This thesis examines the ethical challenges faced by technical communicators working in global virtual teams. Virtual teams usage are becoming increasingly more popular and diverse. As a result, it is valuable for technical communicators to understand and recognize the challenges that are faced within global virtual teams in order to find solutions and preventive measures for these challenges. The ethical challenges present in global virtual teams were determined by examining the literature on virtual teams and intercultural ethics and conducting a survey of practicing technical communicators who have experience in virtual teams. The purpose of the survey was to determine the ethical challenges that are present for technical communicators and how these issues were resolved. The survey results reveal valuable approaches to resolving and preventing ethical challenges in virtual teams. This thesis contributes to a better understanding of virtual teams and intercultural ethics and examines the ethical challenges that are faced by technical communicators. Furthermore, the thesis presents preventive measures for addressing ethical challenges. Finally, the thesis also provides suggestions for future research into the ethical challenges that are faced within global virtual teams, particularly those related to cultural differences.

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has affected organizations as they have been forced to move their operations from a physical space to a fully remote work environment. This rapid and forced digitalization puts pressure on organizations and their leaders to guide them through these uncertain times. Middle-managers have been seen as a vital link between the top and lower level of the organization, and through utilizing transformational leadership, adaptations to rapid changes might be less disruptive for followers and the organization. However, COVID-19 has resulted in an unprecedented situation which has caught the middle-manager in the middle of turbulent organizational change. Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to interpret middle-managers’ adaptation to the forced change from a physical working environment towards a fully remote one from a managerial perspective with the transformational leadership dimension. Method: To address the purpose of this study, a qualitative research design was used, and data was collected through three semi-structured interviews. Conclusion: This study found that three major adaptations were made by middle-managers in response to the forced relocation to remote. These three adaptations influenced three dimensions of transformational leadership who has received increased attention following forced remote which puts pressure on the middle-manager to address these dimensions while adhering to the new contextual circumstances.

This companion dissertation reports the findings of applied case study research on four community college organizational units that consistently meet or exceed standard performance measures. In addition, prior ample evidence confirms that performance extended significantly beyond what might be explained by available tangible resources alone. The case study contexts are common in higher education in general: a) an external partnership, (b) an ad hoc team, (c) a traditional, cross-divisional service unit, and (d) a grant-funded student service unit. Emerging positive organizational theory and research show promise for revealing performance-influencing phenomena and behaviors that are not adequately represented in standard measures. Therefore, this collaborative case study research was designed to explore positive influences on the success of the four community college units. This companion dissertation contains three manuscripts. Chapter 2, a technical report, contains the collaboratively-written synthesis of findings from the four individual case studies. Key findings across the units suggest the influence on performance of: (a) a people-first culture, (b) authentic, trusting, inclusive leadership, and (c) resource richness beyond constrained tangible resources. This collective analysis reveals that leveraging resources for capacity building can help make the difference between an organization that performs adequately and one that performs beyond expectations. In Chapter Three this researcher examines an individual case study of a community college student support services unit. I found that this unit’s culture influences high performance by putting people first, leveraging intangible resources, and providing leaders and all unit members with autonomy and support. I also discovered that relationships, tacit knowledge, diversity, leadership qualities, and traits of unit members when leveraged in combination improved functioning and performance the most. In Chapter Four, I suggest that the recommendations for high performance made in Chapter Three can be applied to a newly developed virtual coaching network, whose members provide student services in a virtual environment. The actions recommended to help the network meet what appear to be conflicting administrative goals are: (a) identify unit strengths, (b) connect strengths to the unit mission, (c) develop constructive relationships, and (d) identify and leverage resources. KEYWORDS: community colleges, organizational functioning, student services, virtual teams, positive organizational scholarship

This diploma thesis is outlining the topic of virtual teams in the work context dealing with cooperation in virtual teams. In this frame it focuses mainly on communication, trust, motivation and performance. The theoretical part is devoted to the differences between the working group and a team, group cooperation in the work environment and multicultural cooperation specifics. It defines the social psychological work aspects in the context of virtuality and draws nearer up-to date findings of the vitual teamwork area. The leadership and coordination of virtual teams and the role of a leader are also touched. The empirical part of the thesis introduces a research of mapping the topic of cooperation within virtual teams using the methodological triangulation. The issue of virtual teams is seen in the organizational context from virtual team leaders' point of view. A point of view of other team members is also noticed. In the mapping study are investigated the most frequently occuring themes of communication, trust, motivation and performance or virtual teams leadership, respectively. This study also indicates the possible advantages offered by this way of work organization and similarly, it presents possible risks, which may be encountered when working with geographically distributed teams. Keywords...

