The Benefits of Global Teams Free-Samples-Myassignmenthelp.Com

Question: Discuss about the the Major Challenges that are faced by Organisations when Managing Global Teams. Introduction For achieving success in a global economy, an increasing number of organisations today are relying on a workforce that is geographically dispersed. They attempt to build up global teams comprising people from across the world who possess the best expertise functionally and also have in depth knowledge of the local and promising markets. By forming global teams such organisations draw on the benefits that are offered by international diversity and they also bring together individuals from varied cultural backgrounds, differing work experiences and possessing distinct perspectives on strategic as well as organisational challenges. These factors assist the multinational organisations to compete in todays business environment. However, the managers leading such global teams have to face stiff challenges. Creation of successful work groups is easier when everybody is local and the same office space is shared by them but when the members of the team belong to different nations, have varied functional background and work from different locations, challenges can be posed in the form of rapid deterioration of communication, misunderstanding and degeneration of cooperation into distrust (Neeley, 2015). This business research will discuss the challenges that are faced by organisations in managing global teams. Project Objective The main objectives of this business research are as follows To identify as well as describe the major challenges that are faced by organisations when managing global teams To develop an in-depth understanding of the ways in which these challenges are managed by the project managers in the virtual teams of the global projects Project Scope The designing of a theoretical framework will be done for research purposes. It will provide the definition of the concept of virtual teams and the major challenges associated with managing global teams of the dispersed projects. However, it does not take into consideration the experience of conducting any such virtual project. The focus will be on collection of expertise, knowledge and opinions of international experts from across the globe so that fresh ideas can be found on ways of dealing with the challenges and also on how to maintain trustworthy profitable relationships and day to day working interaction within the global teams. Literature Review From the perspective of an organisation, there are several benefits associated with global teams. These consist of opportunity for hiring talented employees irrespective of the geography, a work day that continues round the clock, reduction in costs along with increase in speed towards the markets (Filev, 2013). Improvements in customer services and productivity can occur if the virtual teams are designed as well as implemented in the correct way (A.D. Harris, 2005). However, there are also several challenges associated with the management of global teams and their effective management requires knowledge as well as understanding of the fundamental principles in relation to team dynamics irrespective of the space, time and communication distinction between face-to-face and virtual environments (Berry, 2011). Global Teams Global teams have been described as teams that are diverse culturally and also dispersed geographically (McDonough, Kahn, Barczak, 2004). Several international organisations build up global teams since it is viewed as effective manner of operating in global settings. Working in global teams requires the organisation to possess deeper understanding related to the mixed skills of the employees who belong to distinct countries and it also requires the managers to think beyond the collocated practices of project management. Thus, the global teams have to be knowledgeable in fields of coaching, conflict resolution, trust building, team building and coaching so as to build collaboration in an effective way (Binder, 2007). Global virtual teams are teams that consist of individuals from different locations geographically or / and different backgrounds culturally who rely on the technology of communication in order to interact with each other to a certain extent (Carter, Seely, Dagosta, DeCh urch, Zaccaro, 2014). Such team have also been defined as interdependent virtual team, the members of which are geographically as well as time dispersed throughout the national and cultural boundaries (Wildman Griffith, 2014). Challenges posed in Managing Global Teams Cultural Differences The greatest challenge faced by project managers in managing global teams is the cultural diversity that is possessed by the stakeholders as well as the team members working in various locations (Stolovitsky, 2012). A high degree of cultural difference between the members of the global team can result in an increased number of challenges, some of which the management might be having little experience of handling. Different cultures of the members of the global team can at times be the source of misunderstandings and conflicts. Cultural differences might also result in difficulties of coordination and prove to be an obstacle for effective communication (Powell, Piccoli, Ives, 2004). Hence it becomes crucial for the project managers to apply certain basic rules as well as practices so that they can gain advantage of cross-cultural communication. However, most of the authors are of the view that challenges posed by cultural understanding hold the key for successful performance (Hofsted e, Hofstede, Michael., Minkov., 2010). Communication In the virtual environment, majority of the communication that exists is non-verbal. This is the reason why it turns out to be a key issue for managing the global teams successfully. In a project environment of traditional type, the project managers possess the opportunity of communicating and implementing projects with the members of the team who are located in the similar geographical and physical location. In such cases face-to-face communication can be utilise as the primary communication method (Lee, 2013). Such communication methods are usually absent in case of global teams. The members of the global team do not possess the facility of reading the body language of their colleagues until a videoconference is arranged. The accessibility to listening to the tone of voice is also limited as the major ways to communicate comprise instant messaging, text and email (Plazas, 