Do principles of CASS help us understand how virtual teams organize themselves?
Literature review’s table
Author/
Date
Publication
Title
Concepts
Implications
(Ogilvy, 1994)
Journal of Business Strategy:
“This old office”
Discusses the technological advances in so-called virtual offices; Case study of IBM, and others; Management in a virtual office. At the core, it’s the virtual organization
Bottom up systems (SOS) of management requires more objective measures and compensation based on people’s output: Did you get the job done?
- Individual rewards and compensation are based on three things: output, teamwork, and a mix of personality and style (SOS based principle).
Customized systems, offices, technological innovations, work environment, virtual offices and designs are a few challenges faced to becoming a virtual organization. After 18 months of its virtual system implementation, AT&T found it had already saved million and the account executives’ sales contacts had increased by 15%. D&B’s sales productivity was up nearly 30% after the implementation of Virtual Teams program. Occupancy costs, which used to amount to 8% of the sales, dropped by as much as 48%. Ernst & Young reduced space-and-cost- by 40%. Productivity increased by 25%. By consolidating five offices into one and adopting telecommuting strategies and virtual teams structure, IBM reduced both space and costs by 75% and increasing productivity by 25%.
(Beinhocker, 1997)
Journal Article:
Strategy at the edge of chaos.
Complex adaptive systems are composed of a multitude of agents (people and computer programs). Such agents perform complex interactions that are difficult to predict because “what each agent does affects one or more others”
Human resources rise out of bottom-up dynamic interactions, as opposed to a top-down master plan, complex adaptive systems are considered capable of self-organization and emergence. This is a convenient starting point for the analyses of organizational theory by applying the metaphors of self-organizational systems.
(Lubbock & Belasis, 1997)
European Management Journal:
Concepts and technologies for virtual organizing: The Gering Journey
Illustrates Germany-based Gering Group’s efforts to move the insurance company towards a virtual organization and preparation for the 21st century business environment.
Strategic use of state-of-the-art information and communication technologies enhancing customer services; Analysis of organizational issues and implementation factors; Discussion of future opportunities and challenges.
(Henry & Hartley, 1998)
Book -
Tools for Virtual Teams
The authors have provided exercises and team building process that address virtual teams condition (achievement of operational and financial goals). The team fitness model and virtual teams – Challenge 1: directions/focus – Challenge2: values/principles, operating agreements – Challenges 3: synergy/communication.
Building a virtual team is an exciting challenge for managers and leaders. They must draw on a particular set of tools and techniques to create productiveness in dispersed teams rapidly and sustain their productivity over extended period of time. We are entering uncharted territory. Ultimately, we will need to operate differently in order to find the same kind of creativity and synergy that often comes from working together as an intact team. Dispersed teams are becoming more prevalent. Teams that are made of members who are not located in the same place and rarely, or never meet together in person.
(Edom & Lee, 1999)
Journal Article:
Virtual teams: An information age opportunity for mobilizing hidden manpower.
Presents information on a study, which focused on the concept of virtual task force team (TUFT) used in mobilizing hidden manpower. Limitations and problems due to organizational and technical causes; How a virtual TUFT can overcome the limitations of a traditional TUFT; Guidelines for creating virtual teams and virtual organizations
Virtual enterprises are a way of bolstering organization’s weakness. Many organizations like IBM are trying to transform their organizations structure into virtual organizations to prepare for the 21st century business environment and redefining their core competencies; integrating operations with those of other enterprises; developing the technology to connect and support virtual teams and virtual organizations; developing operating culture that allows for the use of virtual teams and deals with resistance.
The use of computer-mediated communications technologies and other information technologies such as distributed database management systems, video e-mail, and the Internet can provide a workable, reliable, and flexible base systems for creating the platforms for virtual task force teams (TUFT).
(Casco, 2000)
Journal Article:
Managing a Virtual Workplace.
The challenges of managing a virtual workplace are increasing in scope. The use of new technology and tools only enables competitive advantage (communications technology). Realizing competitive advantage requires effective performance management “knowledge” (empowerment and mission) coupled with “new ways of doing things.”
While it is possible to nurture management performance “knowledge”, it is impossible to “manage” it, when “manage” is understood in its conventional sense.
Central concepts of mainstream thinking about knowledge creation and management in organizations, and in complex responsive processes of sensitive dependence on initial conditions (e.g. metaphors emerging from complexity systems), are capable to describe the phenomena they observed in human systems. Organizations in which virtual—work arrangements thrive will be flatter than they are today.
(Bell & Kozlowski, 2002)
Journal article
Group & Organization management
-A typology of Virtual Teams.
