There are several challenges organizations face when managing a virtual or remote team. One of the most common and potentially problematic issues is that of accountability and leadership since the management is physically absent from the location. Although it is likely there will be a firm chain of command in place, even this level of organization cannot always be enough when there are widespread problems in the remote location(s) because there is likely to be a lack of accountability. In a permanent location, management can oversee projects to completion and if they encounter errors along the way, it is much easier to trace them to their roots if there is a physical team that can be assembled and examined.
Another challenge management is likely to encounter when managing a remote team is a lack of insight into the specific problem areas because they are not actually present where the work or action is taking place. Just as in the case with the first problem, the lack of oversight allows mistakes to be made that might have otherwise been addressed at team or project meetings on daily or weekly basis. Without this accessibility to other team members or upper management, these small mistakes (that might arise in part because of a lack of communication) could mean failure for the project if not addressed immediately. While these are just two of many possible issues that might arise when managing a virtual team, they are the most likely to cause the most significant problems and thus must be addressed early on to ensure success of the project. Without having a solid infrastructure that is heavily based on active and even daily communication, the convenience of remote project execution may not be worth it in the end.
There can be great rewards to having a team comprised of people from different ethnic and sociopolitical backgrounds, but this diversity must be handled properly by management as well as team members in order to be successful. One of the challenges that can arise in such a situation is a lack of cross-cultural understanding. It is almost natural for people of all cultures to assume that their culture is the standard and this can cause great problems in a team without proper education. In order to cope with some of the issues that can arise because of a lack of cross-cultural understanding, great care must be taken to teach team members to be accepting of others and there should also be an effort to offer outreach training as well. Without this, projects can be doomed to failure because people of different cultures will be more likely to see things differently and this could cause a great deal of tension within the team. One example of this would be a project aimed at reaching young single mothers. Some team members may feel that these women should be shunned while others feel they deserve help and acceptance.
Such a politically charged project could result in failure not because one person is right while the others are wrong, but simply because there are different culture-driven stigmas that the other side may not understand. On this note, care must be taken when assembling a team to take on politically-charged projects. Another problem that can arise is when people are from different sociopolitical backgrounds. For instance, if there is a team comprised of people who are pro-life and more situated in a lower-class background, it could be contentious to place them in the same team with those who are from an upper-class background with opposite political viewpoints. Although it is good to think that proper education of a team can help mediate or prevent these issues from arising due to sociopolitical or cultural differences, it also seems that care must be taken when placing people into teams.
Other essays and articles in the Main Archives related to this topic include : E-commerce and Ethics: The Amazon Model • Profile of Tokyo in the Context of Globalization • The Role and Responsibilities of Management in Organizations
