Genom teknikens framfart senaste decennierna har företag fått anpassa sina verksamheter och skapa nya arbetssätt. Att arbeta virtuellt är ett växande fenomen där du idag kan sitta på olika geografiska platser och ändå ingå i samma arbetsgrupp eller projektteam och arbeta tillsammans genom digitala lösningar. Denna uppsats syftar till att skapa förståelse för hur projektledare i virtuella team arbetar för att sätta samman och motivera team. Utifrån syftet har det tagits fram två stycken frågeställningar, varpå dessa är följande; Hur arbetar projektledare för att stärka motivationen i virtuella team? Vilka fördelar ser projektledare med att sätta samman team virtuellt kontra traditionellt? I kapitlet ”Teoretisk referensram” redogörs för tidigare forskning och teorier. Bland annat kommer generell forskning för virtuella team att beskrivas, samt teorier om komponerande av virtuella team och hur ledare i virtuella team, på framgångsrika sätt, motiverar anställda. Studien utgår från en kvalitativ ansats, där sju (7) stycken intervjuer utförts med personer, som har eller har haft, ledande befattning i distribuerade arbetsgrupper. Resultatet av dessa intervjuer återges övergripande och med tillhörande citat i kapitlet ”Resultat och analys”. I det kapitlet återges även den empiri som framkommit och jämförs med den teoretiska referensramen. I kapitlet ”Slutsatser” besvaras frågeställningarna och slutsatser dras utifrån dessa. En stor fördel som har visat sig med att komponera virtuella team är den kompetensförsörjning som finns när det går att anställa personer från hela landet och ibland hela världen. Studien har även visat att det finns flera olika sätt att motivera sina anställda, där framförallt fysiska träffar någon gång under projektens gång visat sig vara av vikt. Slutligen sker en diskussion kring de resultat och slutsatser dragits samt ges förslag till framtida forskning. / Through the technological progress of the recent decades, companies have had to adjust their operations and create new work methods. Working virtually is a growing phenomenon and today you can sit in different places and still work in the same project through digital solutions. This paper aims to create an understanding of how project managers in virtual teams work to assemble and motivate teams. Based on the purpose, we have developed two question formulations. These are the following: ”How do project managers work to strengthen motivation in virtual teams?” And “What advantages do project managers see in putting together virtual teams versus traditional ones?”In the chapter “Theoretical Framework” we will go through previous research and theories. Among other things, general research on virtual teams and theories about the composing of virtual teams will be descried as well as research about motivation in virtual teams. The study is based on a qualitative approach, where seven interviews with people who currently have, or have had, leading positions in virtual teams have been carried out The results of these interviews are reproduced with accompanying quotes in the chapter “Results and Analysis”. In this chapter we will also present the empirical data compared with the theoretical framework. The chapter “Conclusions” will answer the question formulations and conclusions drawn from them. A big advantage with composing virtual teams is the supply of competence available when employing people all over the country and sometimes all over the world. The study has also shown that there are several different ways to motivate employees. Finally, there is a discussion of the results and conclusions. Also, suggestions of future research will be given.

This student thesis in General Management addresses how leaders can bridge the gap between work groups and teams in geographically dispersed organizations and partially distributed teams. These types of organizational structures are increasingly common in the globalized world of business, and bring benefits to many organizations by for example connecting skilled workers regardless of their location through the means of information and communications technology. However, previous research within the field of work in dispersed settings has identified several challenges that these settings entail, including areas like for example group cohesion and motivation. If not handled, these challenges may have negative effects on team performance and organizational effectiveness. Previous studies have mostly targeted the challenges in isolation. The purpose of this study is to provide a holistic perspective, connecting different challenges in order to pinpoint reasons and effects. By identifying consequences that follow from being geographically dispersed and investigating how the challenges affect a real-world organization, the study aims to suggest countermeasures to deal with these consequences. Theory is built using Informed Grounded Theory, based on primary data from 21 in-depth interviews conducted at a Swedish high tech company. Through an analysis combining the primary data with secondary data stemming from relevant literature, the study presents conclusions including suggested countermeasures to overcome challenges imposed by work in dispersed settings. The study identifies communication as the key factor with possibility to affect group cohesion and motivation directly, and thereby also performance indirectly. Thoughtful use of different types of communication can in fact counteract challenges and lead to increased productivity and well-being. The study has implications for organizations that are planning for, or currently utilizing a dispersed organizational structure, and aids in understanding the collected effects of the challenges involved. The study is conducted at one company, which can be seen as a limitation. To counteract for this limitation, the researchers have put in effort to emphasize generalizable factors.

