Virtual conferences and meetings have been around for many years but they have come to the fore and are a standard form of group communication now that we are in a “new normal” because of the COVID-19 global pandemic. A team from India, writing in the International Journal of Networking and Virtual Organisations, discusses the ways in which virtual teamwork can be made more effective.
Monica Kunte, Sonali Bhattacharya, and Netra Neelam of the Symbiosis International (Deemed) University, in Hinjawadi, India, point out that virtual teams have always offered a way to reduce costs by allowing people to meet online and so preclude the need for transport and accommodation. They have measured perceived effectiveness of participants by looking at goal orientation, interdependency, knowledge sharing, empowerment, and preparedness in a multidimensional second-order construct.
The team has tested and proven their model to offer a useful scale of virtual team effectiveness. As such it will allow organizers and participants to improve their virtual meetings. Factors such as team size, diversity, participant hierarchy and even the timing, length, and frequency of virtual meetings might be optimized using the scale. This should improve efficiency, ensure any agenda is satisfied as well as ensuring all participants are essential to the team at any given point and avoid wasting human resources.
Kunte, M., Bhattacharya, S. and Neelam, N. (2020) ‘Shall we ever meet; does it matter: unfreezing the constructs of virtual team effectiveness’, Int. J. Networking and Virtual Organisations, Vol. 23, No. 2, pp.128–148.