Virtual teams

Developments in communications technologies have seen the emergence of the virtual work team. A virtual team is a group of people who work interdependently and with shared purpose across space, time, and organisation boundaries using technology to communicate and collaborate. Virtual team members can be located across a country or across the world, rarely meet face-to-face, and include members from different cultures.»Kimble et al. (2000) Effective Virtual Teams through Communities of Practice (Department of Management Science Research Paper Series, 00/9), University of Strathclyde, Strathclyde, UK, 2000. Ale Ebrahim, N., Ahmed, S. & Taha, Z. in their recent (2009) literature review paper, added two key issues to definition of a virtual team “as small temporary groups of geographically, organizationally and/ or time dispersed knowledge workers who coordinate their work predominantly with electronic information and communication technologies in order to accomplish one or more organization tasks”.Ale Ebrahim, N.; Ahmed, S.; Taha, Z. (December 2009). "Virtual R & D teams in small and medium enterprises: A literature review" . Scientific Research and Essay 4 (13): 1575–1590. »http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1530904 Many virtual teams are cross-functional and emphasis solving customer problems or generating new work processes. The United States Labour Department reported that in 2001, 19 million people worked from home online or from another location, and that by the end of 2002, over 100 million people world-wide would be working outside traditional offices.Pearlson & Sounders, 2001

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