Theoretical framework to focus research toward understanding virtual teams. Delineating the dimensions of a typology to characterize different types of virtual teams. Distinguish virtual teams from conventional teams Distinguish among different types of virtual teams. Critical role of task complexity, addressing implications for the effective leadership and management of virtual teams.
Organizational systems, structures, and processes have evolved to become more flexible and adaptive. Horizontal organizational structures and team-based work units have become increasingly more prevalent and, with advances in technology, there has been an increasing emphasis on far-flung, distributed, “virtual” teams as organizing units of work. Some ideas about group behavior are based on non-linear dynamical systems theory. In general, the Typology of Virtual Teams behavior consists of three primary dynamics.
1) Formation of stable stages of behavior. (Mission model)
2) The change between stages, described as a transition from stability to more complex system. (Empowerment model)
3) Group pattern of behavior in systems
self-organize through interaction
(Communications model).
(Levin, 2003)
Journal Article: Complex Adaptive Systems, The known, the unknown and the unknowable.
CASS from cells to societies, in general with reference to the self-organization of complex entities, across scales of space, time and organizational complexity.
Agents are semi-autonomous units that seek to maximize some measures of fitness by evolving overtime. The key is to understanding of interrelationships between microscopic process (the parts) and the macroscopic patterns (the whole), and the evolutionary forces that shape systems.
(Kerbed & Boone, 2004)
Journal
Article:
Leadership challenges in global virtual teams: Lessons from the field.
The pressures associated with getting new products and services to worldwide markets are prompting organizations to choose the best people for those projects, regardless of their location. Different approaches to organizational empowerment are suggested by the concepts of Virtual Teams structured organizations.
Virtual teams are able to hire and maintain skilled human resources who prefer arrangements followed by virtual teams, and facilitate the implementation of corporate wide initiatives in global organizations. Unlike traditional teams, collocated teams, a virtual team works across space, time, and organizational and geographic boundaries. Through advanced communication technologies, global teams are developing the ability to “work together apart” accomplishing missions assigned with rarely, if ever, meeting face-to-face.
(Meredith, 2005)
Mecum Publishing Ltd.:
“Offering flexible and remote working options at IBM”
The article focuses on the use of flexible and remote working options at International Business Machines Corp. (IBM). The view at IBM is that offering employees flexible working patterns is an option that must be taken seriously.
Flexibility and mobility need to be the cornerstone of one’s thinking, no matter what area or line of business one is in. The ability to work flexibly is seen by employees as an added benefit–so to have the option in place is an important factor in attracting, retaining and motivating key staff. This will see an increase in virtual teams as part of the further globalization of business.
(Microsoft, 2005)
Microsoft Web Site:
Microsoft 2005 Annual Report
Shareholders Letter
Empowering People for Success.
Driven by passion for empowering people to achieve business success and realize their potential, each of Microsoft’s seven major business groups grew in 2005. Growth in Server and Tools was particularly strong, helped by rapid customer adoption of SQL Server.
We released several important updates to our server products, including Microsoft Operations Manager 2005, Internet Security and Acceleration Server 2004, Virtual Server 2005, and Windows Server™ 2003 Service Pack 1.
Mobile and Embedded revenue increased 36 percent as we launched Windows Mobile™ 5.0, our software for mobile devices. We now partner with more than 40 mobile device makers and 68 mobile operators.
(Yuan, 2006)
Strategic Communication Management:
“Driving culture change by consensus at IBM”.
The article discusses how International Business Machines (IBM) Corp. uses information technology to involve its employees in shaping corporate culture. IBM is a company that employs 330,000 workers and operates in 170 countries, making it the world’s largest information technology firm.
On any day, 275.000 employees log on what has effectively become IBM’s virtual work environment. In addressing cultural change, the intranet has been used as the best method in conducting global online brainstorming. The technology has enabled its personnel to participate in a discussion about company values and has served as the online forums for collaboration, discussion, and creativity.
(Amharic, 2006)
Amharic Vedic Science has been termed as the science and technology of a person’s consciousness. Advocates of this field aspire to promote the absolute progress and growth of human consciousness, in order to keep away from the mistakes that bring about personal distress to people and wide-reaching suffering to the world as a whole
Once members of virtual teams who exist in complex adaptive systems have practiced methods of Amharic Vedic Science, it could be assumed that they would be more creative and adaptive, towards the rise of an alternative managerial system. One could easily perceive the interconnection of the concepts of individual development, complex adaptive systems, as well as virtual teams
Credit:ivythesis.typepad.com
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