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Harvey, Michael; Novicevic, Milorad M.; Garrison, Garry // Global virtual teams: A human resource capital architecture // International Journal of Human Resource Management, 2005, 16(9), p1583-1599 // ISSN: 0958-5192
Globalization has organically introduced Global Virtual Teams (GVTs) and made them an essential part of any rapidly expanding international companies. GVTs, which are groups of people working together even though they are geographically separated, have the potential to be catalysts in effectively utilizing a company’s human resources (HR). Even though GTVs show great promise, problems associated with an interconnected global work force are amplified and new issues have arisen which include difficulty working with individuals from differing cultures, decreased ability for members to build social/cultural capital within a team, difficultly to asses performance, and GVTs cannot convey informal rules or norms which in turn would lead to an increase in misunderstandings and confusion.
GVTs value-creating competencies can be broken down into: self-related competencies, team context-related competencies, and vision-related competencies. These competencies, if bundled together effectively, will foster a sustainable competitive advantage over the firm’s global rivals. Another determining factor in how to efficiently use an organizations competencies would be the balance between the development of a firm knowledge base and the knowledge shared by collaborating GVT members, or the management of corporate HR architecture. Human capital needs to be invested in, trained, highly adaptable to change, and most importantly and perhaps the most difficult task, it needs to be measured in order to add value to an organization’s GVT. Using a six-stepped approach, human capital becomes both a strategic tool and can “directly influence dynamic capabilities.” The next critical capital is social capital, built around associability and trust, which is loosely defined as the social relations employed to facilitate and achieve certain goals. Having trust in another’s reliability and ethical integrity and the ability to associate individual level goals with collective goals are the most important dimensions of social capital. Even though social capital is conceptualized for the collective, it can enhance individual, team, and firm level social capital. Political capital, broken down into reputational and representative capital, is not the social grease of a firm but rather the ability of GVT members to developed political skills throughout the global project. There are six key leadership behaviors of GVT members that influence the building of political capital: social approximation, level/type of interaction, scope and reach, dispersion of knowledge, durability, and degree of formality. Although the pursuit of political capital can reduce the level of conflict and confusion among the members of a GVT, it can also be limited in its effectiveness due to the short longevity of most GVTs. Building political capital or skill among its GVT counterparts goes back to trust which is strengthen the longer a relationship is fostered. Another problem that could arise when developing a political capital strategy, especially true when merging regional operations, is the delusion of control and a rather limited, complex hierarchy.
Each previously mentioned capital involves to some degree the final critical capital, cross cultural capital. Cultural intelligence and cross cultural competence involves three key dimensions which include, cognitive, motivational, and behavioral dimension. Utilizing these facets is vital to receiving, gathering, and interpreting cross cultural information which in turn can be used to develop and maintain cultural competence for the GVT. It is obvious that an organization’s ability to expand its operations beyond its cultural boundaries is directly related to how strong their cross cultural capital is within its GVTs.
In order to maintain and develop capital within a GVT, a six pronged approach has been used successful to increase efficient use of human resources. The very first step is to formalize the assessment process and to institutionalize it, which requires establishing the cost of the collection process, determining who will conduct the assessment, and finally to standardize or institutionalize guidelines of the assessment itself. The second step is to establish a monitoring assessment team, one that is reflective of the number, diversity, and the amount of intangible assets of the GVT, but more importantly membership should be driven by the skill set and experience of potential assessment team members. The next step is to develop a non-imitable, durable, appropriable, substitutable, and superior set of measurements for monitoring GVT capital. Even though there are numerous metrics and methods in measuring GVT capital, two metrics are more commonly used: economics value added and market value added. The fourth step revolves around developing contingency strategies for protecting GVT capital. Effective capital security plans protect against the sometimes inevitable depletion of capital stock and are comprised of four elements which need to be simultaneously utilized in order to protect the intangible core of capital in a GVT. Once a proactive strategy for developing capital stock of GVT is implemented the final step in the capital assessment process is to monitor and account for capital in the GVT over time. During this step capital becomes a team asset and is bundled together with similar capitals in order to improve the GVT capabilities and performance.
In order for global firms to stay relevant in today’s hyper-competitive market an organization needs to embrace, invest in and implement global virtual teams as incubators of innovations. GVTs are increasingly used as strategic tools in developing and maintaining a competitive edge for a global organizations. GVTs are made more efficient by reconfigured human resource capital architecture to meet the demands of GVTs, a continuous assessment and reassessment program, and enhanced competences of its intellectual capital.
