Virtual Teams: A New Opportunity to Develop a Business

A virtual team (also known as a geographically dispersed team or distributed team) is a group of individuals who work across time, space and organizational boundaries with links strengthened by webs of communication technology. Powell, Piccoli and Ives define virtual teams in their literature review article “as groups of geographically, organizationally and/or time dispersed workers brought together by information and telecommunication technologies to accomplish one or more organizational tasks.”[1] Ale Ebrahim, N., Ahmed, S. &[39][42];.[43] Majchrzak et al.[44] found that face-to-face meetings or phones calls are suitable for ambiguous tasks, managing conflicts, managing external resources, brainstorming and strategic talks. Electric communication is more suitable for more structured tasks such as routine analysis, examining design tradeoffs and monitoring project status. Interestingly, in their study the team first adjusted their organization to the technology at hand, but later also adjusted the technology to their organization.

SMEs and virtual R&D teams: A motive channel for relationship between SMEs

Virtual Teams

(Ebrahim et al., 2009).

Enhancing team performance through tool use: How critical technology-related issues influence the performance of virtual project teams