Case Study on Relationship Building in Virtual Teams (880 words)

Read the article “Relationship Building in Virtual Teams: An Academic Case Study” by Kathy Egea and answer the following questions. Be sure to answer questions completely. Grading will be determined on style, content, completeness and support of your answers.

1. What types of issues have you experienced yourself when working in teams? What kinds of problems do you foresee while working in a virtual team?

2. (Thinking about the second part of question 1) Would these potentially be the same problems faced working within a traditional face-to-face group? Explain.

3. Do you agree with the authors, that in dealing with virtual teams and the technical design of collaborative systems, that limited attention has been paid to the importance of social relationships when it comes to teams? Explain.

4. The article describes several factors for success related to the input stage, process stage and output stage. Is there a factor listed that you disagree with? If you agree with all of them, which one do you agree with the strongest? Explain your answer.

5. If you were managing a virtual team, what characteristics would you look for in your team? What type(s) of technology or tools would you use? Do you see any potential technological challenges?

6. Describe issues that can develop from misunderstanding? How can this be addressed with online interaction?

7. Was anything from the study surprising to you? Do you generally agree or disagree with the findings? Explain.

Egea identifies commitment and trust as the two factors most positively affected by the tools she advocates – and, from experience, I think those are the exact two items often in short supply in team environments, particularly at the beginning. What then happens is that, by way of the force and pressure exerted by the necessity of team tasks and deadlines, each member of a team quickly forms opinions regarding other team members. Now, those evaluations are likely to be influenced by all sorts of individual idiosyncrasies, but, regardless...

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