scholarly journals THE IMPACT FACTORS ON PROJECT MANAGEMENT SUCCESS IN GLOBAL TEAMS: THE CASE OF COMPANY “X” PROJECTS

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 126-132
Author(s):  
Inese Sluka ◽  
Sintija Brence

Nowadays, with globalization and the development of information technology, global teams are one of the fastest growing types of teams. Communication technology capabilities have significantly reduced the cost of team management and remote collaboration. Current management science has a broad theoretical basis for managing teams that are physically located in one place, but there is much less understanding of how leaders can effectively manage global teams. Company X is a global management consulting, technology services and outsourcing company. All company projects have virtual teams and participants from different countries The goal of this research is to identify and study the factors that influence the success of global project team management and operations in Company X. The research provides answers to the following questions: 1) Which factors impact the project management success  at global company X?; 2) What is the impact of a team member’s role and experience on project management success at company X?; 3) What are the cultural differences within the project teams? The data was collected from a survey of two global teams (n=31) at global company X. Team members represent three cultures: Finnish, Indian and Latvian. The analyzed factors were communication, remote communication tools, roles and rules, and trust and cooperation in a multicultural environment. Communication, remote communication tools, and roles and rules showed a statistically significant impact on project management success in global teams.  The current role of team members has a negative effect on project management success. No statistically significant differences between cultures were found which supports Cultural Convergence Theory which suggests that two cultures will be more and more like each other as their interactions increase.

2012 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 193-210 ◽  
Author(s):  
Audra I. Mockaitis ◽  
Elizabeth L. Rose ◽  
Peter Zettinig

This paper investigates the perceptions of members of 43 culturally diverse global virtual teams, with respect to team processes and outcomes. Despite widespread acknowledgement of the challenges presented by cultural differences in the context of global teams, little is known about the effect of these differences on team dynamics in the absence of face-to-face interaction. Using a student-based sample, we study the relationship between global virtual team members’ individualistic and collectivistic orientations and their evaluations of trust, interdependence, communication and information sharing, and conflict during the team task. Our results suggest that a collectivist orientation is associated with more favorable impressions regarding global virtual team processes and that cultural differences are not concealed by virtual means of communication.


Author(s):  
Bak Aun Teoh ◽  
Wei Hong Ling ◽  
Amlus Ibrahim

The growth in new knowledge and technology has substantially increased the complexity of the projects that is strongly influencing the time, cost, and quality of the project management. Due to the volatility of the current market, the effectiveness of knowledge management (KM) could reduce the project uncertainties, project life cycle costs, and risks of new product development (NPD). Since NPD is regarded as the key to innovation due to its strong connection between the knowledge and core competence, the ways how the knowledge will be captured, created, and shared among the project teams is important to remain competitive in today's business and market competition. Hence, the modes of how they are created and shared between the project team members as well as the impact of KM towards NPD will be discussed in this paper. KM are normally created and transferred through the conversion between explicit and tacit knowledge, which can be further applied into the project management. Furthermore, the existing knowledge of the organisation can be evaluated by the actions of decision makers, hence, it is undoubted that a better knowledge can lead to measurable efficiencies in production and product development. The key success factors of KM that have been implemented will be discussed in this paper as well, which help to increase the probability of project success. Keywords: New Product Development; Project Management; Knowledge Management; Globalisation


2013 ◽  
pp. 528-540
Author(s):  
David E. Gray ◽  
Malcolm Ryan

This chapter critically examines innovative approaches to the evaluation of a European funded project involving nine countries in the development of a virtual campus to provide training opportunities in ICT for teachers and trainers across Europe. It explores project management processes and decision-making and the impact on outcomes as well as relationships between project team members. It concludes with recommendations for the more effective use of a range of these approaches, asserting that a critical analysis of the processes of engagement is as important as the outcomes.


Author(s):  
Richard Potter ◽  
Pierre Balthazard

Drawing from several years of empirical research, in this chapter, we look at the impact of the personalities of individual team members on the performance and process outcomes of virtual teams. Our studies showed that both too few and too many extroverts in a virtual team may result in low performance. While conventional wisdom says that teams should be set up on the basis of expertise, we argue that the resulting interaction styles of the members must be considered when establishing a virtual team. We offer suggestions for managers on assessing the potential for constructive interaction styles.


Virtual Teams ◽  
2011 ◽  
pp. 70-90 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea Hornett

Practitioners and researchers need to pay attention to how corporate organizing structures are impacting and are impacted by virtual work environments. Virtual teams are powerful organizing mechanisms, but they are not without limitations. This chapter reports on two cases in which dynamics outside the virtual project teams powerfully affected the teams. These cases, both based on studies of real project teams operating inside corporations, highlight the desirability of understanding virtual teams in context. While external factors are not unique to teamwork, their role has not been explored in depth in research on virtual teams. Dynamic forces outside teams seem more difficult to anticipate and to identify when team members are working virtually, and these powerful but invisible dynamics can be frustrating to virtual team leaders and members. Concluded in this chapter is that contrary to initial expectations, virtual teams are not replacing traditional forms of organizing. They are coexisting with traditional forms and dynamics, such as business drivers, hierarchies, departments, strategic priorities, and business needs. This coexistence can be fraught with conflict.


