Virtual worlds provide a way to simulate face-to-face meetings via three dimensional environments where users can meet and communicate through avatars, or their graphical and customized online alter egos. Unfortunately, minimal research exists into the application of virtual worlds on virtual teams for real project management success. This is a concern because virtual worlds can restore the visual cues that foster trust but their avatars' identities may diverge from their owners', thus potentially undermining that trust. Since virtual team members may never physically meet, it is unclear how this will affect virtual team member trust and project success when avatars are used for project communication. This qualitative study assessed whether the authentic projection of an owner's identity via their avatar is an antecedent of team trust. It presented a theoretical model that depicts the impact of virtual team trust on the ability of project managers to leverage the enhanced delivery opportunities virtual worlds provide and the impacts of team member comfort with the virtual world medium and their attitudes toward others' avatar designs on virtual team trust.

Over the last decades, there is a constant experimentation on new organizational models and structures by many international companies aiming to overcome the difficulties of a highly competitive global market and satisfy the needs of the customers 24/7. As such, the companies have commonly adopted virtual team strategies using also the technological advancements. In order to optimally use their resources, they have also used matrix organizational structures. In such complex and demanding organizational models, the virtual managers face a lot of challenges in order to effectively lead their teams. Therefore, the required managerial competencies and skills related to an effective team performance are of great scientific interest. The objective of this thesis is twofold. Firstly, this thesis aims to examine how managerial competencies of a virtual manager in matrix organizations influence the performance of a team and what the most important skills of these competencies are. Secondly, it aims to identify the managerial skills that a virtual functional manager and a virtual project leader need in order to effectively manage their teams and compare these skillsets. This study adapts a survey strategy with the use of an online questionnaire and gathers responses from professional engineers that virtually work in matrix organizational schemes mainly based in Sweden and Switzerland. The descriptive analysis of the collected data shows that both type of virtual managers (functional and project) have similar managerial skills which are commonly found in managers working in more traditional organizational models. This is not in line with the findings of our study, since in our analysis we considered the virtuality dimension, for which our results show that it strongly affects the virtual team performance. Therefore, the required managerial competence is formed with skills that are more important in the virtual context than in other traditional models. A second finding is that a virtual functional manager requires different skills compared to the virtual project leader, which suggests that the companies should account for the management role in the hiring process of a specific type of virtual manager. A future research on virtual teams in matrix organizations taking into consideration the different levels of virtuality or broader sampling techniques or case studies per industry would be of a great interest.

Background: Virtual teams are becoming an increasingly prominent organizational unit, mainly as a result of globalization, digitalization, and the Covid-19 pandemic. While enabling operational advantages, virtuality may be adverse for the team members’ motivation as limited physical interaction in virtual teams can cause feelings of loneliness and demotivation. However, the full impact of the limited physical social interaction on member motivation remains unclear.  Purpose: The study’s purpose is to contribute to knowledge development regarding individual motivation in virtual teams, and how it is affected by limited physical social interaction. The study further aims to provide insight into how to manage such teams to strengthen the motivation of the virtual team members and thus improve the overall functioning of the team.  Method: A qualitative research design was utilized for this study. The empirical data was obtained through semi-structured interviews conducted with ten virtual team members operating within the IT industry. Further, an abductive research approach was applied, and the collected data were analyzed using thematic analysis.  Conclusion: Social dimensions are interdependent and affect each other. They also interplay with social identity and the need to belong. Limited social ties and socialization are generally a motivational issue, but the perception and motivational effect varies greatly between individuals as a result of personal factors. However, virtual team members are still generally motivated, mainly as a result of the independence that the virtual setting provides. Motivation can be improved over time as the team members get to know each other better. The manager should also plan physical, or if not feasible, digital social activities focused on bringing value and not awkwardness. Lastly, the manager is advised to promote team empowerment as it fosters prosocial motivation, which is generally preferable in virtual teams.

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As the need for cost-efficient, talented teams continues to grow, leaders often consider the use of globally dispersed teams, also defined as virtual teams. Despite the apparent benefits, the unique needs of virtual team members are often overlooked in general leadership, change management, and retention discussions. Leaders need to understand contributing factors to the attrition of virtual workers. The foundation for this research included theories of employee retention and change management. The research question for this qualitative phenomenological study focused on the lived experiences of current or former virtual financial services workers regarding job retention. Participants were chosen using purposeful sampling resulting in the selection of 15 individuals who had worked on a virtual financial services team within the past 3 years. The researcher used open-ended interview questions to report the lived experiences of virtual team members related to attrition, retention, and change. The researcher used the phenomenological descriptive approach for the analysis. A combination of hand coding and coding software revealed recurring themes. Themes from the results of the study included challenges of the virtual environment, leadership improvements, productivity impacts resulting from disengagement of the leader, and improvement of communication strategies. Suggestions for further research include frequency of communication, leadership training, team member selection, and further theory development for virtual leaders. The impact to positive social change occurs when virtual workers are satisfied in their role, thus impacting their ability to provide for their family, engage more frequently in activities within their community, and contribute to the success of the company.

The diploma thesis deals with corporate culture in international firm. Development of human resources is oriented on working person. The trend of cognitive ekonomy is now actual. Internation firm must react to various and dynamic competition. There are three parts. The employees and the satisfaction with corporate culture. The influence of American parent company to Czech subsidiary firm. The efficiency of virtual team. The exporation was made in Czech subsidiary firm that deal with information technology. There were not detect some important problems. Nevertheless, finally there were a proposal of some parts, which threaten with potential troubels.

