The prevalence of Virtual Team (VT) configurations in organizations has come to challenge the relevance of traditional management practices based on traditional, physically collocated teams. Creativity—a topical and multidisciplinary issue—has been under-researched within the context of virtuality. Predicated on the premise that creativity may be expressed differently in the context of VTs, I draw the conceptual foundations for this research from the fields of virtuality (i.e. VTs) and creativity, and use engineering design as the empirical context, with the aim of pursuing a better understanding of creativity in relationship with virtuality in the context of Virtual Design Teams (VDTs). Design constitutes a pertinent empirical context because (a) designers have to deliver outputs requiring creativity; and (b) their work is increasingly accomplished in VDT environments. I report on the findings from three case studies involving temporary VDTs. Studies 1 and 2 comprised student engineers. Study 3 was a comparative case study focusing on a team of professional engineers, who completed one design task while physically collocated (face-to-face, F2F) and another one while geographically dispersed (virtually), with the aim of isolating factors that are unique to virtuality. With an interpretive stance guiding this research, the same analytical approach for each case study, and with the team serving as the unit of analysis, I analysed the collected data (interview data, observations, video recordings, photographic material, documents, communication extracts, design and other outputs) qualitatively with the use of visual and thematic analysis. The thesis makes the following theoretical contributions: (a) it advances understanding of creativity within the VDT lifecycle; (b) it elicits factors influencing creativity in the temporary VDT context; and (c) it explains how the unique characteristics of virtuality influence creativity within this context. The thesis’ limitations as well as implications for research and practice are also discussed.

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

Information Technology is advancing at a frightening pace. Cloud computing and its subset, Software as a Service (SaaS), are rapidly challenging traditional thinking for enterprise-level application and infrastructure provision. The project-centric nature of the construction industry provides an environment where the utilisation of SaaS is commercially appropriate, given its ability to provide rapid set-up and predictable costs at the outset. Using project extranets, the construction industry has been - unusually for it as an industry sector - early-adopters of this cloud computing model. However, findings from the research highlight that there is a gap in the information and documents that pass from the construction phase into the operational phase of a building. This research considers examples of the SaaS IT model and how it has been used within a construction and facilities management industry context. A prototype system was developed to address the requirements of facilities management work order logging and tracking process. These requirements were gathered during detailed case studies of organisations within both the construction and facilities management sectors with a view to continue the use of building-specific information through its full life-cycle. The thesis includes a summary of the lessons learnt through system implementation within the construction-contracting organisation Taylor Woodrow, and it concludes with an IT strategy proposal that was developed based on a cloud computing model.

Modern organizations face many significant challenges because of turbulent environments and a competitive global economy. These competitive demands have forced many organizations to increase levels of flexibility and adaptability through the use of virtual environments, and global teams are prevalent in business organizations. Although significant research has been conducted on virtual teams, the development of shared understanding among the members of these teams has not been studied adequately. Time/space barriers, communication complexities, and team diversity hinder the development of shared understanding in these teams. Based on the Media Synchronicity Theory (MST), a new theoretical model was created that used the constructs use of communication media, mode of interaction and team diversity to ascertain the influence shared understanding in global virtual teams. Additionally, the research model examined the relationship between shared understanding and team performance. The developed, web-based survey measured the participants’ use of communication media, mode of interaction, diversity, shared understanding, and team performance in virtual environments. The survey was administered through SurveyMonkey and distributed to a pool of opt-in respondents from firms with virtual teams. A total of 118 respondents participated in the study. The findings of this study indicate that use of communication and familiarity with systems are strong determinants of shared understanding, and subsequently shared understanding is a strong predictor of team performance. The study also indicates that mode of interaction is less of a predictor of shared understanding, and that cultural diversity, modified diversity construct, did not influence shared understanding. As virtual teams continue to proliferate, executive leaders and managers must ensure that teams and environments are designed for collaboration through use of communication technologies that promote synchronicity, and that its members are familiar with systems which subsequently promotes shared understanding.

