Studying Teamwork in Global IT Support
Elizabeth J. Davidson, Associate Professor Department of Information Technology
Management
College of Business Administration, University of Hawaii, Manoa Email: [email protected]
Albert S. M. Tay, Ph.D. candidate Communication and Information Sciences (CIS)
Program, University of Hawaii, Manoa Email: [email protected]
Abstract
As modern organizations increasingly operate in a global economy, they need IT support around the globe;
favorable economic conditions also encourage the use of offshore IT teams. However, when IT efforts "go global,"
issues and challenges typical of IT development and support are magnified. In this paper, we review and integrate three research areas that contribute to our understanding and management of global IT support teams: studies of global teamwork practices, small group dynamics theory, and studies of virtual teams. We review key findings from these areas and discuss a case example of global IT support to illustrate the insights possible through these research perspectives. We conclude by outlining an agenda for future research on teamwork in global IT support.
1. Overview and motivation
The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) [37] in their World Investment Report 2000 reported that international production by transnational corporations (TNCs), now numbering 63,000 parent firms with about 690,000 foreign affiliates, spans virtually all countries and economic activities. In this global economy, effective use of information technologies (IT) is essential to the operation of modern business organizations. Information technologies enable business managers to redesign core business processes, products, or services and provide necessary information for decision-making [31]. King and Sethi [21] suggest that IT is fundamental to effective global operations in two primary ways: providing a coordination mechanism for geographically dispersed activities, and facilitating the reshaping of the separate organizations into global cooperatives. For example, enterprise resource planning (ERP) software make it possible to operate a multi- national firm as a unified enterprise with global product and service sourcing, rather than a loose network of international subsidiaries serving local markets.
Standardized technologies like ERP also facilitate unified financial reporting for enhanced management and control.
Effective use of information technologies depends on two sets of factors. The first is successful implementation, operation and support of the technologies; the second is appropriate alignment, uptake and application of technologies in business strategy and operations. These factors are intertwined: poor IT implementation can undermine a promising business strategy, and well-executed technology projects cannot rescue a poor business strategy. Both sets of factors are critical to effective IT use in global businesses, but our interest here relates to the first set of issues, specifically, how effective use of globally distributed IT support teams can contribute to global business ventures.
As firms create geographically dispersed operation centers, offices, warehouses, or manufacturing facilities, IT staffs must provide support for the information systems that the enterprise depends on, round the clock and around the globe. Single location support is one option, but staffing a site 24 by 7 with multi-lingual, technically competent personnel is both expensive and difficult [2, 6, 8, 20]. Many multi-national corporations have IT departments that span the globe to support dispersed business ventures. Carmel [8] identifies factors that lead to establishment of such global software teams, including the need to access specialized talent (IT and business), the acquisition of international firms, the potential to reduce IT development costs, the desire to foster a global presence, and proximity to customers and IT users.
IT development and support is inherently complex.
Smith, Keil, and Depledge [34] reported that the Standish Group’s 1999 “CHAOS” study revealed that only 26 percent of several thousand software development projects were completed on time; 28 percent were canceled in process; and, the remaining 46 percent were completed over-budget, behind schedule, with fewer functions and features than originally specified. Failed or delayed systems development projects often exhibit a combination of poor communication, project leadership and coordination, and planning, and inadequate top
management support, user involvement, and system methodologies [4, 25]. When IT development and support are scaled to global dimensions, such complexities multiply.
Our research interest is to better understand how geographic dispersion of IT support teams and reliance on information technologies as key channels for communication influence coordination efforts, team processes, and, ultimately, effectiveness of globally distributed software support teams. To ground inquiry in this area, we review three research areas. First, the practitioner literature on global software development highlights managerial practices with these team forms;
firms’ experiences help delineate the business and organizational context for these teams. Second, the rich literature on small group processes theoretically grounds an examination of global software support teams. Third, studies of virtual teams provide insights into the structures and processes of globally distributed teams and the mediating influences of information technology use on team processes.
In the next sections, we review key findings from these research fields and illustrate insights these perspectives provide using a case example of global IT development and support. We then propose a research agenda, drawn from these literatures, which focuses on investigating the ecology (context) of global software support teams, the ways in which team maintenance processes are carried out in a global team context, and the roles and contributions information technologies in determining team effectiveness in the global context.
2.
Going global with IT support: experiences
from practice
Over half of Fortune 500 firms actively engage in global software practices for some of their IT-related activities [18]. Firms are increasingly turning to globally distributed software development and support for a variety of reasons; some involve labor shortages and the high cost of skilled IT workers [8]. Ireland, India and Israel are emerging as centers for remote IT organizations for US-based corporations, because labor costs are lower and there is a large pool of highly-educated, English- speaking workers to draw from [1]. Another motivation is to locate IT operations and support close to operational centers or customer bases, to enhance local relationships, establish local presence, and to take advantage of localized areas of expertise [7].
