Virtual Teams

Virtual team members are physically separated by time or space and those virtual team members primarily interact electronically.

According to David Gould some benefits of virtual teams include the following:

- People can work from anywhere at any time.

- People can be recruited for their competencies, not just physical location.

- Expenses associated with travel, lodging, parking, and leasing or owning a building may be reduced and sometimes eliminated.

-There is no commute time.

Virtual Teams (February 2010). Retrieved May 10, 2011. From: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27Y5WToAeA0

Example:

A Travel Agency that has operations in India and Brazil offers a lot of options to their clients since it has alliances with all the airlines like Avianca Taca-Colombia/American Airlines- EE.UU/ Iberia- España/ Airfrance- Francia, among others. To know if there are seats available the agency keep in touch directly with all of them by mail, and when an airline thinks that is necessary to give an instruction to the agency, they just communicate by videoconference or instant messaging. Is difficult sometimes to understan what the other people is trying to say when he/she writes a mail but the advantages of videoconference is that your are talking "face to face" with the other person.

INSEAD, virtual teams (April 2011). Retreived May 10, 2011. From: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-GjnG__QLkc

References:
- Gould David, Virtual Teams (June 2006). Retrieved May 10, 2011. From: http://www.seanet.com/~daveg/vrteams.htm
- Time Management Guide. Virtual Team Benefits and Challenges. (2005). Retrieved May 10, 2011. From: http://www.time-management-guide.com/virtual-team.html