Virtual Teamwork: A Product of Globalization Implications for University Education

Improving Student Competencies Through Face–to-Face and Virtual Teams

“…A virtual team is defined as a team whose members use technology to varying degrees in working across location, temporal, and relational boundaries to accomplish an interdependent task (Martins, Gilson and Maynard, 2004;Clark and Gibb, 2006). In the case of virtual groups, due to spatial and temporal separation, the continuous process of communication and interaction within the group takes place predominantly through the use of modern communication technologies (Lenz and Machado, 2008). Therefore, communication in virtual groups is based on an intensive use of new technologies.…”

“…From the business perspective the advantages of the virtual team are seen in the opportunity to hire a group of experts regardless of location. In this sense, virtual team work facilitates a more efficient use of internal and external expert knowledge; savings on travel costs and on conference room rent; and being flexible in solving problems such as a surge of complex tasks to be tackled within a limited time frame (Lenz and Machado, 2008). Therefore, firms should benefit from a richness of information transfer and from an extended reach between people (Evans and Wurster, 1999).…”