Communication and Collaboration Issues - Coursework Example

RESEARCH METHODS FOR MANAGERS Table of Contents RESEARCH METHODS FOR MANAGERS Table of Contents 2 Research Problem 3 Introduction 3 Literature Review 4 Successful Virtual Team Communication Techniques 6 Research Methodology 7 Research Implication 8 References 9 Research Problem Virtual teams have a strong business jurisdiction. They are agile in nature and can be formed quickly. It helps in decreasing the response time of the organizations to the changes in the hyper competitive markets. With the help of virtual teams organizations are able to leverage the expertise that is spread over geographic areas that were left untapped. Virtual teams create less disruption to the employees’ life as it requires less traveling time to meet with the dispersed teams (Baker, Sunny, Baker & Kim, 1992, P.7). The team members also have the opportunity to work across organizations and culture which broadens their experience. However the ability of the individuals to work together over distance, organizational boundaries and time adds complexity and increases the risk of failure in achieving goals. The research problem in this paper is to investigate how collaboration and communication issues impact the way in which virtual project teams are managed. Introduction The world is shrinking. Advances in technology have helped in variety of collaboration and communication tools that were expensive or unavailable to the organizations. The needs to quickly address the problems of the customers, deliver services, develop products and tap a diverse pool of employees have given rise to the concept of virtual teams. The ability to form teams virtually that will operate across the limitations of time, distance and organizational boundaries have proven to be the successful for the organizations. These teams use electronic collaboration technologies and other techniques to lower facility and travelling costs, reduce project schedules and improve decision making communication and time. Since companies are focusing increasingly on foreign markets to expand their customer base, they are also looking at lowering costs or exacting effectiveness by tapping the foreign labor pool. For this purpose off- shoring and outsourcing have become very prevalent. The result is that firms are able to achieve substantial cost saving and decrease their time to market when building software solutions, offering services, manufacturing products since additional risks are managed effectively (Gruhn, Volker, Schope & Lothar, 2002, P. 254). Today the management desires to establish international presence by exacting operating efficiencies and reducing costs of distributed teams created by mergers, acquisitions, technical specialization and downsizing. Organizations that do not use virtual teams effectively have difficulty in competing in the global, competitive and rapidly changing markets. Those organizations that will succeed in finding ways of working across boundaries like systems, technologies, people and procedure. Literature Review Managing virtual teams can be more complex than managing traditional teams, however. First, virtual teams primarily communicate and collaborate by using technology such as e-mail, groupware, etc. Virtual teams exclusively depends on software and technology tools to collaborate and communication, whereas the teams that are traditional can always abandon technology and software tools in favor of face-to-face communication and collaboration. Second, virtual teams cross boundaries related to time, distance, and organization. This creates a need for increased attention to communication and collaboration issues. Interestingly, although the effective use of electronic communication and collaboration technologies is fundamental to the success of virtual teams, virtual seldom find ways to overcome the limitations of technology for communication and collaboration. When the virtual teams and their leaders in an organization are asked about failures and success, they hardly mention technology as the primary reason for either (Boar & Bernard, 2001, P. 168). Working across the national boundaries of any country complicates collaboration and communication in addition to the challenges of working with team members, who are culturally diverse, speak different languages and use technologies that are also different. The membership of any virtual team becomes complex because of cross boundaries organizational, organizational cultures and technologies and goals and the integration of several work methods. It is often the case that partners and suppliers have conflicting organizational goals and culture. The complexity is increased by the limited number of ways for team members of a virtual team to communicate. Traditional teams always have the option to interact face to face with other team members at least on a regular basis if not on a daily basis. However, the interactions of the virtual team members are mostly mediated by electronic collaboration and communication technology. Interactions of virtual team members fall into four categories: same place, same time such as face to face meetings different place, same time, such as video conference and audio conference different place, different time, such as voice mail messages or exchange of e-mail same place, different time such as using shared file on a network or using a chat room Since team members on virtual teams are not collocated, communication becomes more difficult. Body language is an integral part in human communication. Without it the receiver of the communication is only getting a part of the message that is trying to be conveyed. Birdwhistell claimed that up to 65 percentage of a message’s meaning is communicated through non-verbal clues (Birdwhistell, 1970, P.7). Today some of the researchers put more stress on the information that is not transmitted verbally to even higher. Rodman and Fromkin claimed that up to 90 percent of the meaning that is stored in a message is not transmitted verbally. So when an individual is reading an