Author(s):  
Norhayati Zakaria

Many multinational companies (MNCs) have inevitably assembled and employed global virtual teams (GVTs) to leverage their work performance. GVTs are considered as an innovative and flexible work structure to achieve competitiveness in the era of globalization. The emergence of this structure is also due to the heavy reliance on computer-mediated communication technology and, as such, geographical boundaries and time zones are no longer considered as a hindrance to collaboration and communication. Yet, cultural differences remain challenging when team members work together in a non-collocated environment when they are engaged in managerial tasks such as problem-solving, negotiations, decision-making, and coordination. Thus, this new distributed collaborative phenomenon suggests that one of the key challenges in working together apart is the ability to adapt and acculturate to different cultural values that exist among team members. People need to be fully aware, understand, and be sensitive to the impact of cultural differences by exploiting appropriate online behaviors in order to reduce its detrimental influence on work performance. The purpose of this article is to present and understand the dynamics of intercultural collaboration within global virtual teams and how culture impacts their work performance in MNCs. Individuals from all over the world with diverse cultural backgrounds are increasingly collaborating using computer-mediated communication (CMC) technologies such as e-mail, Web, chat and videoconferencing, and others. Existing literature shows that when people with different cultural values communicate, it is not unusual for miscommunication, misunderstanding, and misinterpretations to occur (Chen, 2001; Gudykunst, 2003). Problems are intensified in CMC environment because of its limitation such as the absence of body language, facial expressions, tone of voice, and many others (Sproull & Kiesler, 1986; Walther, 1996). However, little research has been conducted on the ways in which different intercultural communication styles and cultural values affect people working in a distributed or virtual environment, particularly on team members’ performance. Thus, in this article, first, I will introduce the phenomenon of GVTs and its crucial function in MNCs. Second, I will present the background of the phenomenon by highlighting the gaps as identified between two research fields--crosscultural management and computer-mediated communication. Next, the main focus of the article will be a discussion of the issue of intercultural collaboration. In this section, I will first provide a definition of GVTs, followed by several arguments on cultural challenges of GVTs. In the subsequent section, I will discuss the different types of CMC that are available to GVTs and the impact of culture on its utilization. Then, I will provide a brief direction of the future research agenda comprising of both the practical as well as theoretical perspectives. In conclusion, the article will highlight the significance of using GVTs in MNCs when people engage more prominently in intercultural collaboration, using CMC in order to promote and expand international business.


Author(s):  
Catherine M. Beise ◽  
Fred Niederman ◽  
Herb Mattord

This chapter presents the results of a case study pertaining to the use of information and communication media to support a range of project management tasks. A variety of electronic communication tools have evolved to support collaborative work and virtual teams. Few of these tools have focused specifically on the needs of project managers. In an effort to learn how practicing IT project managers employ these tools, data were collected at a North American Fortune 500 industrial company via interviews with IT project managers regarding their use and perceptions of electronic media within the context of their work on project teams. In this study, “virtual” describes the extent to which communication is electronic rather than the extent to which team members are geographically separated. Although the number of respondents was limited, the richness of the data collected leads to the conclusion that successful project managers and teams become skilled at adapting a variety of existing communication technologies to match the project task or process, the receiver, their own role as sender, and the content of the message. Groupware designers and developers need to better understand project management methods and best practices in order to provide better tools for practitioners, particularly as organizations expand globally and increasingly outsource various functions of their IT development and operations.


2014 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 11-28 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yasser A. El-Kassrawy

Given the important role of information technology, virtuality has become crucial issue in contemporary organizations. Virtual teams are comprised of members who are located in more than one physical location. They need to be effectively collaborating to harness their full performance capabilities in order to compete in the highly competitive environments. However, virtual team effectiveness is affected by determinants of trust which include three types; personality, cognitive and institutional-based trust. Therefore, this paper examines the impact of trust determinants on virtual team effectiveness represented in virtual team satisfaction and performance. Through a survey of 125 virtual team members who had experienced at least two years in this field, the results indicated that determinants of trust positively influence virtual team satisfaction and virtual team performance. The authors' structural equations modeling findings also support our hypothetical predictions that personality- based trust, cognitive- based trust and institutional- based trust have a dramatic impact on both of virtual team satisfaction and virtual team performance. Moreover, institutional- based trust is the uppermost driver of virtual team effectiveness. This study provides novel insights into virtual team behaviours, managerial and research implications for effective virtual team.


Author(s):  
Joshua A. Eaton ◽  
David J. Mendonça ◽  
Matthew-Donald D. Sangster

Objective: This research studies the impact of role familiarity on team performance by examining performance of the “Carry” role in the Multi-player Online Battle Arena gaming environment, League of Legends™. Background: Roles are typically defined as stable patterns of expectations, relationships, and behaviors. As social constructs, roles therefore include notions of status, relationships with additional social actors, and of defined sets of behaviors tied to the assigned role. We hypothesize that the importance of role familiarity in teams is mediated by the nature and extent of team members’ experience working together in defined roles. Methods: The data set used for this study is from League of Legends’ Application Program Interface and consists of ranked match play from 2011–2016. Results: ANOVA and visualization techniques are used to explore match-level data in order to address the proposed research questions. The proportion of time the same team member is assigned to the “Carry” role (role familiarity) has a direct and positive impact on team performance. Conclusions: This study shows how objective, detailed data on teamwork may be used to provide insights into questions of the composition and performance of teams. Additionally, the results illustrate the importance of role familiarity in the performance of teams. Application: This research highlights the value and feasibility of studying virtual teams for new insights into team performance.


Author(s):  
Norhayati Zakaria

This chapter looks at a key concept called communities of practice that helps to facilitate organizational learning through increased knowledge sharing within global virtual teams. By using Granovetter’s (1974) weak ties theory, I suggest that casual acquaintances, known as weak ties have significant implications for social relationships and context, both of which can benefit virtual organizational team members. Furthermore, based on Hofstede’s (1980) cultural dimensions, I also argue that cultural factors can impact one’s willingness to share knowledge. Thus, there are three questions that guide this chapter: (1) How do social relationships and context among global virtual teams affect the development of communities of practice? (2) How does culture affect the knowledge of sharing activities? (3) What is the impact of ICTs on knowledge sharing and the emergence of communities of practice?


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