The purpose of this paper is to explore group creative processes in a virtual environment to better understand how virtual communication influences creativity. After reviewing literature, a theoretical foundation in creativity was established and with three common themes derived: Task motivation and task orientation, social environment and participation, and communication. This was coupled with a review of current virtual team interaction theories, demonstrating intersections between them. The method used was a qualitative exploration using semi-structured in-depth interviews. The interviews were conducted via VOIP, with notes and recordings taken for further analysis. Analysis was conducted on the three common creative themes viewing virtualization as the mediator. Trends emerged demonstrating that asynchronous communication had a substantial influence on group creative processes. Conversely, virtual teams employing real-time communication found little influence on the creative process. Other anecdotal trends can be seen regarding motivation and social environment. This paper identifies key areas where virtualization influences the group creative process, and provides a base for future suggested research.

As the world becomes more globalized and information technology develops more rapidly, companies are increasingly exploring the benefits of using virtual teams to work on projects that allow them to achieve their objectives. This phenomenon though keeps raising questions regarding the best practices in selection and management of employees whose work would be mostly conducted in virtual settings instead of traditional co-located teams. We have investigated the conditions of virtuality, identifying its benefits and challenges and came up to a conclusion that in order to be an effective virtual team member, a special set of skills and abilities may be needed. The central question of this study is: What individual knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs) that comprise virtual competence (IVC) should the virtual project team members possess, which could contribute to overcoming challenges of the virtual environment? To answer this question a variety of theories on a virtual team, professional competencies, team management and project management were examined. Quantitative research has been utilized to measure the relationship between the conceptualised construct of individual virtual competence and individual work outcomes in a project that is conducted by distributed global teams. Data on the skills of the individuals conducting their work in virtual IT project settings were collected with an online survey which was distributed among the chosen sample. The results of the survey indicated that the most important characteristics that contribute to overcoming challenges of virtuality are self-efficacy, social, and media skills, which also have a positive reflection on the individual work performance and job satisfaction. There are also interesting results regarding the effect of demographic characteristics on variables when compared with the results from the similar study conducted with a different group of respondents. In the end, a revised model of individual virtual competence is proposed that can shed some light on its impact on job performance and job satisfaction of an individual working in virtual project teams.

The advancements in technology have enabled contemporary organisations to work remotely, and this work structure is increasingly being adopted by more industries. This forces organisations to implement global virtual teams, that despite differences in geographic locations, time zones and cultures, are obligated to work towards organisational goals. It is possible to identify both opportunities and challenges for leaders within organisations. These can be viewed from various organisational perspectives, although one of the most recurring topics for leaders to consider when managing global virtual teams, is the notion of ​trust. ​Trust is argued to be one of the fundamental constituents for teams to work effectively. Even though the use of global virtual teams is becoming more prevalent, research on trust in regard to virtual teams is limited. Prior research argues that leadership is the key success factor for determining the level of trust in global virtual teams. 

    However, there is a research gap on specifically how leaders work in terms of the specific actions that are taken in order to facilitate for establishing trust. This case study therefore investigates how leaders establish trust in their geographically dispersed virtual teams. 

In order to answer this research question, nine leaders were interviewed through qualitative in-depth semi-structured interviews.

Virtual team collaboration through the Internet has become a commonplace event for preparing and publishing collaboratively authored documents. While collaborative technologies are now ubiquitous through the advent of Web 2.0, there is still considerable work required to ensure that virtual team members are able to maintain a sufficient level of activity awareness about other members and their roles and contributions in the collaborative authoring of a document. The goal was to measure and evaluate wiki notification mechanisms as agents to significantly raise activity awareness for virtual teams engaged in collaborative authoring. Virtual teams collaboratively authored a project over a sixteen-week term using team wikis. The participants were undergraduate students divided into groups of between 25 and 27 each in three online business courses. Attention focused on the significance of e-mail and RSS notifications as agents for raising activity awareness. Evaluation of the effect of notification mechanisms on activity awareness was done with a pretest-posttest control group design and a descriptive analysis of data, plus a posttest only design to test for significant academic achievement gains on projects. The Activity Awareness Questionnaire with IRC Domains and Levels was used to measure activity awareness. Additionally, a pedagogical evaluation of student success based on treatment type was undertaken. The ANOVA was used for measuring virtual team academic success between the control and treatment groups. In general the data analysis suggested that the use of RSS and e-mail notification did not have a significant impact on either activity awareness or virtual team academic performance.

