Virtual Team Report as Part of Presentation for Mgsm

MGSM870 – Organisational Behaviour

Group 2  Report - Virtual Teams

Teamwork is becoming an increasingly common approach to work design in organisations. Given the globalised nature of work, many teams are using technology to mediate communication and information exchanges among members. Using group member's experiences as well as your research discuss specific examples of virtual teams in organisations. Based on the group's research what lessons can be drawn for managers to enhance the effectiveness of virtual teams, especially those that include members from different cultures. In preparing for this presentation and your report, your team may have utilised collaborative technologies in working virtually - you are encouraged to incorporate insights from this experience into your presentation and report content and analysis.  

Executive Summary 

This report outlines how virtual teams operate in business and group environments. It will detail the most common sources of influence for virtual teams and some common challenges. In researching for this topic, we sought information through personal experiences in the form of case studies, as well as a digital survey sent to our local peers to gauge their experiences. The group also was asked to reflect towards the end of the assessment to provide feedback as to formulate a position on how we worked as a virtual team.

Our findings for the survey were considered as we developed our case studies (Woolworths, Cochlear, Working from Home/Remotely and the group). We found that there are challenges and conflict in many virtual teams but with the aids of technology, appropriate business communication styles and appropriate scheduling, most of these may be mitigated. Given the globalised nature of work there is an increasing need for virtual teams to occur where there are scarce resources of knowledge or where quick actions are required at short notice.        

It is recommended for managers wishing to further develop or introduce virtual teams to their business environments:

• Understand that a virtual team is a socio-technical arrangement between ‘people, information, processes, leadership and technology’.
• Early in the team development process, virtual team members should meet face-to-face (if possible).

• Managers should ensure that clear operational objectives are established and that roles and responsibilities are made clear from the outset of the project.
• By highlighting communication abilities, autonomy and cultural integrity, virtual teams will proceed with relative ease.

• Managers should attempt to maximise the effectiveness of communication mediums through appropriate technologies.

Case Study - Woolworths  

The first case looks into the leadership and cultural aspects of effective virtual team practice at Woolworths in resolving a large scale EFTPOS service outage. On a Sunday afternoon, a power surge struck one of the Woolworth’s Data Centre in Sydney. This resulted in a major outage of over 200 IT systems, including the EFTPOS payment systems preventing customer purchases. The direct impact amounted loss of profit at $50k per hour.