Studiens syfte är att undersöka hur avsaknaden av spontana möten påverkar innovationsförmågan i samverkansprojekt och besvaras genom följande forskningsfrågor. Hur påverkar en övergång från fysiskt till digitalt samarbete den informella kunskapsdelningen i projektdeltagarnas nätverk och vilken effekt får det för produktiviteten? Hur upplever projektdeltagarna att yrkesmässiga relationer påverkas av distribuerat arbete? Semistrukturerade intervjuer har genomförts med projektledare från tio av landets 61 Science parks vars verksamhet är att främja innovation och utveckling genom att bilda ett nätverk mellan akademi, offentlig verksamhet och näringslivet. En induktiv ansats har använts då Coronapandemins restriktioner medfört att projektdeltagare som tidigare arbetat tillsammans i fysiska rum under 2020 på grund av restriktioner tvingats arbeta distribuerat i digitala rum. En förändring som kraftigt minskat möjligheterna till spontana möten och kunskapsdelning med andra individer i projektledarnas nätverk. En tematisk analys har genomförts och gett följande teman. Med förändring i fokus; verksamhet som vanligt?, möten, möten, möten; spontanitet går inte att planera samt relationer och organisationskultur. Slutsatserna inkluderar att avsaknaden av fysiska arenor ger minskade möjligheter till relationsbyggande och överhörning vilket på sikt kan hämma möjligheterna att upptäcka potentiella synergier och samarbeten vilket i sin tur kan leda till minskad innovativ förmåga. Det ligger även en utmaning i att genomföra innovationsmöten och planering i det digitala mötet jämfört med i det fysiska mötet. Orsaken är att det upplevs svårare att få överblick och göra sig förstådd samt svårare att föra informella samtal vilket begränsar utbytet mellan parterna. Projektledarna kommer med all sannolikhet att fortsätta arbeta delvis på distans efter restriktionerna då det möjliggör en bättre balans mellan arbetsliv och privatliv. Ur ett organisationsperspektiv medför förändringen nya möjligheter då vissa geografiska och logistiska begränsningar försvunnit, men även nya utmaningar i att upprätthålla organisationskultur och produktivitet över tid. / In the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic project teams have been forced to workonline, in what could be described as "digital rooms". This has drastically decreased the possibilites for informal meetings. This study aims to answer how a transition from physical meetings to digital ones affects the informal knowledge sharing and what effect that might have on productivity. Further the study also aims to explore the effect on proffessional relationsship, as experienced by members of project teams. Following an inductive approach, ten semi structured interviews with project leaders, active in Sweden, was conducted. Thematic analysis was performed and four themes observed: /Change in focus/, /business as usual/, /meetings, meetings, meetings/, /spontanity can not be planned/, and /relations and culture/. Study found that the lack of physical meetings results in lesser opportunities for relationship building and informal sharing of information. Something that on a longer timescale could hamper the ability to find synergic effects and cooperations, which in turn could result in lessened creative abilities. Results also show that meetings aimed towards creativity and innovation is more challenging if held digitally instead of physically.  Meeting overview, missunderstandings and informal communication all becomes more challenging, which limits the interchange in between the project teams. Respondents will likely continue to work, partly, on distance also after the restrictions have been lifted, due to positive effects on the work-leisure balance. For organisations these changes carries new possibilities but also new challenges: geographical and logistic hinders have been removed, but to uphold company culture and productivity over time have become more onerous.

Abstract The rapid advances in technology and the globalization of the economy have led corporate leaders to invest heavily in virtual teams to increase their global coverage. The problem in this phenomenological study was that many organizational leaders do not understand the extent to which they need to manage virtual teams differently from traditional, face-to-face teams. This is significant, because due to geographical differences and possibly cultural differences, virtual teams require various modes of communication. The purpose of this study was to explore and describe the lived experiences of effective virtual-team leaders and the operational strategies employed to lead them. The answer to the research questions included strategies that virtual-team leaders applied to make their teams successful. The conceptual framework was comprised of the theories of transformational leadership and leader-member exchange. Data collection took place through open-ended interviews with 20 virtual-team leaders. Moustakas' modified version of the van Kaam analysis method was used to code and organize the data. The interview data were classified into common themes to provide a better understanding of the participants' perceptions and experiences. The results indicated that the primary virtual team challenges were communication and face-to-face connections. The strategies for managing these challenges included more open and scheduled communication, making sure the team members know their roles and responsibilities, and clear and concise goals and objectives from the virtual-team leaders. The implication for positive social change is that the effectiveness of virtual-team leaders may improve thus benefiting management, employees, and customers.