IT development and support is an inherently complex social process that is communication and coordination intensive. Despite apparent business advantages, "going global" with such activities heightens complexities due to cultural, language, and organizational differences [9].
Carmel [8] summarizes five major challenges that global
software development teams face: 1) adjusting to geographical dispersion of IT personnel and users; 2) loss of communication richness with less face-to-face interaction; 3) coordination breakdown in project management; 4) loss of "teamness"; and, 5) dealing with cultural differences among globally distributed staff and business organizations.
These challenges are interrelated and may be mutually reinforcing. Notably, globally distributed teams must contend with difficulties in communication and coordination that arise from differences in time zones, geographical location, and culture. Communication of IT requirements and support tasks typically has to be precise and accurate. However, dispersed teams have less opportunity for face-to-face communication and hence lose non-verbal aspects of communications that make up 65% to 93 % of a message’s meaning [14]. Differences in culture and language may further impede communication [2, 6, 8, 19, 20].
Developers spend as much as 70% of their time working with others [8]. In globally dispersed teams coordination becomes especially problematic, because team interactions are limited to less "rich" channels such as phone, fax, e-mail, and electronic databases and are stretched across time zones and distance. When co- workers are not located in the same location, camaraderie and socializing -- important informal aspects of teamwork coordination-- are significantly reduced, and cohesiveness and team unity, and the means of socializing new members of the global team, are harder to cultivate [2, 6, 8, 20].
A growing literature of practitioner reports and academic studies describes practices aimed at overcoming barriers of time zone differences, geographic dispersion, and organizational/ national cultural differences. One approach to overcoming distance barriers is to eliminate them during activities requiring intensive interaction and coordination, such as project startup, by temporarily co- locating team members, and periodically through site visits and travel. For example, firms may designate liaisons as focal points of coordination who spend some time in the main IT office location, to become acculturated and informed about technical issues; liaisons then transfer knowledge to local sites for day-to-day coordination [1, 5, 8]. These face-to-face interactions may help team members establish ground rules and common understanding that facilitate communication and coordination when team members return home. Another goal is to build the social network of team members, so that team identity and commitment can be sustained despite distance barriers and local organizations' demands, once team members are again dispersed [23].
IT tasks, activities, and roles may also be standardized or structured in ways that reduce complexities of global team coordination. Design activities may be structured to
minimize the need for coordination and interaction, and thus for face-to-face or synchronous interactions [9].
Ramesh and Dennis [32] propose an object-oriented team model, conceptually following object oriented software design principles, that uses loose coupling of IT design tasks among dispersed groups of IT personnel to reduce communication and coordination loads. Alternatively, team responsibilities may be assigned to remotely located members, so that time zone or cultural differences are minimized, if synchronous interactions are deemed important [5, 9, 32]. For example, IT workers in North and South America may be assigned to tasks requiring telephone interactions because they share time zone and thus can more easily schedule calls.
In global teams, communication technologies such as the telephone and e-mail are invaluable for exchanging information across time and geographic barriers. While generally useful, these technologies are nonspecific and may not be efficient for specific tasks. Technologies specialized for IT development or support, such as centralized "bug report" software [5] or documentation version control software [32], have embedded norms, practices, and structure that may facilitate communication and coordination among globally distributed teams.
Reports of industry experience help identify the organizational, social and technical issues global IT support teams face and suggest potential practices for managing these teams. To develop a theoretical perspective that can help us to better understand the social dynamics that underlie these issues and practices, we now turn to the small group literature.
3. Teamwork: research on small group
processes and embedding context of groups
Research on group and team processes has examined influence of groups on individuals, individuals on groups (e.g., leadership studies), group conflict, group communications, and so on. The influence of the
"embedding context" of groups and group development and evolution over time have received far less attention [3]. However, a theoretical perspective on groups is now emerging in social psychology and management studies which views groups as “complex, adaptive, dynamic systems ... embedded in a hierarchy of levels and characterized by multiple, bi-directional, and nonlinear causal relations ... [that] develop as systems over time, and change as a function of changing conditions over time" [3]. This approach to understanding teams focuses on group processes through which a group adapts and changes as context changes, and on the context in which groups operate. Such considerations are particularly relevant to teams transitioning to or operating in a global context.
