Teamwork

Articles about team work and virtual teams.

Understanding the Benefits and Uses of Virtual Worlds

Surinder and I are currently attending the Mardi Gras conference on virtual worlds in Baton Rouge along with our colleague Rui Huang. We are here to present our paper that I discussed in last week’s post and also to hear the exciting work that others are pursuing in and around virtual worlds. I am amazed by the breadth of interests… Read more →

Supportive and Critical Communication in Virtual Teams

Effective communication in electronic environments can be vexing to virtual teams. We know intuitively that we need proper communication to achieve high quality and efficient outcomes, but we are not always sure how to best achieve effective communication or even what effective communication is for the task at hand. We have mentioned issues around communication in past posts, such as… Read more →

Training to Get More From Your Virtual Team

A few weeks back, Surinder posted quick tips that virtual team leaders could use to deal with pressures to make their virtual teams more productive. I believe that sponsors and leaders of virtual team projects ought to also focus on another thing: training. While the times are challenging because of pressures to cut down costs, we strongly believe that the… Read more →

Promoting Cooperation Among Subgroups in Virtual Teams

Promoting Cooperation Among Subgroups in Virtual Teams

A project leader recently asked me how to promote cooperation among members of his virtual team who are at different locations. This is a common issue that virtual team leaders struggle with. Virtual teams often consist of subgroups of team members located in separate locations. This division of team members can give rise to social categorization within the team (i.e., those who… Read more →

Building Social Relationships in Virtual Teams

Building Social Relationships in Virtual Teams

Every once in a while, you come across something that defies the conventional wisdom that you need face-to-face contact to build strong social relationships (see a recent article that relies on this wisdom). A New York Times article “After Blogger’s Plane Crash, Virtual Becomes Personal” that was published on September 6, 2008 is one such item. In this post, I… Read more →

Emergent Collaboration: The Reason Why Email Should Not Be Used for Collaboration

In one of her recent posts, Betsy Carroll blogged about alternatives to email. Email tends to be misused because of its accessibility and convenience. People end up using it in situations where alternatives would be more suitable. While stressing that email is great for communication but not for collaboration, Betsy discussed alternatives to email and the situations where they would… Read more →

Assessing the Quality of Collaboration in Virtual Teams

For those who are interested in virtual team collaboration, the concept of teamwork is crucial. But rarely is “teamwork” actually defined. Just as the adage goes, we know it when we see it, but we may have trouble explicitly saying what makes for good teamwork. This week, Surinder sent me an academic journal article by Martin Hoegl and Hans Georg… Read more →