Businesses and governmental agencies are increasingly reliant on virtual teams composed of team members in different location. However, such virtual teams face all the interpersonal challenges inherent in working in a group, plus additional challenges that are a consequence from communicating through electronic methods. Numerous technological tools are available to facilitate electronic communication, and some organizations provide Collaborative Technology Skills Training (CTST) to virtual team members to help them select and use these tools. In this study, the researcher investigated whether CTST improves virtual team effectiveness by quantifying relationships between CTST and five components of team effectiveness: knowledge sharing, trust, cohesion, performance, and satisfaction. The researcher designed a survey based on an extensive literature review to allow respondents to quantify and describe their virtual team experiences, including information on any CTST they received and their perceptions of the five components of team effectiveness. Prior to the main research study, a panel of experts used the Delphi method to evaluate the survey, commenting on structure, content, and applicability to the research questions. The researcher then evaluated the temporal reliability and internal reliability of the survey. For the research study, the researcher invited over 1000 members of virtual teams to complete the online, self-report survey. Data were analyzed using MANOVA to investigate and confirm that CTST significantly affected components of team effectiveness. Results of this study can be used to improve CTST, thereby increasing the effectiveness of virtual teams.

Globalization and fast developing technology are allowing organizations to spread their operations across the world. While this is often cost effective and increases companies’ competitiveness, a new challenge for leadership has arisen as people and teams are becoming geographically dispersed. Leaders and followers are relying more heavily on computer-mediated communication instead of traditional face-to-face interaction. The aim of this thesis is to gain a deeper understanding of leadership in geographically dispersed teams. As communication is occurring primarily through virtual channels, the purpose is to study the effect this phenomenon has on the leader’s role and how followers experience virtual leadership. This thesis also outlines the impact of leadership in virtual teams; how to create and maintain team spirit, how to establish trust, and how to ensure team effectiveness. Additionally, this study examines the main challenges and opportunities  in virtual leadership, what competencies are required for virtual leaders, and how important communication is in the concept of virtual leadership. Data for this study was collected from ten various professionals, including both leaders' and followers', by conducting qualitative semi-structured interviews with each individual. The findings of the empirical research show that there is a relatively optimistic attitude towards virtual leadership. However, there are certainly critical challenges when it comes to relationship building, team cohesion, and communication. There is a significant need for raising awareness of virtual leadership, as it is becoming more the norm than the exception in the modern business world.

Companies from across the globe move from traditional towards virtual organisations to be able to respond effectively to developments and changes in the global economy. As a consequence, the leadership of virtual teams will evolve as one of the major challenges future leaders will have to face. Hence, this triggers a growing demand in knowledge and understanding of virtual teams from both science and practice. So far, there is only basic research available on key elements of virtual teaming and limited literature on the leadership of virtual teams. With the increasing significance of a corporate culture in organisations, science will want to investigate its impact on virtual team leadership. Shedding light into this matter is hence this dissertation\'s main objective. After a thorough literature review and a pre-study, a leading EURO STOXX 50 company which has rolled out a global corporate culture in the past years was investigated using interviews with experienced virtual team leaders. Their experiences from before and after the introduction of a global corporate culture were assessed and analysed. Finally, focus groups were conducted to validate the results. In order to provide a holistic picture of the influence of a global corporate culture on the leaders of virtual teams, each empirical component follows a three phase sequence. First, it seeks to understand the environment of a virtual team leader, aiming specifically at investigating how the corporate culture shifts the behaviour of virtual team members. In the next phase, it focuses on how virtual leaders then react to the shift in team member behaviour. The last phase focuses on how the leaders are directly influenced by the global corporate culture themselves. The results of the study show that a common global corporate culture positively influences the collaboration of virtual team members and increases harmony between them. This leads to higher team performance. In response to this shift in team behaviour as well as due to the direct impact of the corporate culture, the leader himself switches gradually from a transactional towards a transformational leadership style, thereby again increasing the performance of the team. The results of the empirical research are channelled into a final product, namely detailed best practices for virtual team leaders on how to develop themselves and their team into effective virtual collaborators. This model uses corporate culture as a catalyst.

