Disadvantages Of Virtual Teams

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Global Virtual Teams can bring a lot of benefits to the organization if its members will be able to coordinate work properly. However, poorly designed and managed VT can harm the productive work of the team members. In that perspective, GVT in comparison with face-to-face expatriate work has several disadvantages and challenges, which should be addressed for the prosperity of the corporate projects. Since both expatriate and GVT face the challenges with the cultural and language barriers, the main focus of analysis will be shifted to the disadvantages of the virtual project work. 4.1 Leadership Although majority of leadership principles are applicable to the virtual teams, leadership is still one of the main challenges in the GVT due to the…show more content…
In expatriate work standardized KPI allow leaders to monitor, control and influence the activities of the specific employee or the department. However in GVT performance evaluation is typically tied into the local priorities, which are set in the location the employee is factually located. This may negatively interfere motivation of the employees and misunderstanding between the project leader and the employees (Klein & Barrett,…show more content…
Lack of channels for socialization make work in the virtual team more task-focus and less of a social-focus (Chidambaram & Bostrom, 1993). This has a negative aspect on understanding of personality of colleagues. Furthermore, because of the lack of the situational information of other teammates, GVT members are more likely to make personal and categorical attribution, rather than situational attribution. This means, that in case of the conflict, GVT members are more prone to blame the personality of the individuals involved, rather than situation. Personal attribution can worsen the relationship and undermine the trust among the team members (Kankanhalli, 2007). Lack of control of the team members’ activities is another reason, which undermines trust in the virtual team. GVT members are not able to see what other people are doing, rarely can have an immediate response for the inquiries, rarely work at the same time and may have different workload outside of the project (Meyer, 2013). Participants often express frustration about team members who engage in multi‐tasking during a meeting and the challenge of not receiving feedback from comments being made. In addition, delays can be frustrating for team members when the team cannot proceed without a colleague’s response (Joinson,

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