No setor da terceirização de serviços de Tecnologia da Informação (TI), uma estratégia global emergente é o multisourcing, que busca a combinação na provisão de serviços de TI a partir do melhor conjunto de fornecedores ao redor do globo. No campo operacional do multisourcing, a cooperação precisa ser desenvolvida entre as equipes de serviço que, além de fronteiras organizacionais, frequentemente estão distribuídas através de fronteiras geográficas, culturais e temporais. Dadas as complexidades do ambiente em que essas equipes virtuais atuam, parte do sucesso do multisourcing pode ser colocado em risco caso os desafios enfrentados por tais equipes não sejam gerenciados adequadamente. A constituição da base de fornecimento do multisourcing parece ser um dos elementos críticos a serem considerados nessa questão, já que suas características podem afetar a estruturação das equipes virtuais e, por conseguinte, o desempenho das mesmas. O objetivo deste trabalho é abordar a questão do desempenho das equipes virtuais no contexto do multisourcing de serviços de TI. Busca, portanto, analisar o impacto que determinados elementos estruturais das equipes virtuais, relacionados com as características da base de fornecimento do multisourcing, apresentam sobre o desempenho dessas equipes. Para essa finalidade, foi desenvolvido um modelo teórico relacionando as variáveis de interesse e o mesmo foi avaliado com base nos dados coletados a partir de um survey com profissionais de prestação de serviços de TI. O método de análise estatística utilizado é a modelagem de equações estruturais de mínimos quadrados parciais. Os resultados do modelo estatístico sugerem que a variedade de práticas de trabalho apresenta influências significativas para o desempenho das equipes estudadas e que a influência do tamanho e distribuição da equipe podem ser minimizadas caso os membros das equipes possuam elevada experiência prévia com o desenvolvimento de trabalho em contextos virtuais. Esses resultados também foram extrapolados para uma análise acerca da importância das características da base de fornecimento para o sucesso do multisourcing de serviços de TI. Implicações para teoria e prática são discutidas. / In the outsourcing of Information Technology (IT) services, an emergent global strategy is the multisourcing of IT services, whose purpose is to blend IT service provisioning from the optimal set of suppliers around the globe. At the operational level, the cooperation needs to be developed among the service teams that, besides organizational boundaries, are frequently distributed across geographical, cultural and temporal boundaries. Given the complex environments where these virtual teams operate, much of the multisourcing success can be at risk if the challenges faced by these teams are not properly managed. The composition of the multisourcing supply base appears to be a critical element to be considered in this matter, since its characteristics may affect the structuring of the virtual teams and, therefore, the team performance itself. The aim of this study is to approach virtual team performance in the context of the multisourcing of IT services. To this end, it attempts to assess the impact of specific structural elements of virtual teams, which are associated with the characteristics of the multisourcing supply base, over the performance of these teams. For this purpose, a theoretical model was developed and evaluated with data collected through a survey among IT service provisioning professionals. The data was analyzed using partial least squares structural equation modeling. The results from the statistical model suggest that the variety of work practices has a significant influence over the virtual team performance and that the influence stemming from team size and team distribution can be minimized if the virtual team members have considerable previous experience with the development of work in virtual settings. These results were also extrapolated for a discussion in regards to the importance of the supply base characteristics to the multisourcing success. Implications for practice and theory are discussed.