Virtual teams improve organizational performance and competitiveness because they reduce business travel and allow team members to work from anywhere, anytime, using the Internet to complete projects. Although researchers have identified benefits of using virtual teams, knowledge about how cultural backgrounds influence virtual team performance is limited. Illuminating this relationship may help leadership improve team performance. The purpose of this phenomenological study was to explore the lived experiences of team members with different cultural backgrounds to understand their effect on team performance. The research questions were based on the conceptual framework of organizational cultural theories developed by Schein and Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner. Interview questions were electronically distributed to a purposeful sample of 20 participants who worked on virtual teams and could describe their lived experiences. Data were collected, coded using open and axial techniques, and analyzed for themes and patterns. Key themes emerged such as cultural backgrounds, language barriers, communication, conflict, and use of information technology. Findings included techniques for improving communications, understanding different cultural backgrounds, and the satisfaction of team members. Implications for positive social change include an improved understanding among virtual team leaders regarding how different cultural backgrounds influence team performance. Results of this study may benefit organizations by helping them better manage the performance of multicultural virtual teams, thereby leading to improved product development and reduced costs associated with activities such as business travel and remote work.

Nonprofit leaders often place new employees with little experience in challenging virtual team settings, where they are expected to meet increased service demands. Productivity failures reported in the 2015 State of the Nonprofit Sector survey revealed that 76% of U.S. nonprofit agencies experienced increased demand for services in 2014, while 52% were unable to meet those demands. Based on the e-leadership and leader-member exchange (LMX) theories, the purpose of this descriptive, single case study was to identify the leadership strategies used by nonprofit midlevel supervisors to increase productivity of virtual teams containing new employees in Colorado. A purposeful sampling method facilitated identification of participants who had experience using successful leadership strategies to increase virtual team productivity. Data were collected through face-to-face semistructured interviews with 6 virtual team leaders and the review of organizational documents that contained weekly, executive leadership minutes over a period of 25 months. Data were analyzed using thematic analysis and word frequency searches. Three themes emerged related to increasing virtual team productivity: formal and informal staff support improved productivity, cohesive team dynamics improved productivity, and effective virtual staff mobility facilitated fieldwork. Human service nonprofit leaders who are proficient with virtual team leadership strategies could increase team productivity and meaningfully advance the use of virtual teams across the industry. Increasing nonprofit, virtual team productivity contributes to social change by meeting increased service demands in underserved communities and enhancing nonprofit employees' work experiences for continued support of the nonprofit mission.

The overarching goal of the proposed study is to develop and test a mediated multi-level model of leadership emergence in virtual teams, which aims to better understand not only the processes that result in leadership emergence in self-managed virtual teams, but also how patterns of emergent leadership and team member dispersion can impact team performance in collaborative activities. Virtual teams, which can be defined as "a collection of individuals who are geographically and/or organizationally or otherwise dispersed and who collaborate via communication and information technologies in order to accomplish a specific goal" (Zigurs, 2003), continue to grow in importance as to how organizations function in the 21st century (Hertel, Konradt, & Orlikowski, 2004; Lipnack & Stamps, 2000), and the benefits to companies and individuals are numerous. For employees, virtual teamwork offers flexibility in work-life balance, a decrease in time spent in travel and commuting, and a greater range of work-related opportunities and experiences, particularly for individuals with physical disabilities. For organizations, virtual teams offer cost savings on office space and travel, an increased knowledge base and accelerated organizational learning, access to a wider range of expertise and qualified labor, and increased productivity (Jude-York, Davis, & Wise, 2000; Gillam & Oppenheim, 2006). The model to be tested in the proposed study is predicated on the input--mediator--output--input (IMOI) model proposed by Ilgen, Hollenbeck, Johnson, & Jundt (2005). Also, heeding the recent call for researchers to better incorporate the potential of attribution theory (see Heider, 1958; Kelley, 1973; Weiner, 1986) in explaining organizational behavior (Martinko, Harvey, & Dasborough, 2010), the interpersonal attribution model proposed by Gilbert & Malone (1995) is applied within the IMOI framework for the purposes of this study. At the individual level, the model provides a theoretical linkage between communication behaviors and several outcomes, including team member perceptions/attributions and, ultimately, emergent leadership. At the team level, the model also incorporates the effect of leadership pattern differences across teams, as well as differences in level of virtuality, on overall team performance. Based on the results of an experiment involving 86 four-person teams, it was found that configuration and collocation have significant effects on team performance and peer perceptions of individual team members. A curvilinear relationship was found between the level of dispersion among team members and team performance, such that performance generally decreased as team dispersion increased, yet performance improved at the high end of the dispersion continuum. Collocation also had strong positive effects on perceptions of trust, ability, and leadership emergence. In terms of the relationships between communication-related behaviors and emergent leadership, task-based communications proved to be the strongest predictor of emergent leadership. The use of texting language was positively associated with perceptions of leadership emergence as well. These results have significant practical implications for the design of virtual teams from both a team configuration and a team member skills/individual differences perspective. Several avenues of future research are also discussed.

