Minitrack Introduction: Virtual Work, Teams, And Organizations

This mini-track focuses on challenges presented by geographical, temporal, and cultural distribution among individuals working in teams, organizations, and communities. The explosion of communication technologies has facilitated the growth of virtual environments, but it has also resulted in confusion over choice of communication technologies that may be appropriate for a particular task, overload of information to be sorted through, and a sense of isolation from coworkers. In addition, teams must be formed and become productive quickly, e.g., competitive advantage for project development teams is frequently based on being able to bring a new product to market more quickly than competitors. This environment is further complicated as individual members may work in multiple virtual teams with multiple, often conflicting priorities. In virtual environments, managing these different relationships, loyalties, and priorities, in addition to developing new relationships, presents a definite challenge.