RESEARCH AIM The aim of this study is to provide a deeper understanding in how leadership competencies are perceived to be important for hybrid team members team performance in both, a virtual and face-to-face setting. This, to investigate how different leadership competencies could be used by a hybrid team leader to manage the hybrid teams performance. RESEARCH METHOD This study uses qualitative research method and is conducted by using exploratory research. The data for this study was collected through 10 semi-structured interviews with hybrid team members. The collected data was analysed by using a thematic analysis approach. THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVE Previous literature has been examined, where three concepts have been chosen for this study: Hybrid teams, hybrid team leadership and leadership competencies. Based on the examined literature, a conceptual framework was constructed by the authors. RESULTS Interpersonal sensitivity as a leadership competence was fundamentally important for all hybrid team members, as a strong socio-emotional relationship was required to create a desire for other competencies. The complexity of hybrid teams was evident in how virtual team members perceived leadership actions, as they felt misunderstood by the hybrid team leader and alienated from the hybrid team. CONCLUSION The hybrid team leader needs to carefully consider the virtual team members needs to mitigate their negative perception of team performance. It could be done by allowing more autonomy by practising a supportive leadership role, use one-to-one meetings for relationship building, and by giving clear guidelines. KEYWORDS Hybrid team, Virtual team, Face-to-face team, Hybrid leadership, Leadership competencies, Team performance.

Virtual teams become more and more courant in today's organisations for New Product Development (NPD) of a new product, service, system or organisational process. As potential partners of those projects are spread out over countries, organisations need access to a dynamic communication to increase de-centralisation and globalisation of work processes. Many organisations have responded to this dynamic environment by introducing virtual teams. These virtual teams have specific characteristics including distance of geography or time and cultural or organisational differences. In this PhD thesis we provide a preliminary design of a tool of support to build virtual teams, named Virtual Team Building Support System (VTB Support System). The VTB Support System functions as tool of analysis, communication and planning for virtual team building in the domain of NPD. This tool is a support that facilitates the constitution of a virtual team not only in organisations but also in projects without a real organisational structure. The VTB Support System identifies requirements and provides recommendations and adaptable technical solutions that permit to build a virtual team. In a virtual environment, project members can change frequently, which necessitates to identify the requirements of a VTB Support System to build those virtual teams. The process of virtual team building is not just limited to team development under the aspect of human resources or human interactions but takes also the organisation of working processes into account. The recommendations for virtual team building take into consideration three domains that are precisely presented in this work as Virtual Project Management (VPM), Competence Management (CM) and Virtual Team Interaction (VTI). In order to provide the VTB Support System, we choose the holistic approach of the functional analysis. This allows us to identify all the functions of the VTB Support System that describe the requirements of such a system. Then, we use the tool of Quality Function Deployment (QFD), especially the "house of quality", to deduce substantiated recommendations of the most important functions that are detected by the functional analysis. The house of quality allows representing the recommendations or technical solutions and the functions (issues of a functional analysis) in a matrix and to evaluate if a recommendation or a technical solution satisfies the demand of one or multiple functions. The VTB Support System is applied in three different cases, which underlines the generic aspect of the model.