2013). The absence of face behind the words can lead to allocation of incorrect messages and emotions. This has increased the curiosity of finding out the ways in which communication can be managed in global teams. Trust Issues related to trust in virtual teams are usually present during the start of the project. As time is usually taken for building trust, most of the research papers indicate that people begin to trust others whom they meet on a regular basis sooner in comparison to an environment wherein communication takes place primarily by means of electronic technology. Addition of diverse backgrounds and language related difficulties makes it all the more complex (Duarte Snyder, 2006). The core of almost all the knowledge dissemination models in global teams comprises of trust in other members (Rosen, Furst, Blackburn, 2007). However, while efforts are put in for establishing trust in virtual teams, a more sceptical approach is adopted by others and they are of the view that for fostering trust face-to-face communication is required (Oertig Buergi, 2006). In the absence of trust between co-workers, proper functioning of the global teams is hampered. Although building as well as maintaining trust in a traditional and physical place of work is difficult, it becomes all the more difficult in a virtual environment where people usually are required to work with somebody whom they might not have met in person. When the global teams span across distinct cultures, it can result in cropping up of misunderstandings which are hard to detect and difficult to address. Additionally, global team rarely give time allocation for building relationships as there is no introductory meeting. Hence, in difficult times, it is difficult to give up all the things for talks which will be able to eliminate conflicts and repair relationships on the basis of cultural misunderstandings and mistrust (Kerravala, 2014). Differences of Time Zones Time is one of the issues in global teams as the members of the team are dispersed over varying time zones (Sankey Lee-Kelley, 2008). The utilisation of asynchronous technologies can help in overcoming various daylight working. However, a gap is still left between question and answer and such delays can prove to be inefficient and stressful in projects of critical nature. Even though the use of communication technology helps in bringing global team members together at virtually the same time, the impact of time zones cannot be completely mitigated by it (Piecewicz, 2010). The members of global teams thus need to identify the factors associated with time zone as the main dependency from the time of start of the project related initiatives. Conflicts Navigation of disputes that occur between members of the team is not easy. Conflicts between employees can turn out to be poisonous and cause damage in productivity, crushing of creativity as well as squashing of morale. Conflicts that remain unresolved cause lot of destruction in a traditional workplace. It is obvious that their complexity will increase in a virtual environment where the people lack proximity of working on their cultural differences and problems face-to-face. Conflicts in case of global teams are more likely to impact the performance in a negative way. Such conflicts are also more likely to be escalated (Petersen, 2014). Conflicts can be related to tasks or relationships. Interpersonal or relationship conflicts comprise effective components such as friction and tension. They consist of personal issues such as annoyance, personality clashes and mutual dislike among the team members. Conflicts which are task based are a reflection of the contradictory viewpoints in relation to implementation of working tasks. Language Differences Language is another significant challenge of managing global teams. English is the language that is spoken in most of the teams across the world. However, when English is spoken on a professional level as a second language it can result in several major misunderstandings as reaching the levels of the mother tongue is very difficult. Additionally, English itself also varies across nations even in those nations where it happens to be the official language such as in Singapore, Great Britain, Australia and the United States. In these nations also meanings of words can differ (Zakaria, Amelinckx, Wilemon, 2004). Even if each member of the team is able to speak English well, all of them speak it in their own ways which leads to another challenge of language knowhow (Oertig Buergi, 2006). Technological Differences As the global teams are dependent on technology for communicating, it is crucial to have knowledge of the ways in which technology can be used. The technological skills of the members of the team differ widely. It is critical to know not only the usage of a particular technology but also which technology is suitable for which purpose. Thus, efficient use of technology is very important. The above discussion shows that the managers of the global teams should know how to manage the challenges associated with cultural differences, communication, conflicts, trust, technological differences, variations in time zones and find out ways of overcoming the functional as well as cultural diversity in global teams that can be a cause of mistrust among the team members (Elbrahim, 2009). The expansion of the number of challenges continues to take place as new problems are being identified by the researchers when they try to manage global teams. The challenges that managers face while leading these global teams can thus be summed as the challenges associated with building virtual relationships, challenges associated with observation, evaluation, measurement and assessment of the work being done along with the skill development of every member of the global team (Zofi, 2011). Conclusion The benefits of global teams are recognised greatly in literature but research concentrating on challenges associated with managing such teams is scarce. The current study thus focuses on the challenges in managing global teams. The project managers managing such teams need to overcome several barriers like cultural issues, absence of face-to-face communication, temporal and geographical distances, issues related to trust, varied styles of communication and technological challenges. Consequently, management of global teams is not only more complex but also different from the management of traditional teams. Bibliography A.D., A., Harris, D. 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