The impact of training on virtual team effectiveness was assessed in five areas: communication, planning tasks and setting goals, solving problems and making decisions, resolving conflict, and responding to customer requirements. A 12-page survey was developed exploring all aspects of virtual teams. 180 surveys were distributed, 52 were returned representing 43 companies. Training led to higher effectiveness in planning tasks and setting goals, solving problems and making decisions, and conflict resolution, but not in communication and responding to customer requirements. Training may not solve all the problems that virtual teams will encounter; however, training will make the challenges easier to handle.

Background The world is experiencing exceptional technological evolution and Sweden is at the forefront of this development and virtual teams are on the rise. Virtual teams are a way for companies to improve their sustainability with decreased travel for employees which also saves time that employees can spend at home though with difficulties separating work and home. Virtual teams are a chance for employees to better influence their work, a way to have people from all over the world working together but with a risk of decreased physical social interactions and being isolated. Research question How is employee satisfaction perceived by individuals in virtual teams? Purpose  The purpose of this thesis is to describe how employees in virtual teams perceive employee satisfaction in contrast to traditional teams in order to identify which aspects are especially significant for employee satisfaction in virtual teams. Further we aim to explain how to create employee satisfaction with these aspects in mind. Method A qualitative research method was used in this study, by semistructured interviews with twelve respondents from various companies in Sweden, in which four of the twelve respondents work in the public sector and the rest in the private sector. The respondents were selected by convenience. TheoreticalFramework Theories about teams, virtual teams, job satisfaction and culture are presented followed by behavioural theory focusing on selfdetermination theory as well as social capital. The final component in the theoretical framework is theory regarding. work-life balance and spillover theory. Findings In this thesis, the findings of how employee satisfaction is perceived in virtual teams is divided into two parts. The first part addresses the need to prepare a structure for the virtual team before hiring as to avoid issues raised by the respondents and brings to attention key areas. The second part addresses the need to find the right people when hiring for the virtual team. It mentions important characteristics beneficial for the person to have if they are to work within the virtual team.

A adaptação de novos colaboradores em equipes de desenvolvimento de software é um tópico em crescimento na literatura, tanto para equipes tradicionais, quanto para as equipes virtuais. Sendo assim, o objetivo desse estudo é desenvolver um guia de diretrizes necessárias para se adaptar um novo colaborador em uma equipe virtual. Para atingir o objetivo, um método qualitativo foi usado para coletar dados através de questionários e um total de 22 respondentes de diferentes países contribuíram com a pesquisa. Os respondentes classificaram e sugeriram os métodos mais importantes para a adaptação como: Ferramentas de Comunicação, Treinamento, Definição de Metas, Definição de Processo e Princípios e Definição de um Mentor. Os resultados foram classificados analisados através da ferramenta SPSS da IBM e demostraram uma relação positiva entre mentoria e habilidades técnicas e uma relação negativa entre a cultura da empresa e a hierarquia forte. A principal dificuldade descrita para a adaptação nas equipes virtuais foram as diferenças culturais. Construir uma cultura forte na empresa é importante, mas a cultura de cada pessoa também é relevante para a adaptação em equipes virtuais. Ao final, foram desenvolvidas quatro diretrizes a serem utilizadas como um guia para melhor adaptação de novos colaboradores em uma equipe virtual: a cultura da empresa; as responsabilidades, os processos e os objetivos e a comunicação e as ferramentas de comunicação. / The topic adaptation has grown within the broader team literature and is relevant to virtual teams. Therefore, the objective of this study is to find out how to adapt a new member in a virtual team. To achieve this objective, a qualitative survey research was used to collect data through questionnaires and a total of 22 respondents from different countries contributed to the survey. Respondents ranked and suggested the most important methods for adaptation: Communication Tools, Training, Defining Goals, Defining Process and Principles and Defining a Mentor. The results were analyzed through the SPSS software by IBM, and the findings showed a positive relationship between mentoring and technical skills and a negative relation between strong companies\' culture and strong hierarchy. The main difficulty to virtual teams\' adaptation found was the culture. Building a strong culture in the company is important but each persons\' culture is also relevant for adaptation in virtual teams. Finally, four directives were elaborated as a guide to adapt a new member into a virtual team: company\'s culture; responsibilities, process and goals and communication and communication tools.