Companies and projects often face the challenge of creating something new to increase their competitiveness. In this process of creating something new creativity is an important factor. By using a creative approach and utilizing creative processes new innovations emerges. An industry that has grown in recent years is the computer games industry. Competition is fierce and for the companies to succeed, the product need that extra something to make it stand out among all the produced games. The project manager's role in the creative process and the ability to be creative within a distance based company is not something highlighted by previous research. This formed the basis of our research question: How do project managers act to create conditions for creativity among employees in a remotely organized computer game company? To answer our question, we chose to make a descriptive case study. The project is based in the Nordic countries with employees worldwide. It is altogether a distance based project with no shared workspace. We interviewed the projects two project managers, and supplemented with a qualitative survey amongst the employees. The collected material was analyzed with a methodology inspired by Grounded Theory and previous research results. Three approaches of how the project managers act to promote creativity are evident in their stories. These approaches are trust, availability and tolerance. They form the basis of our model on how the project managers in this case act to promote employee creativity. Besides the three approaches, two concepts emerged as important tools for creativity in the project: motivation and communication. Our conclusion can be described as follows: Motivation provides the conditions for creative thinking. By building an organization where project leaders show trust in the ability of employees, and allows tolerance to be a watchword for collaboration, project managers work to improve employee motivation. This will create opportunities for creativity among the employees in this distance based project. Communication is essential for creative work in the project and virtual means of communication a way to increase availability. / Företag och projekt ställs ofta inför utmaningen att skapa något nytt för att till exempel öka sin konkurrenskraft. I processen att ta fram denna nya produkt är kreativitet en viktig faktor. Med hjälp av ett kreativt förhållningssätt och en kreativ process kan nya innovationer växa fram. En bransch som växt mycket de senaste åren är datorspelsbranschen. Konkurrensen är hård och om företagen ska lyckas krävs det att produkten har något extra som gör att det sticker ut bland alla spel som produceras. Projektledarens roll i kreativitetsprocessen är ett område som tidigare forskning inte har belyst särskilt mycket. Inte heller har möjligheten att skapa förutsättningar för kreativitet inom ett distansbaserat företag behandlats särskilt mycket. Studiens forskningsfråga är: Hur agerar projektledare för att skapa förutsättningar för kreativitet hos projektmedarbetare i ett distansbaserat datorspelsutvecklingsprojekt? För att besvara vår frågeställning valde vi att göra en deskriptiv fallstudie. Projektet har sin bas i Norden med medarbetare över hela världen. Det är helt och hållet ett distansbaserat projekt på så sätt att ingen delar arbetsplats. Vi djupintervjuade projektets två projektledare och kompletterade med en kvalitativ enkät till medarbetarna. Med en utgångspunkt i Grounded Theory och tidigare forskningsresultat analyserades materialet. Ur projektledarnas berättelser framträdde tre förhållningssätt. Dessa är tillit, tillgänglighet och tolerans. De ligger till grund för vår modell om hur projektledarna i det undersökta fallet agerar för att främja kreativiteten hos medarbetarna. Dessutom visade det sig att motivation och kommunikation var två viktiga verktyg för att skapa förutsättningar för kreativitet hos medarbetarna. Vår slutsats kan beskrivas på följande sätt: Motivation ger förutsättningar för kreativt tänkande. Genom att bygga en organisation där projektledarna visar tillit till medarbetarnas förmåga, och låter tolerans vara ett ledord för kollaboration, arbetar projektledarna för att höja medarbetarnas motivation. Därmed skapas förutsättningar för kreativitet hos medarbetarna i detta distansbaserade projekt. Kommunikation är en förutsättning för kreativt skapande i projektet och virtuella kommunikationsmedel ett sätt att öka tillgängligheten.

The impact of globalisation and advanced information technology on service and knowledgebased industries in South Africa contributes to these workplaces becoming increasingly virtual. Virtual teams can be seen as a mechanism that organisations could use to increase their orientation for change through enhancing and integrating key organisational resources such as people, space and information technology to deliver greater business value. The findings of several studies suggest that the implementation of virtual teams is associated with benefits such as cost and time saving, increased employee productivity and employee empowerment. There are however salient barriers to effective virtual teamwork that organisations need to address before engaging in the transformational process towards virtual teamwork. The literature review identified ineffective leadership practices, factors relating to virtual team development, inadequate use of information technology and a paucity of social and organisational cultural integration, as the most salient features that impede effective virtual teamwork. The objective of this research was to develop a basic theoretical framework for the implementation of virtual teams. Since virtual teams emanate from a relatively new area of research an inductive methodology, based on a literature review, was used to achieve the research objective. Several theoretical models on virtual teams and their effectiveness thereon were explored to conceptualise the dynamic nature of virtual teams and the requirements for implementing them in the workplace. The results of the study indicated that an emergent approach to change be followed and that the following factors be addressed to determine an organisation's readiness for the implementation of virtual teams, namely: the degree of interdependence between tasks, structural requirements, technological requirements, process redesign and the selection of appropriate people. A methodology for work transformation towards virtual teamwork was suggested based on an integration of these factors. / Thesis (M.Sc. (Industrial Psychology))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2004.

Information technology has played several important roles in group decision making, such as communication support and decision support. Little is known about how information technology can be used to persuade members of a group to reach a consensus. In this dissertation, I aim to address the issues that are related to the role of visual representation technology (VRT) for persuasion in a forecasting context. VRTs are not traditional graphical representation technologies. VRTs can select, transform, and present data in a rich visual format that facilitates exploration, comprehension, and sense-making. The first study investigates conditions under which teams are likely to increase the use of VRTs and how the use of VRTs affects teams' consensus development and decision performance. The second study evaluates the effects of influence types and information technology on a choice shift. A choice shift is the tendency of group members to shift their initial positions to a more extreme direction following discussion. A choice shift is also called group polarization. To complement my first two studies, I conduct a laboratory experiment in my third study. I explore the effect of VRTs and team composition on a choice shift in group confidence.

