay examined that in today’s businesses, the phenomenon of virtual team
building proves very advantageous. Virtual teams enable acquiring talent while working in
multiple teams along with enabling equal opportunities for relatively disabled employees,
however, their cooperation may sometimes prove challenging for firms. Therefore, it can be
recommended that virtual teams must be implemented in the company after preparing
appropriate plans along with describing time limits, goals and communicational strategies
before it begins in an international level.

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References
Bhat, S. K., Pande, N. & Ahuja, V., 2017. Virtual Team Effectiveness: An Empirical Study
Using SEM. Information Technology and Quantitative Management, Volume 122, pp. 33-41.
Layng, J. M., 2016. The Virtual Communication Aspect: A Critical Review of Virtual Studies
Over the Last 15 Years. Journal of Literacy and Technology, 17(03), pp. 172-218.
Morley, S., Cormican, K. & Folan, P., 2015. An Analysis of Virtual Team Characteristics: A
Model for Virtual Project Managers. Journal of Technology Management & Innovation ,
10(01), pp. 188-203.
Simpson, D., 2017. Advantages and Disadvantages of International Virtual Project Teams.
International Business and Global Economy, Volume 36, pp. 275-287.