There has been a rise in remote and virtual employees over the last 10 years with roughly 20-30 million Americans working remotely at least 1 day each week. This growth in virtual employees increases business and organizations' dependency on technology and on effective strategies to lead virtual teams. Grounded in transformational leadership theory, the purpose of this explanatory case study was to explore strategies e-leaders use in leading virtual teams effectively. The study population comprised a virtual company headquartered in the United States. The data included semistructured interviews with e-leaders with at least 1 year of experience in leading successful virtual teams, an analysis of technological tools, and a review of company documentation. Thematic analysis was conducted on the data collected via tool analysis. Three themes emerged from the analysis: focusing on results-based performance, enabling communications and collaborations through the right technologies, and investing in building and modeling the company's culture. The study's implications for positive social change include the potential to provide similar organizations with effective strategies to train their e-leaders in developing and leading more successful virtual teams. Additionally, using virtual teams can enable firms to lower direct and indirect green gashouse emissions by using fewer resources at worksites and to reduce carbon dioxide through decreased travel.

Organizations use work teams to solve complex problems in innovative ways. As such, an abundance of diverse ideas, suggestions, and information should help organizations generate quality products and remain competitive. Yet, there is research which shows that women do not participate as much as men in face-to-face team interactions. Women often get fewer speaking turns than men, they speak for shorter lengths of time, and they are interrupted more often than men. As a result, women?s ideas may often be overlooked in work settings. This is problematic, because women make up 46 percent of the United States workforce, and not being active participants in meetings could results in underutilization of roughly half of the firm?s human capital. This study investigated whether the order of face-to-face and virtual communication used by virtual teams could be used as one means of increasing inclusion and participation of women in male-dominated teams. Results from 82 teams confirmed that women felt more included in the team when they communicated virtually first and then face-to-face as opposed to face-to-face first and then virtually. Findings supported a four-stage model where the medium of communication influences feelings of inclusion which influences participation (both self-reported and objective). Participation, in turn, influences perceptions of interpersonal justice, satisfaction with the team, and ratings received from team members. An objective measure of participation and team performance ratings from five independent raters also show that the more equally team members participate and the higher the team?s total communication volume, in both total speaking turns and words spoken, the higher the team?s ratings and the more creative the team?s output was judged to be.

Technological developments and the modern economy have changed the way teams operate. Most professionals today are mobile and equipped with everything they need to work from anywhere at any time, including blackberries, laptop computers, email, video conferencing and other personal productivity devices. Doing work this way, allows for a wide range of benefits such as flexibility, diversity and an increase in productivity. However, these virtual teams require specific conditions to help them reach their full potential. This paper will identify the four major characteristics of virtual teams (geographic dispersion, electronic dependence, dynamic structure and national diversity) and use a model of virtual team effectiveness to examine the three team processes (transactive memory, work engagement and collective efficacy) that are most strongly affected by these characteristics. It will further suggest ways in which leadership can help to overcome these process losses through the establishment of trust, psychological safety and conflict management. / text