Abstract The study investigated how individuals evaluate others' knowledge when they work as a distributed team. Theoretically, the study was based on contemporary theory on collaborative learning and combined with the theories which explain how individuals evaluate others' perspectives in social learning situations. Interpersonal evaluation of knowledge was conceptualized as one mediating process which is needed between social and individual knowledge planes. This study builds on a design-based research approach. Three research experiments were conducted. In the study, a pedagogical model and a visualization tool were developed based on the findings gathered from the first and the second empirical research experiments. It was also investigated how the working model and the visualization tool supported interpersonal evaluation of knowledge. In practice, the model and the tool were tested in the experiments with distributed teams. The results of the experiments are reported in four research articles (Articles I–IV). Based on the analysis of the three research experiments, it can be concluded that when the distributed team members evaluate the other team members' thinking, they use several cognitive reasoning strategies. The findings indicate that the evaluation strategies, such as perspective-taking, comparing, attribution and categorization fulfill each other when the team members try to take the perspectives and shared knowledge of others into account. The results showed also that with the working model or the visualization tool it was possible to support only some strategies of interpersonal evaluation of knowledge at one time. The findings highlight the fact that interpersonal evaluation of knowledge is a multidimensional process. The dimensions which affect the evaluation of others' knowledge are externalized knowledge presented in communication, and an individual's knowledge about, for instance, others' expertise, which may not be externalized in communication. In future studies different levels of analysis are needed to understand how interpersonal evaluation of knowledge is related to the interactions between team members and with technological resources in practice. / Tiivistelmä Tässä tutkimuksessa tarkastellaan hajautetun tiimin jäsenten pyrkimyksiä arvioida toistensa tietoa. Yhä useammin sekä suomalaisten että globaalien organisaatioiden toiminta perustuu ongelmien ratkaisemiseen ja uuden tiedon kehittämiseen tiimeissä. Yleensä monimutkaisten ongelmien ratkominen edellyttää tiimiläisten tapaamisia ja keskusteluja, mutta se ei ole aina mahdollista esimerkiksi pitkien välimatkojen vuoksi. Tällöin tiimiläiset kommunikoivat pääosin teknologian välityksellä, mikä osaltaan tekee tiimiläisten keskinäisestä ymmärtämisestä ja siten myös ongelmien ratkaisusta haastavaa. Teoreettisesti tutkimus nojautuu kollaboratiivisen yhteisöllisen oppimisen teoriaan ja sosiokognitiiviseen oppimisnäkemykseen, joissa toisten tietojen arviointi ja pyrkimys vastavuoroiseen ymmärtämiseen nähdään oppimiselle tärkeinä prosesseina. Tutkimuksessa sovelletaan myös sosiaalispsykologian tutkimuksissa käytettyjä teorioita attribuutiosta ja kategorioinnista. Tutkimus koostuu kolmesta osatutkimuksesta, ja se seuraa Design Based Research -tutkimusotetta. Ensimmäisen ja toisen osatutkimuksien tulosten perusteella kehitettiin yhteisölliseen hajautettuun tiimityöhön työskentelymalli ja visualisointityökalu, jota hajautetun tiimin jäsenet käyttivät tietorepresentaatioiden ja jaetun tiedon arvioimisen tukena kolmannessa osatutkimuksessa. Yleisesti visualisointityökalun ja työskentelymallin avulla pyrittiin tukemaan hajautettujen tiimien jäsenten vastavuoroista ymmärrystä. Toisten tietojen arvioimiseen käytettyjä strategioita tarkasteltiin useiden laadullisten tutkimusmenetelmien avulla. Tutkimuksen tulokset osoittavat, että ymmärtääkseen toistensa näkökulmia hajautettujen tiimien jäsenet käyttävät kognitiivisina strategioina perspektiivinottoa, vertailua, attribuutiointia ja kategorisointia. Perspektiivinotossa pyrkimyksenä on ymmärtää toisen tiimin jäsenen näkökulma jaetun tehtävän sisällön kannalta. Vertailu perustuu omien ja toisten tiimiläisten tietorakenteiden erojen ja yhteneväisyyksien etsintään. Lisäksi tuloksista nousee esille erityisesti tarve ymmärtää, mikä tieto on jo jaettua tiimin jäsenten kesken. Tutkimuksen tulokset osoittavat, että yhteisöllisen ongelmanratkaisun tutkiminen hajautetussa tiimityössä vaatii yksilön kognitiivisten toimintojen analysointia osana sosiaalista tilannetta.

A research of effectiveness of team work in a concrete company, that acts in the sphere of the information technology, is an object of my diploma paper. To take the view about the team work in the company it was necessary to perform an analyse of the team work. I confronted results of the analyse with the real position in the team. An evaluation of conditions in the monitored team and a proposition of pertinent recommendation to increase the effectiveness of team work is an inseparable part of my diploma paper.

Purpose of this thesis is to design system to support agile software development in virtual teams. Agile development methodology and some available tools to support it are listed here in this thesis, in order to use the system in a wide range of devices, theoretical analysis of multi-platform application development options are listed. The following sections describe the design and implementation witch using web technologies. At the end the system is demonstrated on model situation and extension its designed.

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.