The extensive use of global teams to develop software has prompted researchers to investigate various factors that can enhance a team’s performance. While a significant body of research exists on global software teams, previous research has not fully explored the interrelationships and collective impact of various factors on team performance. This study explored a model that added the characteristics of a team’s culture, ability, communication frequencies, response rates, and linguistic categories to a central framework of team performance. Data was collected from two student software development projects that occurred between teams located in the United States, Panama, and Turkey. The data was obtained through online surveys and recorded postings of team activities that occurred throughout the global software development projects. Partial least squares path modeling (PLS-PM) was chosen as the analytic technique to test the model and identify the most influential factors. Individual factors associated with response rates and linguistic characteristics proved to significantly affect a team’s activity related to grade on the project, group cohesion, and the number of messages received and sent. Moreover, an examination of possible latent homogeneous segments in the model supported the existence of differences among groups based on leadership style. Teams with assigned leaders tended to have stronger relationships between linguistic characteristics and team performance factors, while teams with emergent leaders had stronger. Relationships between response rates and team performance factors. The contributions in this dissertation are three fold. 1) Novel analysis techniques using PLS-PM and clustering, 2) Use of new, quantifiable variables in analyzing team activity, 3) Identification of plausible causal indicators for team performance and analysis of the same.

This Master thesis is an exploratory study that had the initial aim to research leadership in distributed teams, but, which ended up changing the focus as a result of unexpected findings. Therefore, the study refocused on collaboration in distributed teams with the purpose to explore the work environment of distributed teams from a collaborative perspective, with the aim of trying to develop an in‐depth understanding of the factors that contribute and challenge the cohesion in these teams. Furthermore, our aim was to present our findings in a model, which would describe the collaborative environment in distributed teams. Our research design was a single case study with embedded cases, overall 13 interviews were conducted representing leaders and members of hybrid distributed teams, which gave rich and descriptive data of their collaborative environment. Our empirical findings showed that structure has a significant impact on collaboration. This led to another finding, which states that management skills are more relevant than leadership skills in the virtual context. Furthermore, we could also identify several challenges, which were not explicitly approached in previous literature. Limitations/Implications: Our research is limited to a single case study, therefore future investigations including several cases or companies from different industries would be advised to strengthen the findings. Our research project contributes to the existing literature, by extending the research field of collaboration in distributed teams, while also having implications for companies, which have employees across the world and thus, consider developing or implementing this specific work unit.

Background: In various industries, market power is concentrated on a few major companies, which makes competition increasingly challenging for small and medium-sized enterprises. Those SMEs are furthermore impacted by the characteristics of their industry and need to change constantly and adapt to maintain competitive in this challenging market environment. The IT sector is characterized by a high degree of digitalization, quickly changing customer needs, and short lifecycles. Thus, many IT firms apply agile working methods, increase working in teams, and use different digital tools and applications. In many cases, those adjustments also impact the organizational structure of the firm and require a change in management. Purpose: In the context of a medium-sized IT firm, this study aims to evaluate the effects of digitalization on management innovation in project teams. Method: To gain a deep understanding of the researched topic, we chose a qualitative interview-based study. We collected the data for this single-case study in semi-structured interviews and applied purposeful sampling (theory based). For the data analysis, we used content analysis (open code; grouping; categorization). Conclusion: We developed a framework describing the influence of digitalization on management innovation in six dimensions, which emerged in the study. Those dimensions are project teams, virtual teams, communication & collaboration, trust, technology, as well as leadership & management. Digitalization strongly influences management innovations in all six identified fields. Digitalization, management innovation, and the respective field are interdependent. In our case, we found that digitalization acts as an enabler or simplifier for management innovation in all six dimensions.

