Working in teams is not a new phenomenon, but advances in communication technologies have drastically changed the nature of teamwork. Today, many companies rely heavily upon modern communication technologies such as e-mail, telephone and video-conferencing. Traditional co-located groups are being replaced with virtual teams, spread among many time zones and dispersed through various nations. With teams being spread throughout large companies or even all over the world, it often occurs that people who work together barely meet physically and discuss the issues face-to-face. Although there are major advantages to this (such as cost and time savings), there is also a severe downside to this new form of work. This paper aims to identify some of the barriers to effective virtual team. .
In order to understand the concept of virtual teams, it is critical to define what constitutes a team and what makes it virtual. The term "virtual team" applies to a physically dispersed task group that conducts its business through modern information (Kreitner and Kinicki 2001). Virtual teams are like project or traditional work teams. They work together to solve problems in their day-to-day jobs. The major difference is that the team members are located at different work site, or travel frequently so that it is difficult for them to meet on a face-to-face basis. These work sites may be in the same city, different cities in the same country or in different parts of the world. Team members may be from different organizations or parts of the organization, and duration or length of time that members work together as a team may differ from that of traditional work teams. These differences in place, organization, and time are the main components of a virtual team.
The use of virtual teams allows organizations to manage a greater number of projects without the cost and wasted time of face-to-face meetings.