Background: As companies are operating more and more globally, the need for increasingly coordinating and cooperating activities are becoming important. One solution to problems associated with work in globally dispersed teams can be to organize business activites, such as product development, virtually. A virtual setting for knowledge transfer is becoming a part of day-to-day activities for globally dispersed organizations such as Autoliv, the company in focus for this study. Purpose: To explore to what extent and in what respect companies can, using virtual teams in the product development process, by codifying knowledge, improve communication and transfer of knowledge between business units within and between projects in order to improve and increase cooperation and coordination. Method: The approach taken, has been an hermeneutic case study where we have carried out 16 in-depth interviews with a total of 17 respondents. The interviews have been carried out in face-to-face or videoconference settings with Autoliv employees from all over the world. Results: Codification should be used as a complementary tool to the personalization strategy within knowledge intensive companies. The fact that Autoliv’s product development teams often are globally dispersed creates an even larger need for codification in order to reach efficiency in the knowledge sharing process. Positive effects from this can occur, such as help creating a common understanding, which will facilitate coordination and cooperation activities.

As global markets transcend nationalities in search for key advantages in cost,quality and flexibility, the once unbridgeable limit of geographical location isovercome by faster Internet speed lines, online services and tools that allowindividuals and businesses to interact regardless of space and time. This thesis studies the transition from traditional project management to virtualenvironments and the impact that this new paradigm has over dispersed teamsand their interactions among themselves and the project manager. The focus of the study lays on the concept of motivation within virtual projectmanagement and the role of the project manager to overcome the specificchallenges of this new working scenario. Additionally, parallels are drawn on themotivation features that virtual project management systems offer to projectmanagers as well as team members. This study shows the importance of bridging the difficulties of motivatingdispersed teams and how traditional techniques of motivation have a muchlesser impact on team members. The idea of progress and self accomplishmentare brought forth as the strongest motivators for dispersed teams. Finally, this study exposes the shortcomings of current projectware as a tool tomotivate teams and explores the idea of applying gamification techniques tothese software packages to lift the motivation responsibilities off the shoulders ofproject managers.

Globally distributed engineering teams are a reality in globally operating companies. However, research on teams is often done by psychologists, with a focus on general team building and working processes, and seldom on engineering teams and the challenges and benefits that are specific to them. In this thesis, experimental research on two globally distributed engineering teams is presented. First, one instance of globally distributed teams in computational fluid dynamics is scrutinized. Second, experimental research on idea generation methods used in globally distributed teams during the conceptual design phase of the product development process is presented. An experimental study simulating the global distribution of a three person Computational Fluid Dynamics team shows that successful sequential processing of a problem is possible given technological support by different internet based technologies. Three succeeding studies researched the influence of space and time during idea generation for an engineering problem, leading to the conclusion in the final study that idea generation in distributed engineering teams is a valid option. It is shown that the idea generation method has a significant effect on the number of ideas generated per team member. Further, the quality, novelty, and variety are each significantly influenced by both the idea generation method chosen and the team member’s location, but in different ways by the same level of each factor. Concluding, both experiments in distributed engineering teams show these teams have unused potential that can be utilized using appropriate process, procedures and tools.