Critical Success Factors for Virtual Teams
February 12, 2025
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Politics is an inevitable phenomenon faced by the employees in any workplace - virtual or collocated. The personal agenda of individuals in terms of career aspirations and motivations to work as well as organizational culture are the key determinants of workplace politics. Political processes can be either overt where the organizational hierarchy is rigid or covert in less bureaucratic organizations. Overt or covert, both types of political processes are detrimental to the organizational health.
Members of virtual teams adopt different influence tactics to impact team decisions. Influence tactics adopted by virtual team members affect:
All this have direct impact on the productivity and effectiveness of global virtual team. Therefore, it is one of the most important responsibilities of virtual team leader to understand as well as manage politics in the virtual workspace.
There are different types of influence tactics such as assertiveness, rational persuasion, consultation, pressure, blocking, upward appeal etc. exhibited by the members during their interactions with others. Following four factors largely determine the intensity and choice of influence tactics by the virtual team members:
Thus we see virtual teams witness less intense and interpersonal means of influencing rather than unhealthy competitive ones. An exception to this rule occurs when members of same geographical area form coalition and hold discussion outside the formal group interactions.
Though virtual team members experience politics but in a comparatively subtle way. In fact, virtual team leaders can minimize any signs of politics by establishing flatter hierarchy and promoting cultural sensitivity. Thus we see the basic characteristics of global virtual teams like multicultural, physical distance and constrained communication keep the emergence of team politics under control.
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