Challenges for virtual teams in voluntary organizations

This research concerns virtual teams in the field of volunteer work. The developments in the area of information and communication technology have decreased their costs and made them easily accessible. As a result, it seems natural that also the voluntary organizations have adopted online tools and virtual teams as a part of their work modes. However, virtual teams have not received much research in this context, and one of the goals of this study was to begin closing that gap. The research had two main focus areas: the challenges that the volunteers face in the teams, and the leadership that the teams have. The study used a qualitative approach and semi-structured interviews. The interviews were conducted over Skype and email and included members from six different teams. The case organization was a European-wide student organization that widely utilized virtual teams in its work. The study identified three critical issues for managing the virtual teams. The first challenge was creating common ground for teamwork through electronic communication. Secondly, volunteering created challenges for the teams through variations in the level of commitment of the members, as some left the organization during the term of the team. Lastly, knowledge transfer was a challenge that came from changing the team members regularly each year. As for the second key topic, leadership in the teams was spread among the team members unevenly. The teams had a formal leader, but they exhibited signs of shared leadership, and the team members were able to influence the team through their own level of involvement. Especially the experience that a member had contributed the amount of influence she held. All in all, the challenges that the volunteers faced were similar to those of normal virtual teams. Volunteering brought additional challenges through the varying levels of commitment and the changing of the team members. Additionally, the role of the team leader was not as firm. The results of the study can be applied to other volunteer organizations that utilize virtual teams.

Challenges for virtual teams in voluntary organizations

This research concerns virtual teams in the field of volunteer work. The developments in the area of information and communication technology have decreased their costs and made them easily accessible. As a result, it seems natural that also the voluntary organizations have adopted online tools and virtual teams as a part of their work modes. However, virtual teams have not received much research in this context, and one of the goals of this study was to begin closing that gap. The research had two main focus areas: the challenges that the volunteers face in the teams, and the leadership that the teams have. The study used a qualitative approach and semi-structured interviews. The interviews were conducted over Skype and email and included members from six different teams. The case organization was a European-wide student organization that widely utilized virtual teams in its work. The study identified three critical issues for managing the virtual teams. The first challenge was creating common ground for teamwork through electronic communication. Secondly, volunteering created challenges for the teams through variations in the level of commitment of the members, as some left the organization during the term of the team. Lastly, knowledge transfer was a challenge that came from changing the team members regularly each year. As for the second key topic, leadership in the teams was spread among the team members unevenly. The teams had a formal leader, but they exhibited signs of shared leadership, and the team members were able to influence the team through their own level of involvement. Especially the experience that a member had contributed the amount of influence she held. All in all, the challenges that the volunteers faced were similar to those of normal virtual teams. Volunteering brought additional challenges through the varying levels of commitment and the changing of the team members. Additionally, the role of the team leader was not as firm. The results of the study can be applied to other volunteer organizations that utilize virtual teams.

Collectiveness within startup teams – Leading the way to initiating and managing collective pursuit of opportunities in organizational contexts