Projetos Internacionais são uma conseqüência natural da diversidade de vantagens competitivas entre diversos países. Com o crescente desenvolvimento da Tecnologia de Informação e enorme expansão do mercado global, tais projetos passaram a empregar Equipes Virtuais para permitir a interação entre equipes remotas de projeto. Tal interação é composta por variados aspectos das Interfaces técnica, humana e organizacional. Este estudo pretende investigar as associações entre estes aspectos das interfaces da interação local-remota das equipes virtuais e o Sucesso percebido dos Projetos Internacionais de Tecnologia de Informação (TI) que dependem de tal interface virtual para alcançar seus objetivos. O foco em projetos de TI se baseia no fato de tais empresas disporem dos meios e experiência necessária para serem as pioneiras no uso de Equipes Virtuais, e acreditamos que elas sejam o modelo para que outras empresas empreguem semelhante implementação de projetos em futuro próximo. Foi realizada uma pesquisa junto a empresas de TI brasileiras, que reunissem as caracteristicas do estudo. Os projetos tiveram seus dados coletados através de questionários e tais dados foram analisados através de técnicas estatísticas. Como resultado, várias associações significativas foram determinadas entre os aspectos das interfaces e o sucesso dos projetos considerados. O estudo revelou ainda que elementos clássicos de gerenciamento de projetos estão entre os mais importantes dentre as associações observadas. Também foi feita uma análise do comportamento de variáveis intervenientes, como Porte e Complexidade, e constatou-se um efeito sobre a associação entre Interfaces e Sucesso. Tais resultados geraram recomendações para os gerentes de Projetos Internacionais. / International projects are a natural consequence of the diversity of competitive advantages among different countries. Considering the huge development of Information Tecnology and the overwhelming global market expansion, such projects start employing Virtual Teams in order to make remote project team interaction possible. Such interaction is composed of various technical, human and organizational Interface elements. This study intends to investigate the association between interface elements present on the local-remote interaction of virtual teams and the perceived success of the international Information Technology (IT) projects which depend on those virtual interface in order to achieve their goals. Our focus on IT projects relies on the fact that IT companies have the means and expertise needed to pioneer Virtual Teams usage, and we are confident that they will set the model for other companies to employ similar project implementation in the near future. A field study was done with Brazilian IT companies matching the caracteristics required. Data has been collected thru questionaries and statistic techniques were used on data analysis. As a result, many significant associations have been found between Interface elements and the Project Success. Further, the study find out classic project management elements among the most important associations found. We also considered the effect of control variables, such as Team Size and Project Complexity, and we found some effect into the association between Interfaces and Success. Those results generated recommendations for International Project Managers.

A gestão de equipes virtuais de projetos globais passa pelas áreas de conhecimento da gestão de projetos tradicional e, por outro lado, demanda maior atenção em alguns aspectos, como a comunicação, Em equipes virtuais, o processo de comunicação torna-se bastante crítico, à medida que alguns dos recursos tradicionais de comunicação em projetos (reuniões face-aface, comunicação não-verbal, visualização do trabalho in loco, dentre outros) passam a ser limitados e substituídos por outros baseados em tecnologia (teleconferências, e-mails, chats, etc.), Além disso, é freqüente que em projetos globais a composição das equipes não seja homogênea e contemple membros provenientes de diferentes culturas. Esse trabalho estuda o processo de comunicação como uma variável crítica de sucesso em equipes virtuais de projetos globais, analisando como esse processo é afetado por diferenças culturais entre os membros das equipes. Um survey sobre percepção de ferramentas de comunicação virtual e suas características é respondido por um grupo de americanos e um grupo de brasileiros e as diferenças encontradas são analisado à luz das diferenças de cultura nacional. Constata-se através dos resultados do survey que diferenças significativas estão presentes na percepção que os dois grupos apresentam quanto às ferramentas de comunicação virtual, de forma coerente com seus traços culturais. / The management of global projects\' virtual teams comprehends the knowledge areas of the traditional project management but, on the other hand, demands closer attention to some aspects like communication. In virtual teams, the communication process becomes even more critical as some of the traditional resources of communication in projects such as face-theface meetings , non-verbal communication, visualization of the work in place and others, become limited and need to be replaced by other methods based on technology (teleconference, e-mail, chat, etc.), Moreover, it is frequent that in global projects the composition of the teams is not homogeneous and encompasses members from different cultures. This research studies the communication process as a critical success factor in global projects virtual teams, analyzing how this process is affected by cultural differences between the members of the teams. One survey about the perception of virtual communication tools and its characteristics is answered by a group of Americans and a group of Brazilians and the differences found are analyzed from the point of view of differences in the national cultures. From the surveys results it can be seen that there are significant differences between the perceptions of the groups about the virtual communication tools, according to