Virtual Team Leading Practices in MNCs, Present and Future

Virtual Team Leading Practices in MNCs, Present and Future

Introduction

An individual is unable to reach organizational goals individually and it's the collective effort of “teams” which leads to success. The companies came up with the concept of “Virtual Teams” to address this issue. Employees being brought together from all departments to achieve a beneficial goal are now a management practice at most companies. With the globalization and advent of technology, these teams may go beyond borders and include people from within the organization and outside the organization working at a totally different geographical location (Pauleen, 2004).

Discussion

Multinational companies operate across borders and intend to benefits from the opportunities available in every part of the world. While there are opportunities available across borders, there are numerous opportunities available in the virtual world. MNC are utilizing many technologies for their business operations and are making progress in training employees working in less technology exposed areas to coup up with the new business requirements (Caligiuri, Lepak, Bonache, 2010). Virtual teams are made to work with people located at different places to achieve organizational objectives. In order to succeed with Virtual Teams, author David Pauleen elaborates that the team members must have adequate behaviors and skills, they must be good at the use of technology, good team leadership is required to assemble and manage an effective team and its evolving group dynamics. The company must provide a cultural to facilitate such teams (2004).

Following are some of the virtual team leading practices which are best adoptable by MNCs for now and their future use after ten years in the perspective of political, economic and technological aspects:

Use of Communication Technology and Trust

It has become imperative for MNC's to establish and maintain an environment of trust throughout the organization for having a smooth workflow. Procedures and norms must be communicated to all the team members to facilitate effective communication. The use of technology the information which should be and should not be shared may be well explained to all stake holders. We saw the controversy surround China and Australia two years before over Rio Tinto operations in China and the prosecution of its executives by Chinese Government (Barboza, 2010). It is one of the example how this virtual team leading practice is necessary given the political perspective. MNCs developing trust across borders can harness the economic opportunities available across the world ...