While traditional entrepreneurship literature addresses the pursuit of entrepreneurial opportunities to a solo entrepreneur, scholars increasingly agree that new ventures are often founded and operated by entrepreneurial teams as collective efforts especially in hightechnology industries. Researchers also suggest that team ventures are more likely to survive and succeed than ventures founded by the individual entrepreneur although specific challenges might relate to multiple individuals being involved in joint entrepreneurial action. In addition to new ventures, entrepreneurial teams are seen central for organizing work in established organizations since the teams are able to create major product and service innovations that drive organizational success. Acknowledgement of the entrepreneurial teams in various organizational contexts has challenged the notion on the individual entrepreneur. However, considering that entrepreneurial teams represent a collective-level phenomenon that bases on interactions between organizational members, entrepreneurial teams may not have been studied as indepth as could be expected from the point of view of the team-level, rather than the individual or the individuals in the team. Many entrepreneurial team studies adopt the individualized view of entrepreneurship and examine the team members’ aggregate characteristics or the role of a lead entrepreneur. The previous understandings might not offer a comprehensive and indepth enough understanding of collectiveness within entrepreneurial teams and team venture performance that often relates to the team-level issues in particular. In addition, as the collective-level of entrepreneurial teams has been approached in various ways in the existing literatures, the phenomenon has been difficult to understand in research and practice. Hence, there is a need to understand entrepreneurial teams at the collective-level through a systematic and comprehensive perspective. This study takes part in the discussions on entrepreneurial teams. The overall objective of this study is to offer a description and understanding of collectiveness within entrepreneurial teams beyond individual(s). The research questions of the study are: 1) what collectiveness within entrepreneurial teams stands for, what constitutes the basic elements of it, and who are included in it, 2) why, how, and when collectiveness emerges or reinforces within entrepreneurial teams, and 3) why collectiveness within entrepreneurial teams matters and how it could be developed or supported. In order to answer the above questions, this study bases on three approaches, two set of empirical data, two analysis techniques, and conceptual study. The first data set consists of 12 qualitative semi-structured interviews with business school students who are seen as prospective entrepreneurs. The data is approached through a social constructionist perspective and analyzed through discourse analysis. The second data set bases on a qualitative multiplecase study approach that aims at theory elaboration. The main data consists of 14 individual and four group semi-structured thematic interviews with members of core entrepreneurial teams of four team startups in high-technology industries. The secondary data includes publicly available documents. This data set is approached through a critical realist perspective and analyzed through systematic thematic analysis. The study is completed through a conceptual study that aims at building a theoretical model of collective-level entrepreneurship drawing from existing literatures on organizational theory and social-psychology. The theoretical work applies a positivist perspective. This study consists of two parts. The first part includes an overview that introduces the research background, knowledge gaps and objectives, research strategy, and key concepts. It also outlines the existing knowledge of entrepreneurial team literature, presents and justifies the choices of paradigms and methods, summarizes the publications, and synthesizes the findings through answering the above mentioned research questions. The second part consists of five publications that address independent research questions but all enable to answer the research questions set for this study as a whole. The findings of this study suggest a map of relevant concepts and their relationships that help grasp collectiveness within entrepreneurial teams. The analyses conducted in the publications suggest that collectiveness within entrepreneurial teams stands for cognitive and affective structures in-between team members including elements of collective entity, collective idea of business, collective effort, collective attitudes and motivations, and collective feelings. Collectiveness within entrepreneurial teams also stands for specific joint entrepreneurial action components in which the structures are constructed. The action components reflect equality and democracy, and open and direct communication in particular. Collectiveness emerges because it is a powerful tool for overcoming individualized barriers to entrepreneurship and due to collectively oriented desire for, collective value orientation to, demand for, and encouragement to team entrepreneurship. Collectiveness emerges and reinforces in processes of joint creation and realization of entrepreneurial opportunities including joint analysis and planning of the opportunities and strategies, decision-making and realization of the opportunities, and evaluation, feedback, and sanctions of entrepreneurial action. Collectiveness matters because it is relevant for potential future entrepreneurs and because it affects the ways collective ventures are initiated and managed. Collectiveness also matters because it is a versatile, dynamic, and malleable phenomenon and the ideas of it can be applied across organizational contexts that require team work in discovering or creating and realizing new opportunities. This study further discusses how the findings add to the existing knowledge of entrepreneurial team literature and how the ideas can be applied in educational, managerial, and policy contexts.

Factors of innovation creation within functional heterogeneous project teams Case study: ABB Group

The research topic of the work is: “Factors of innovation creation within functionally heterogeneous project teams”. The research question is “What are the factors of innovation creation within functionally heterogeneous project teams?” The subject of this research is to explore the teams of projects, aimed at creating innovations, and understand how innovation is generated through project team work within them in term of factors. In line with the purposes of this study, firstly, it was analyzed what factors of such teams’ work are affecting creating innovation positively and negatively on the base of chosen literature and a preliminary conceptional framework was formulated, and secondly, the research of the work of project teams in one of the divisions of ABB company has been done and other factors and interdependencies between them have been added to the conceptional framework. This final conceptional framework constitutes the essense of the work findings and can be used as a tool to analyze the innovation creation process in functionally heterogeneous project teams

Development Of Interpersonal Relationships in Global Virtual Teams

This study investigates the development of relationships in same global virtual team working on different projects. The purpose is to explore how do interpersonal relationships develop in terms of characteristics of virtuality and if there is any influence of project lifespan on the development of these relationships. Since relationships are dynamic in nature and are influenced by multiple levels of variables including individual, group and organizational level, therefore characteristics of virtuality have been considered from all these aspects so as to study their influence on development of relationships. In this study, relationships have been studied at two different levels. At first, dyadic relationships between two members of a GVT have been analyzed and thereafter, focus has been on the development of relationships among the team, based on these dyads. Characteristics having influence on development of relationships include trust, physical distance, time zone difference, cultural and language differences, level of formalization in the organization and means of communication used by team members. Level of formalization and means of communication are two characteristics which emerged after empirical study and are found to have direct influence on development of relationships. Remaining characteristics have been identified through literature review. In order to conduct the study, qualitative methodology has been applied. Empirical data has been collected based on a single case study while using semi-structured interviews as data gathering technique. Data analysis has been performed by applying thematic analysis along with the utilization of company documents such as work sheets, minutes of meetings and recordings of conferences. Findings of the study indicate that development of relationships, both at dyadic level and team level, is influenced by different events taking place among different members of GVT. These events have either positive or negative influence on the characteristics of virtuality, which leads to development of the relationships. It has been found that, trust, among all factors plays a greater role in development of these relations. Contrary to the belief that most conflicts arise among members of different cultures, they are equally likely to happen among the members from same culture in GVT environment. Study suggests that relationship development is not a smooth process but it fluctuates based on different events in teams. For further research, teams within large firms shall be studied along these lines. This study is an early attempt towards bringing different characteristics of virtuality together which previously, have been studied individually. It is therefore plausible to conduct similar studies so as to generalize the findings of this study which has provided a starting point.