Uniting The Virtual Workforce: Transforming Leadership and Innovation in the Globally Integrated Enterprise - Hardcover

Lojeski, Karen Sobel; Reilly, Richard R.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0470193956 ISBN 13: 9780470193952

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons Inc, 2008

Synopsis

Praise for Uniting the Virtual Workforce

"Uniting the Virtual Workforce offers much-needed guidance on how to navigate the largely unmapped territory of virtual work environments in the global economy. The authors do an outstanding job of presenting how organizations should address the challenges of virtual workforces so as to reap the huge potential benefits of increased growth, productivity, and innovation."
-C. Warren Axelrod, PhD, Chief Privacy Officer and Business Information Security Officer, U.S. Trust, and author of Outsourcing Information Security

"Lojeski and Reilly bring us something that readers of business books so rarely get-no nonsense practical guidance on how to manage distance, especially where it most often serves as an impediment to working effectively.Ê If you interface with widely dispersed team members who rarely see one another and communicate by virtue of impersonal electronics, you may expect to find this book provocative, counterintuitive, and above all, exciting. It gives all of us who have to struggle, while working with talent stretched across distance, hope, that maybe there are ways to do this right!"
-Patrick J. McKenna, author of First Among EqualsÊ

"A must-read for global corporate executives who manage geographically dispersed job sharing teams. Practical strategies for preventing productivity loss and optimizing innovation. The authors pull no punches in showing the real downsides to the virtual work phenomenon; they have done a great service for us all."
-Jeff Saperstein, author of Creating Regional Wealth in the Innovation Economy

"Uniting the Virtual Workforce charts the course for competing in the twenty-first century by tapping into the powers of virtual work. Any manager who ignores the virtual workforce is underperforming, and any company or organization that does not appreciate virtual work is already at a competitive disadvantage. Karen and Dick have tapped into a key ingredient in the recipe for global growth."
-Jerry MacArthur Hultin, President, Polytechnic University, and former Under Secretary of the Navy

"Authors Sobel Lojeski and Reilly have provided a useful primer for the harried executive striving for productivity improvements while seeing the workload expand and the workforce disperse. Using conceptual definitions of Physical, Operational, and Affinity Distance to describe the multifaceted dimensions of building teams of people to work effectively together, the authors construct a very powerful set of metrics for a manager to improve the capability of his or her workgroup, no matter where it resides or how it is composed. The book is rich in anecdotes and specific studies that illustrate the concepts in an engaging, pertinent, and easy-to-understand manner. In an age of outsourcing, offshoring, and decentralizing groups of people who have to get things done together, reading this small book will repay itself many times over."
-Charles House, Director, Media X Lab at Stanford University, and former Director of the Societal Impact of Technology, Intel Corporation

About this title

From the Inside Flap

Uniting the Virtual Workforce

As our society continues its transition from the Industrial Age to the Digital Age, new challenges are being introduced into the workplace, giving rise to a new pheno-menon, Virtual Distance, comprised of three major axes: physical distance—geographic, time zone, or organizational; operational distance—multitasking, communication problems, and technical difficulties; and affinity distance—cultural differences, interdependence distance, working relationships, and social distance.

Part of Wiley's Microsoft Executive Leadership series, Uniting the Virtual Workforce introduces the concept of Virtual Distance to show businesses the definite costs to doing work in a virtual environment. It then goes a step further and offers proven methods for measuring these costs and guidance on managing them.

Wherever your organization is in its under-standing of virtual Distance, Uniting the Virtual Workforce covers:

• HowÊthe transition to a "virtual" workforce creates real challengesÊto collaboration and innovation and how to measure and manage the impact

• How Virtual Distance impacts productivity and innovation and offers insight and guidance on how to manage these new risks

• A historical perspective on "distance," exposing the so-called "death of distance" as a myth, and showing how our understanding of distance in the virtual workplace must include psychological, as well as physical, spaces

Today, almost all organizations are struggling with the impact that virtualization is having on the workplace. Yet, a full comprehension of the costs of virtualization is lacking. Uniting the Virtual Workforce: Transforming Leadership and Innovation in the Globally Integrated Enterprise presents a better understanding of Virtual Distance and the impact it has on people and performance in today's workplace, providing the essential tools necessary for minimizing its impact going forward.

About the Author

Karen Sobel Lojeski, PhD, is CEO of Virtual Distance International, a consulting firm specializing in measuring and managing the impact of virtual distance in the workforce; a contributing writer to CIOInsight.com; and a popular speaker on Virtual Distance and the impact it has on today's workplace.

Richard R. Reilly, PhD, is a Professor of Management at the Wesley J. Howe School of Technology Management at the Stevens Institute of Technology and Chief Technology Officer at Virtual Distance International.Ê He is the coauthor of Blockbusters: The Five Keys to Developing Great New Products.

Edition details

• Publisher: John Wiley & Sons Inc
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 0470193956
• ISBN 13: 9780470193952
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 203