Gestão de projetos com equipes virtuais é um tema relevante no meio acadêmico e na prática das empresas e neste contexto, o estudo dos fatores críticos de sucesso neste tipo de atividade possui grande importância. Este trabalho teve por objetivo identificar os fatores críticos de sucesso na gestão de projetos com equipes virtuais e verificar como cada um destes influencia no sucesso de projetos com equipes virtuais. Para tanto, identificou-se na literatura pertinente um conjunto de sete fatores críticos de sucesso com seus respectivos atributos. Usando-se de survey, foram coletados dados em duas pesquisas Primeiramente, um piloto que teve por objetivo coletar a percepção de gerentes de projetos sobre o nível de importância de cada um dos sete fatores críticos de sucesso identificados na literatura. Este piloto permitiu que um entendimento inicial fosse obtido de forma a se desenhar a pesquisa final. Em seguida, na pesquisa final, coletaram-se dados de projetos em nível mundial os classificando em América Latina, Ásia e Oceania, Estados Unidos e Canadá e Europa. Verificou-se a presença de cada fator crítico de sucesso frente ao sucesso percebido em cada projeto, avaliado conforme o modelo de SHENHAR e DVIR (2007). Usando-se de análise fatorial, determinou-se um conjunto de atributos para os fatores críticos de sucesso avaliados que foram comparados com o sucesso percebido em cada projeto através de análise de correlação de Pearson. Adicionalmente, fez-se uso de um conjunto de variáveis de controle para verificar se estas influenciavam na correlação entre os fatores críticos de sucesso e as dimensões de sucesso, de modo a dar solidez para os achados da pesquisa. O estudo concluiu que oito são os fatores críticos de sucesso em projetos que usam equipes virtuais, com a seguinte escala de importância, do mais para o menos importante: 1) liderança; 2) comportamento do membro da equipe; 3) padrão de comunicação da equipe; 4) confiança; 5) comunicação do membro da equipe; 6) ferramentas de controle; 7) gestão do conhecimento e; 8) organização e estrutura. Cada fator crítico de sucesso possui um conjunto de atributos e influencia de forma distinta em cada dimensão de sucesso de SHENHAR e DVIR (2007). Finalmente, são descritas as limitações do trabalho e recomendações de pesquisas futuras. / Project management using virtual teams is a theme of great relevance at this moment in the academy and for project management professionals. In this theme, the study of critical success factors is of great importance. This work had the objective of identify the critical success factors for managing virtual teams and verified how each of these critical success factors causes influence to the success of projects using virtual teams. For that, this work identified a group of seven critical success factors and their respective attributes in the literature. Using survey, collected data in two researches, a pilot research that had the objective of getting project managers perception on the level of importance of each of these seven critical success factors identified in the literature. This pilot research allowed an initial understanding so the final research could be drawn. In the final research, a world wide data was collected being classified as Latin America, Asia and Oceania, United States and Canada and Europe. It was verified the presence of each critical success factor against the perceived success of the project measured using the model from SHENHAR e DVIR (2007). Using factor analysis it was determined a set of attributes for each critical success factor comparing them to the perceived success of the project using Pearsons correlation analysis. In addition, a set of control variables was used to verify if these cased any type of influence to the correlation measured between the critical success factors and the success dimensions, in order to consolidate the findings of this research. The study concluded the existence of eight critical success factors in projects using virtual teams, in the following scale of importance, from the most to the less important: 1) leadership; 2) team member behavior; 3) team communication pattern; 4) trust; 5) team member communication; 6) control tools; 7) knowledge management and; 8) organization and structure. Each critical success factor has its own set of attributes and has a different influence in each success dimension from SHENHAR e DVIR (2007). Finally, it describes the limitations of the study and recommendations for future researches.

The use of dispersed (virtual) teams is growing rapidly in the engineering profession. To help prepare students for work in this type of industry, university engineering courses are requiring students to work in teams. Industry leaders and university faculty are interested in improving and measuring the performance of these distributed teams. Surveys, interviews, and observations from the AerosPACE Partners for the Advancement of Collaborative Engineering (AerosPACE) capstone design course are examined to demonstrate how different collaboration tools can be used to best enhance a distributed design team's effectiveness. Collaboration tools to which distributed design teams should give extra consideration at different stages of the product development process are identified and presented in a model. Teams that follow this model will be more effective in their communication patterns. This study also consists of examining whether peer ratings can accurately predict team effectiveness (as defined by task and relational effectiveness) within a dispersed multidisciplinary, design team. The hypotheses predict that peer ratings will not be unidimensional over time, and will have a positive, significant relationship with team effectiveness. A longitudinal study was conducted on data gathered form the same capstone design course. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was first used to test unidimensionality of peer ratings and structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to model the data and determine any predictive relationships. Model fit statistics are reported to confirm adequate fit for each model. Results showed that while peer ratings are unidimensional at individual time points, they don't behave equally over time and should be considered separately. The structural equation models yielded mixed results, with some parts of peer ratings significantly predicting relational effectiveness and with yet failing to predict task effectiveness. As such, by examining peer assessments, supervisors and faculty will be able to determine and predict relational effectiveness of teams working at different locations, but should use other methods to predict task effectiveness.

