Abstract
The COVID-19 situation has shown many leaders that their face-to-face meetings leadership style may well now be a thing of the past. Tech-savvy companies are now deploying new technologies to support the creation and leadership of virtual teams, working remotely in different locations around the globe. This presents a range of new challenges for both project leaders and team members, who must now adopt new ways of working. Using an inductive approach based on an analysis of relevant literature, online surveys, and in-depth interviews with project leaders and other practitioners, this chapter examines the transitioning to virtual team leadership and operation, identifies critical success factors, and discusses the facilitating role of new technologies. An operational model (V-CORPS) to guide the building and operation of virtual teams is developed and explained with the aim of increasing the flexibility and efficiency of virtual project teams and establishing a checklist of action points for team building and leading.
TopBackground And Relevant Literature
This section reviews the extant literature to assess how new technologies can support team building and leadership. The review highlights the current use and potential of new technologies in team building and leading. The impacts of globalization on project team operations are also reviewed. The focus is on the automotive industry, which is one of the most complex industries to analyze, where projects are not only executed by global companies, but also with suppliers from all over the world. Outsourcing adds another possible dimension to global project management, with team members coming from a number of different business entities. Due to the rapid advancement of globalization, however, the focus here is on the effects and working methods of the team members scattered around the world, as it is common practice for these virtual employees to create their own unique way of working (Caulat, 2006). A basic and stable structure for a virtual team can engender reliable long-term performance.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Virtual Team: A group of individuals who work across time, space, and organizational boundaries and communicate and work together using digital tools. Team members are often widely dispersed, working remotely in different parts of the world. Also known as geographically dispersed teams or remote teams.
V-CORPS Model: A model for virtual team building and leadership (Virtual – Creation, Organization, Relationship building, Performance & evaluation, Sign-off & closure).
Digitalization: The capture of representable information by physical objects and its processing into digital formats that are stored or further processed in digital systems.
APP: Application software for mobile devices or mobile operating systems.
Follow the Sun Methodology: Using global workflow and project management technologies in which daily tasks and responsibilities are distributed amongst work sites that are in multiple time zones.
Customer Relationship Management (CRM): Strategic orientation of a company towards its customers with a systematic improvement of customer relations. Also, a major business systems software package.
Globalization: A worldwide interconnectedness between individuals, societies, institutions, and states.