The impact of globalisation and advanced information technology on service and knowledgebased industries in South Africa contributes to these workplaces becoming increasingly virtual. Virtual teams can be seen as a mechanism that organisations could use to increase their orientation for change through enhancing and integrating key organisational resources such as people, space and information technology to deliver greater business value. The findings of several studies suggest that the implementation of virtual teams is associated with benefits such as cost and time saving, increased employee productivity and employee empowerment. There are however salient barriers to effective virtual teamwork that organisations need to address before engaging in the transformational process towards virtual teamwork. The literature review identified ineffective leadership practices, factors relating to virtual team development, inadequate use of information technology and a paucity of social and organisational cultural integration, as the most salient features that impede effective virtual teamwork. The objective of this research was to develop a basic theoretical framework for the implementation of virtual teams. Since virtual teams emanate from a relatively new area of research an inductive methodology, based on a literature review, was used to achieve the research objective. Several theoretical models on virtual teams and their effectiveness thereon were explored to conceptualise the dynamic nature of virtual teams and the requirements for implementing them in the workplace. The results of the study indicated that an emergent approach to change be followed and that the following factors be addressed to determine an organisation's readiness for the implementation of virtual teams, namely: the degree of interdependence between tasks, structural requirements, technological requirements, process redesign and the selection of appropriate people. A methodology for work transformation towards virtual teamwork was suggested based on an integration of these factors. / Thesis (M.Sc. (Industrial Psychology))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2004.

The present investigation is concerned with shared leadership and team performance in a sample of 20 organizational virtual teams. We examine shared team leadership in terms of cognitive processes (team learning), affective processes (perceived team support), and behavioural processes (team member exchange quality). Our findings document internal validity of the shared leadership model, and high external validity in predicting team performance. Findings are discussed with regard to management of virtual teams in organizations.

Cette thèse explore la façon dont les managers suscitent l’engagement des membres au sein d’équipes ouvertes, internationales et virtuelles. Ce type d’équipe, qu’on nomme une équipe « ouverte » est caractérisée par : des interactions régulières entre les membres, pour atteindre des objectifs organisationnels spécifiques ; une appartenance floue et instable des membres ; une « pluri-appartenance » des membres : chaque membre est simultanément impliqué dans plusieurs équipes ; des managers disposant d’une responsabilité formelle, sans pour autant disposer d’une autorité formelle. Les équipes ouvertes sont un phénomène fréquent dans les organisations commerciales internationales et les entreprises de conseil, mais peu de recherches s’y sont encore intéressées. Mobilisant la théorie enracinée, cette recherche étudie les équipes ouvertes d’une grande entreprise multinationale. Sur une période de deux ans, 70 entretiens formels ont été conduits auprès de 66 employés et 28 jours d’observation ont été réalisés dans neuf pays. Cette étude enrichit la littérature sur les équipes du concept d’équipe ouverte et apporte des compléments à trois cadres théoriques : la théorie de l’engagement, du « boundary spanning » et du leadership fonctionnel. Elle prolonge la théorie de l’engagement de Kahn, en montrant comment les leaders améliorent les conditions psychologiques de l’engagement en donnant du sens et en agissant sur le sentiment de sécurité psychologique. La recherche enrichit le concept de « boundary work » en identifiant de manière empirique et théorique deux pratiques de « boundary spanning » supplémentaires : la création de frontières et la coordination des frontières. L’étude des équipes ouvertes a fait émerger six fonctions additionnelles à la théorie du leadership fonctionnel et montré que six autres fonctions sont modifiées du fait de la structure même de ces équipes ouvertes. / The objective of this empirical study is to explore how managers engage team members in global virtual ‘open’ teams. Open teams are a collection of individuals with varying levels of interdependence, who contribute toward shared organizational objectives, who are seen by others as an intact social entity within one or more larger systems, whose membership is neither bounded nor stable, and whose members participate in multi-team systems, and whose managers have formal responsibility for group outcomes but little to no formal authority. Open teams are a phenomenon found in multinationals and large consulting firms, but little research is focused on this type of team. Using grounded theory, this research examines the open teams at a large multinational. Over a period of two years, 70 formal interviews with 66 employees were conducted and 28 days of observations in nine countries were logged. The study introduces the concept of ‘open team’ and contributes to three theoretical frameworks: engagement theory, boundary spanning theory and functional leadership theory. It extends Kahn’s theory of engagement by showing how leaders influence meaningfulness and psychological safety to improve the psychological conditions for engagement. In boundary spanning theory, the boundary work concept is extended by providing empirical evidence for boundary coordination and boundary creation as well as introducing two new boundary spanning practices. In function leadership theory, six leadership functions emerge from the study of open teams and show how another six changed due to the open team structure.