e-mail, they are really only getting a small part of the message that was being transmitted. Therefore, the potential for confusion and misunderstanding between team members is greater as they rely more on communication methods and not face to face interactions. Similarly, within organizations informal communication is often a key source of information and knowledge transfer. This rich source of knowledge transfer is lacking in the virtual space. They cannot turn to a team member and ask them how they have done something in the past (Duarte, Deborah, Snyder, Tennant, 2001, P. 286) Successful Virtual Team Communication Techniques In order to increase the chances of communicating successfully, Haywood has provided four principles that successful virtual teams have in common (Haywood 1998, 18-19). They include: 1. Standards for acknowledgement and availability were defined and respected; 2. The team members replaced lost context in their communication; 3. The team members regularly used synchronous communication; 4. Senders took responsibility for prioritizing communication By creating standards for availability and acknowledgement, team members can define specific times when they will be available to teammates and provide details such as how soon they will guarantee a response to a message. This clarifies for other team members when a team member’s normal working hours are and gives a window within which responses to communications can be expected. This helps to solve the problem of not knowing whether or not a message was received. Replacing lost context within a message, effectively gives the receiver of a message a frame of reference for the communication, which is not always obvious (Hayward & Simon, 2001, P. 341). Haywood concluded that it is easy to misuse many forms of electronic communication and the result is often distorted reduced or eliminated context. In effect this is an attempt to replace some of the body language that is lacking in electronic communication. By describing the situation that is relevant to the communication, the receiver is able to gather additional information with respect to the intended message. Although adding context cannot replace non-verbal communication it definitely helps to minimize misunderstanding. Research Methodology The research methodology which is primary in this project was is a questionnaire that consists of six questions. The questionnaires were delivered through e-mail to some project managers who are having some experience of working with virtual project teams. The respondents are spread throughout United States of America. Eight responses are gathered from the employees in organizations that varied from relatively small firms to big firms. The responses were grouped according to each question and analyzed qualitatively. The questionnaire was designed to get a broad sense of the issues associated with virtual project teams and how organizations are dealing with these issues. More specifically, the questionnaire was designed to get a sense of the reasons organizations are using virtual project teams, to confirm whether or not organizations use different methods for managing virtual teams compared with more traditional collocated teams, to get an idea of the communication and collaboration technologies enabling virtual project teams, and to look for confirmation of the central issues of communication and collaboration. In addition to this, the questionnaire tried to get an idea of the effect of virtual project teams on the morals of the team members. The questions are as follows: 1. What are the main reasons your organization uses virtual project teams? 2. Does the organization that you work for have various techniques for managing a virtual project team as compared to the traditional project teams? If yes, then what are the main differences between the techniques? 3. Please list in order of value up to 3 tools (technology, software) that you have personally establish to be most useful for managing virtual project teams. Explain briefly how would you individually use each of the tools tool for managing virtual teams. 4. What impact do virtual teams have on virtual team members self-confidence? On in-house team members self-confidence? 5. What are the 3 most general communication troubles you have encountered with virtual project teams? 6. What are the 3 most general control issues that you have encountered with virtual project teams? Research Implication The research problem in this paper is to investigate how communication and collaboration issues change the way virtual project teams are managed. Surprisingly, the data collected did not show that there was a significant change in the way virtual project managers managed their teams. This is unexpected because the nature of the virtual team is very different compared to a more traditional team. References Baker, Sunny, Baker & Kim. 1992. On Time/ On Budget: A Step-by-Step Guide for Managing Any Project. USA: Prentice Hall. Birdwhistell, R. L. 1970. Kinesics and Context: Essays on Body Motion Communication. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Boar & Bernard. 2001. The Art of Strategic Planning for Information Technology. USA: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Covey & Stephen R. 1989. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. UK: Simon & Schuster. Duarte, Deborah, L, Snyder, Tennant, N. 2001. Mastering Virtual Teams : Strategies, Tools, and Techniques That Succeed. Canada: Jossey Bass Gruhn, Volker, Schope & Lothar. 2002. Software processes for the development of electronic commerce systems, Information and Software Technology. USA: Elsevier Science B.V. Hayward & Simon. 2001. Technology For Virtual Teams. UK: Gartner Research Haywood & Martha. 1998. Managing Virtual Teams, Practical Techniques for High-Technology Project Managers. UK: Artech House Jacobson, Ivar, Booch, Grady, Rumbaugh, James. 1999. The Unified Software Development Process. USA: Addison-Wesley. Trautsch, B. R. 1993. MANAGING VIRTUAL PROJECT TEAMS. [Available at] [Assessed on 20 March 2013] Read More