HRM742 Business Management &

Organizational Behaviour

Student: Mariana Karapetyan

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1. Identify and explain the advantages and disadvantages of virtual teams. Outline the
factors required for virtual teams to be successful.

“Virtual teams are teams, whose members operate across space, time, and organizational
boundaries and are linked through information technologies to achieve
organizational tasks.” (McShane et all, p.230)

In the rapidly growing world of digital technologies, our constantly increasing dependency
on them, and with the new COVID reality on top of everything, considering virtual
communication as a new normal and striving to improve it has become a must. Virtual
teams are an important part of that virtual reality that help to create a functional,
competitive and cost-friendly work environment.
Speaking about the advantages of virtual teams the below features need to be highlighted:
Cost-effective/Cost saving: Organizations enjoy significant reductions of operating costs.
Companies no longer require extensive and expensive office space to accommodate its
employees (team members). For example, American Express enjoyed lower overhead costs
to the tune of nearly $15 million thanks to hiring remote workers. (Organizational Design,
Virtual Organizations, Dec 12, 2018., www.oragimi.com).
Access to a Larger Talent Pool: Best employees can be hired more easily trough the remote
platforms enjoying the opportunity of accessing a greater talent pool. Talents can be hired
form all over the world without any dependency on geographic, religious, social and other
limitations.
Better employee efficiency and satisfaction: Employees working remotely have proven to
do more work, saving quality time and energy on home-to-office transactions. The results of
a survey held in one of Telus Canada’s locations showed, that 40% of workers have shown
better results in less time while working remotely (Work from home (n.d.), Social impact,
telus.com).
24/7 availability: As mentioned above, talents can be hired from all over the world, i.e.
team members can be from different time zones. That will ensure the availability and
productivity of one team member, while the other is down in the other side of the globe.

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Work-life balance/employee retention: Remote work supports the work-life balance, as it
allows to set the own schedule and make it possible to organize and handle some personal
and family duties during the day time. Of course, this makes people feel more comfortable
and happier, which consequently keeps an employee away from the thoughts of leaving te
company (especially when a competitive salary is in place)

The benefits of remote and virtual teams are not limited with the above list, however, as
with all teams, virtual teams also have their downsides that need to be highlighted:

Lack of Companionship & Social contact: Remote team members hardly meet face-to-face,
let alone the virtual video-communication channels. Even the video-chat solutions have
proven not to be sufficient for building the team spirit and camaraderie as it would be while
working together at the office environment.
Extra efforts to focus on communication: Team members are not able to communicate by
“tapping on the shoulder”, as in case of an office environment, the need for making efforts
to ensure efficient communication increases. As the communication has a crucial role in the
success of virtual organizations, the team lead or the manager will need to make sure that
daily/weekly meetings are scheduled properly, team members are available during the work
hours for giving feedbacks and getting involved in any communication on time.
Reduced knowledge transfer - It has been proven that teams working in the same place
transfer a greater capacity of information and knowledge to each other, than those that are
working remotely.
Security Issues. Working remotely means passing a lot of data through various
communication channels. There are industries, such as health, financial, legal etc., where
sharing important and confidential information back and forth may be risky in terms of
information security.

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Success factors for virtual teams
Virtual teams have all the challenges, along with the complications of distance and time and
OB studies are finding ways to improve virtual team effectiveness. (McShane, pg. 231).
Members of successful virtual teams must have:
- Strong communication technology, self leadership and self discipline skill set. In
addition to this, they must possess with higher emotional intelligence to be able to
interpret feelings of other team members from e-mail and other virtual communication
channels. (McShane, pg. 231)
- Toolkit of communication channels (email, videoconferencing, etc.,) and the freedom of
choosing the channel that best works for them. (McShane, pg. 231)
- Should have clear structure, such as clear operational objectives, documented work
- processes, and agreed upon roles and responsibilities. (McShane, pg. 231)
- An opportunity to meet face-to-face, at least on the early stage of team development,
as this will help to start the future virtual cooperation on the basis of mutual
understanding, sense of camaraderie and trust. (McShane, pg. 231)

2. Describe the kinds of behaviours that individual team members can engage in that
positively impact overall team effectiveness.

