VIRTUAL TEAMS

The most important topic for this class is the virtual teams, which are people disperse in different zones, cities or even countries that work through communication technologies.  As our world has become more and more connected, is normal to talk about working with virtual teams, also there are many advantages like less overheads, the maximization of the time, the commodity, the flexibility, the direct access to local market, the informatics facilities, and so on, but it also has some disadvantages, for example, the time zone differences, lack of communication or interaction with the others making almost impossible to build trust, failure to share information, misunderstanding, lack of commitment, the feeling of impotence when something is going wrong, or when you cannot make contact with the others. However, there are some factors that can help to create a successful team, for this is very important to build trust in a certain level, in order to approach more to the others and have a good and comfortable interaction, this can be made by getting to talk about what you like to do, your hobbies, your family, your traditions, or in general about yourself, you have to state the goals you want to achieve with them and coordinate the way we will work and with which tools the information will be send or show (be sure that all of them know how to use it) and how we will be communicating with the others, it can be by facebook, emails, whatsapp, line, yahoo, Hotmail, skype, google docs, dropbox, and so on, do it continuously, but in a way that do not disturb the others. There should be a preparation in cultural training to overcome all the possible conflicts or problems with the others, because of the possible misunderstandings. You should always have a high sense of tolerance, respect and patience toward the others, this is very useful when the others do not commit too much to the team, or their way to talk or write is not clear or is wrong, or they do not appear on time or show up for the virtual meetings that have been state, or when they do not respond on time. 

My research question is to understand in a better way the importance of fault lines, which is consider as “an imaginary line that divides a heterogeneous team into homogenous sub-teams” and which have to be activated by external forces.  When forming the group aspects as the demographic traits, such as gender, continent of origin, age; can induce in the creation of a sub-team, and by the feeling of a connection, similitude or identification with the sub-team they start to create a stronger relation, but these may create conflicts with the other part of the team and therefore their performance, as the other part start feeling apart or different, even inferior.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Team_composition#Faultlines