Dubé, Line; Paré, Guy. // Global Virtual Teams // Communications of the ACM, 2001, 44(12), p71-73 // SSN: 0001-0782
A study revolving around global virtual team leaders from businesses diverse in sizes and industry all seemed to have the same challenges, recommendations, and all saw the same benefits from their use of GVTs. Different and at times conflicting cultural norms lead to an array of issues from management style clashes to cultural bias but most concluded that with pre-project cultural training and education some of this avoidable cross cultural problems would be solved. Communication barriers resulting in a loss of vital ideas and information, but could be curved by introducing structured communication sessions, the implementation of technology to check grammar and spelling, and use of basic foreign language training. Different levels of IT proficiency, lack of technology training, and incompatible, unreliable, or unavailable technology was another major issue weighing down the efficiency of their GVTs. After the daunting task of selecting the right media for each task, GVT leaders are faced with the inherent downfalls of telecommunication, which include the lack of physical interaction, nonverbal cues, and synergies. Implication of an effect GVTs require the creation of a reliable electronic workplace.
Goodbody, Jenny // Critical Success Factors for Global Virtual Teams // Strategic Communication Management, 2005, 9(2), p18-21 // ISSN: 1363-9064
Written from the experiences of BOC group’s global change manger, there are three factors that determine the success of VGTs: team formation, trust and collaboration, and team communication. The first stage, and most important to the health of a GVT, includes carefully positioning and clearing defining who the GVT leader, or sponsor, should be. After individual ownership of the collective goals is set and measured, it is important to recruit members of the team with different functional backgrounds. As is true with any initial meeting, first impressions are everything which holds especially true to the vitally important kick off meeting meant to jump start the relationships between the GVT members. BOC group’s manager highlights the most important cultural influences that a GVT should be made aware of, which includes: individualism vs. collectivism, power distance, uncertainty avoidance, and task/relationship orientation. One should also re-evaluate previous co-located team members in order to asses if they will be of any value to the new GVT. The final step in the first factor is to build a team identity, which will help with associating a brand with key goals and objectives of various GVTs. When trying to foster trust and collaboration, the second factor in the success of a GVT, it is important to ensure consistency. Formal teleconferences, a stricter schedule and hard deadlines are meant to combat the lack of oversight and management of a GVT, but also help with encouraging collaboration among its members. As with any manager it is extremely important to communicate success to its members and be aware of individual efforts in the form of celebrating achievements. The final factor is team communication, which arguably is the most important part of a successful VGT. Be proactive about sharing information for the next conference call by preparing 6-10 bullet point overviews, select the appropriate technology in relation to what needs to be communicated, and finally effectively facilitate team meetings, are all ways to increase the GVT’s commination.
My Comments
This topic seems to have been written exclusively for myself. I hold two jobs where I am in continuous participation within a global virtual team. Given that most of what was said I can agree with I would like to add a couple more things. In regards to technological issues that where stated in “Global Virtual Teams,” ten years has since passed and I think those are no longer applicable to what one would consider a GVT in today’s business landscape. Furthermore, in today’s global market employees that do not have technological knowhow are extremely rare. If one has to be told how to organize your email or how to organize a CRM program, you might not have a job in the future. Most issues presented by Line Dube and Guy Pare are solved by technologies that have come out in the last 15 years. If I cannot speak a client’s language, I have software that will translate it for me, if I have to use software I am unfamiliar with Youtube undoubtedly has a tutorial for me, and if one mode of media fails me I have dozens of other backups. Just as an example, I have split screens showing a live stream of my office in Sao Paulo and a direct google hangout button for each of my partners from Austin, Tx to Cape Town, South Africa. I cannot stress how important Goodbody’s categories are for effective GVTs. Without realizing that I was following her guidelines I have managed to follow them down to the smallest details, like the kick off meeting in which we have an initial live streamed launch event built around a more causal vibe with music. The only addition I would have to insert would be the value of improved technologies. We utilize a festival management software which embodies many of Goodbody’s key categories like ensuring consistency or encouraging collaboration by being able to give tasks to others, complete other’s tasks in order to gain more trust, and even allows for smaller celebrations when key goals are met in the form of a competitive point system. Interesting enough, our teams are tasked to write out 3-6 bullet point pre-conference call notes in order to steer the videoconference in the right direction and to make sure we are utilizing our time wisely. What we have done to combat time differences, listed as an issue with GVTs, is to assign off hours to certain directors or purchasers, where employees have the option of working at certain times that would coincide with our offices in Brazil or Singapore.