Global Virtual Teams: How to Manage Them

The emergence of the internet, multimedia, collaborative software environments and group support systems has created new opportunities for organizations to form global virtual teams (GVTs) to work on complex virtual projects, and remain competitive. This development in information and communication technology over the last decade and a half has added a new dimension to management and has sparked a new line of research. This paper has collated literature to provide the reader with pertinent definitions and challenges faced by managers when managing virtual/distributed teams and projects and the different methods used to manage these challenges. One of the researchers has worked in a virtual team for 7 months, and conducted an ethnographical study. It was found that communication was the core challenge to the success of a global virtual team. Other issues linked to this core challenge of communication were trust, cultural differences, team cohesion, software, collaboration, and environmental challenges.