Over the last 2 decades of advances in technology, organizations have used virtual teams (VTs) as one way to expand globally. Strong leadership and communication skills with followers are essential qualities for successful VTs. It is important to conduct research related to charismatic leadership and communication satisfaction of team members as many organizations now use VTs. The purpose of the survey study was to examine the relationship of perceived charismatic leadership qualities in VT leaders and communication satisfaction in VT members. The research questions examined the association between charismatic leadership qualities and the subdimension of communication satisfaction. Charismatic leadership was the theoretical framework for the study, which posits that leadership and communication are contributing factors to successful VTs. Data were collected from property managers of a major student housing management company (n = 111) using convenience sampling. The Conger-Kanungo Charismatic Leadership Questionnaire and Communication Satisfaction Survey were e-mailed to the property managers through Survey Monkey. Multiple regression analysis showed that a number of charismatic leadership qualities were statistically associated with communication satisfaction. Inspiring strategic and organizational goals explained the most variance in conflict resolution (p < 0.001). The results may contribute to the body of knowledge on VTs, as the results suggest that a leadership-focused approach can transform VTs into highly communicative teams. Implications for positive social change are that management awareness of charismatic leadership qualities can have a positive effect on the enhancement of communication satisfaction and employee productivity.

Syftet med uppsatsen är att bidra med kunskap om virtuella team, genom att undersöka medarbetares och ledares upplevelser av att arbeta inom sådana team. Uppsatsens resultat förväntas kunna bidra till en ökad kunskap om virtuella team som verkar inom samma tidszon samt hur tillit och kommunikation förhåller sig inom virtuella team. Uppsatsen innefattar nio semistrukturerade intervjuer som genomförts med både ledare och medarbetare för att besvara frågeställningarna och genom det uppnå syftet. Att skapa en stark tillit mellan individerna i ett virtuellt team är det som anses svårast. Resultatet visade dock att virtuella team i dagens arbetsmiljö inte har samma problematik som de tidigare haft. Slutsatsen som drogs var att under premissen att virtuella team arbetar inom samma tidszon så påverkas arbetet inte i någon större utsträckning. / The aim of the study is to contribute with knowledge about virtual teams by investigating co-workers and leaders’ perception of working in such teams. Nine semi-structured interviews with co-workers and leaders were made in this qualitative case study. In line with previous studies, the result reveals that creating trust is considered the most difficult for the individuals within virtual teams. Virtual teams in today's working environment do not have the same problems as they used to have. It was concluded that if virtual teams work within the same time zone, the work is not affected to a great extent.

This thesis investigates the role of technology-use mediation in supporting the work of global virtual teams. The work is set in the context of a longer term action research programme into collaborative computing and global virtual teams, initiated by Auckland University of Technology in New Zealand and Uppsala University in Sweden. Over the period since 1998, global virtual collaborations involving teams of students from both universities have been conducted annually. This thesis investigates the 2004 collaboration cycle, in which participants from St Louis University Missouri joined the collaboration. This was the first triadic collaboration, and covered Northern, Southern and Western aspects of the globe while traversing three widely divergent time-zones. In spite of the extensive experience in collaboration possessed by the coordinators at all three sites, the results of the global virtual trial were at best mixed. This repeated experience of dissatisfaction in our global virtual collaborations, in spite of the technology being in place has been a primary motivator for this work. Why is global virtual collaboration difficult? What roles and activities are critical? How can we do it better? These are not issues solely to do with the student actors in the global virtual teams, but more to do with the supporting cast, engaged in “activities which involve the shaping of other users activities of [technology] use” (Orlikowski et al., 1995, p.425). Thus came about my interest in exploring the topic of technology-use mediation. This thesis applies a research framework adapted from DeSanctis & Poole’s “Adaptive Structuration Theory” (1994) by the author. Initially applied to “facilitation” in virtual teams “Extended Adaptive Structuration Theory (EAST)” (Clear, 1999a), has undergone further development. The resulting research framework “Technology-use Mediated AST (TUMAST)” is applied here for the first time to investigate technology-use mediation activities performed during the global virtual collaborative trial. A corpus of data based on the email communications of supporting parties to the collaboration is analysed in depth in this study, applying a combination of grounded theoretic and structurational techniques. Thus a very rich and firmly grounded picture of the processes of technology-use mediation is built. This thesis represents the first known in-depth longitudinal study of technology-use mediation in a real global virtual team setting. From this exploratory study some novel theorizations have resulted. Methodologically it demonstrates analysis of technology-use mediation applying the TUMAST framework in a manner that captures the richness and evolution over time of these complex activities. Substantively it proposes a novel theory of “Collaborative Technology Fit (CTF)”. It is hoped that future global virtual team coordinators and researchers may apply the theory in order to map their situation, and diagnose their degree of collaborative alignment on multiple dimensions, thus enabling corrective actions to be taken. While the work arises in a tertiary education context, it reflects the reality of professionals at work in a global virtual team. Its application within other domains remains to be proven, but readings from the literature, and personal experience within global virtual software development teams suggest its wider applicability.