Virtual Teams That Work – Creating Conditions for Virtual Team Effectiveness

Virtual Teams That Work offers a much-needed, comprehensive guidebook for business leaders and managers who want to create the organizational conditions that will help virtual teams thrive. Each chapter in this important book focuses on best practices and includes case studies and illustrative examples from a wide variety of companies, including British Petroleum, Lucent Technologies, Ramtech, SoftCo, and Whirlpool Corporation. These real-life examples demonstrate how the principles identified in the book play out within virtual teams. Virtual Teams That Work shows how organizations can put in place the structure to help team members who speak different languages and have different cultural values develop effective ways of communicating when there is little opportunity for the members to meet face-to-face. The authors also reveal how organizations can implement performance management and reward systems that will motivate team members to cooperate across multiple boundaries. And they offer the information to determine which technologies best fit a variety of virtual-team tasks and the level of information technology support needed.

Cristina B. Gibson is associate research professor at the University of Southern California's Center for Effective Organizations and has also taught at the University of Wisconsin. Her research on teams has appeared in numerous journals, and she is coauthor of a recent book on multinational teams.

Susan G. Cohen is senior research scientist at the University of Southern California's Center for Effective Organizations and an organizational effectiveness consultant. She is the author of numerous journal articles and several books on the topic of teams.