Collaboration: This is an active cooperation between team members aimed at creating joint
solutions and achieving common goals.
Ownership Approach/Responsibility - This is when team members are ready to invest their
best, demonstrate initiative and suggest solutions, rather than just doing what other team
members would ask them to do. This approach increases responsibility, brings more
enthusiasm to the team work which helps achieving better results (Module 6: Group/Team
Behaviour - Groups and Teams).
Integrity: You must have high professional and personal standard as part of your behavior
for teamwork. When you have high integrity, no one will doubt your action. You must be

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sincere in your opinions and dealing with other team members. The trust that is forged also
means it will lessen all the back stabbing and gossips in the team.
Professionalism: The team members should be professional enough to act within certain
behavioral standards complying with team work and corporate environment. This is very
important, as failing to perform proper conduct may affect the other team members.
Awareness/Focus: Team members must be aware of and understand their rights and
responsibilities and on top of this, they also need to have a clear understanding of
organization’s goals and targets.
Constructive Criticism: A team member should be able to express his/her opinion, show
disagreement, without being too critical. In other words, it is about voicing criticism without
being to judgemental. In constructive criticism it is very important to focus on improving the
work or correcting the mistakes, rather than pointing out to the team members. Not less
important is to be open for accepting constructive criticism.
Support: Team members should be ready to provide professional and personal support to
each other, to reduce stress among the team. It is very important in terms of keeping
positive team spirit and motivation.
Optimism/Positive approach: Positive thinking is the primary guarantor of better team
performances, that is why all team members should keep optimistic even in critical
situations and be ready to encourage each other.

3. Describe the kinds of behaviours that individual team members can engage in that
negatively impact overall team effectiveness.

Bad communication: As we already mentioned above, good communication is the

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communication. Besides, all team members must have a clear understanding of what the
communication is about and what their goals are.
Uncooperative Behavior: There are team members, that show uncooperative behaviors,
including discrediting or gossiping other team members, shaping atmosphere around them,
etc. This appears to be bad not only for team members individually, but affects the team
spirit, mentality, thoughts and ideas.
Disrespect: In some cases, team members demonstrate disrespectful or abusive behaviour
to other team member, which results in unrest, mistrust and insecurity among team
members.
Lack of constructive feedback: Sometimes some team members are reluctant to provide
any positive feedback for the good work of a team member, not wanting them to feel
recognized. This behaviour can demotivate all team members.
Unorganized: Being unorganized is one of the most serious negative behaviors, that can
affect the team. Not having clearly designed pattern of the tasks and action plan for
reaching the goal, will cause frustration and stress among the team members and finally
lead the team to a complete failure.

4. Outline how you intend to approach participation in your group project, explaining how
your plans for participation will likely impact your project team. Include an analysis of
your results from the Group/Team Skills activity you completed from the Module 6
reading.

After reading through the modules and getting the instructions from the facilitator about
the requirements and deadlines of the group project, I intend to:
- Send a “hello” e-mail to the members of the group I am assigned to.
- Share a couple of ideas on how we organize our work, through which communication
channels (Blackboard, WhatsApp, Zoom etc.) and work documents (a word document
or a Google doc.)

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 - Review everybody’s feedbacks, based on which we can draw the best route towards the
completion of our task.
- Make sure to follow deadlines, tasks and format, team has agreed on for the group
project.
- Make sure to check the group e-mails daily, to be able to provide timely support, if
requested by any of the team members.
- Give feedback to other team members’ works and ask them to review my part and
make suggestions.
- Have a final group call to discuss the work and approve final submission.
- Thank the team for support and participation and congratulate on a successful
completion of the group project.

There are two important factors for me in the team work. First is communicating with my team
members in open and non-official manner, making them feel my positive attitude and readiness
for healthy cooperation. Second, strictly following the assigned deadlines, to show my
commitment to the team work and avoid causing any frustration and stress for not meeting the
deadlines.

References:
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McShane et all (2012). Canadian Organizational Behaviour. McGraw Hill Ryerson.

Module 5: Group/Team Behaviour - Individual and Group/Team Decision-Building

Module 6: Group/Team Behaviour - Groups and Teams

Ivan Moscilovic (March 12th, 2018) 4 Things that Have Negative Effect on Teamwork.

(Telus team empowered to work from home until 2021Work from home (n.d.), Social impact,
https://www.telus.com/en/social-impact?linktype=ge-mainnav).

The Advantages and Disadvantages of Virtual Organization Design (n.d.), retrieved from internet: Organimi.com
https://www.organimi.com/the-advantages-and-disadvantages-of-virtual-organization-design-in-startups/