This theoretical perspective draws on the structural- functional model of group adaptation processes, which Mills [27] synthesizes from works by Parsons, Bales, and Shils [30]. Here, a team is conceptualized as a goal- seeking, boundary-maintaining system whose survival is problematic. It is a mutable and transitory arrangement of actions, norms, ideas, and techniques that address personal, social, and environmental realities of team members. Team members must use intelligence and ingenuity to mobilize resources and to meet changing demands, including i) adapting to changing circumstances such as loss of resources; ii) maintaining focus on goal attainment despite obstacles; iii) integrating diverse members into a collective team that can withstand intra-team conflict; and iv) maintaining patterns and routines that affirm and reinforce team norms. This model assumes that members are gratified as goals are fulfilled, and that some team members act as group agents to ensure team survival, striving for balance between adaptation, goal-attainment, integration and pattern maintenance. The model does not assume that all groups do survive, or that survival is the most functional outcome, from the perspective of individual members or the group as a whole.
Sundstrom, De Meuse, and Futrell’s [36] ecological framework for analyzing work team effectiveness (see Figure 1) focuses on the interplay of features of the embedding context of groups. This framework conceptualizes work team effectiveness as an emergent process, in which organizational context, boundaries, and team development are dynamically and reciprocally interdependent; that is, team effectiveness is both influenced by and influences the organizational context, the team's boundaries, and the development of the team.
Organizational context factors like reward and recognition, autonomy and training can augment team effectiveness by providing resources needed for performance. The boundaries are a means of differentiating a work unit from others and defining how the group needs to operate within its context to be effective. Team development includes group structure like norms and roles, as well as interpersonal processes. The adjacent facets of the framework have reciprocal interdependencies; for example, boundaries influence team effectiveness, which in turn alters the boundaries.
This framework is consistent with the perspective of groups as dynamic systems that change and develop new ways of operating as they adapt to their context.
These theoretical models for group processes provide a basis for studying global IT support teams. However, they do not explicitly address issues such as geographic separation, time zone and cultural differences, and the limitations of IT-mediated communication characteristic of global teamwork. In fact, the majority of group research is based on co-located teams, and many studies
• Organizational Culture
• Task design/ technology
• Mission Clarity
• Autonomy
• Performance Feedback
• Rewards/Recognition
• Training & consultation
• Physical environment Organizational Context
Boundaries
• Work team differentiation
• External integration
Team Development
• Interpersonal processes
• Norms
• Cohesion
• Roles
Team
Effectiveness
• Performance
• Viability are methodologically limited to short term studies in controlled, laboratory settings [3]. The literature on virtual teams, reviewed in the next section, begins to address these gaps.
Figure 1: Ecological framework for analyzing work team effectiveness [36]
4. Group processes in virtual teams
With the rapid diffusion of the Internet in the 1990s, organizations and institutions have increasingly adopted global teamwork approaches. Though there is growing enthusiasm for virtual teams, little empirical research exists that explores the dynamics inherent in the virtual work environment [28, 11, 29]. Models that could be used to understand virtual team development and effectiveness have been limited to traditional co-located groups [12, 20]. However, researchers have begun to address virtual teams and the mediating role of information technologies on communication in dispersed teams, to determine if, and how, virtual teams operate differently from co-located teams.
The need for and development of trust is one recurring theme in recent research on virtual teams. Trust is often seen as a basic requirement of teamwork, yet developing trust when team members have few if any opportunities to interact face-to-face, or who do not share a context or history poses difficulties for virtual groups [16, 17, 13].
Similarly, conflict management is an essential component
of teamwork, but conflict management processes may play out differently in virtual teams than in co-located teams [28, 15]. When teams span national boundaries, cultural values and team integration become important social variables [21, 38]. These studies suggest differences in group members’ ability to communicate and interact in virtual versus co-located contexts may alter fundamental social processes within groups.
A second stream of research on virtual teams involves adaptive mechanisms and processes for managing time and distance barriers. Maznevski and Chudoba [22] found that interactions in effective global decision-making teams centered around incidents of intense interactions, with lower-volumes of interactions through less-rich IT media in-between times, and that team activities were organized around repeating patterns of such incidents.
The duration and media for interactions, in turn, depended on the nature of the task and message complexity. Their study and others [28, 33] suggest that managing temporal rhythms in global, virtual teamwork is key to team effectiveness.
The affordances and limitations of information technologies used to coordinate virtual teams, and which become the main channel through which communications occur, alters team contexts in ways that may elicit these process differences [35]. No undisputed causal relationships among task, communication technology choice, and task/decision effectiveness have emerged from numerous studies of IT use in virtual teams, suggesting instead that team experience over time and contextual factors may determine outcomes [22]. This finding is consistent with the projections of small group research, which suggests that membership, task, and technology relations evolve as a group becomes more experienced over time [24].
5 An illustrative example of global IT
support
The following case description is drawn from the work experiences of one of the authors as IT operations manager for a multinational corporation. This example suggests how theoretical analysis can inform our understanding of factors that influence global IT support teams effectiveness.
5.1 Company and IT project background
Hi-Tech (a pseudonym) is a computer peripheral manufacturer based in Silicon Valley. Its only manufacturing facility is located in Singapore, but the company has sales and marketing offices throughout the US, Europe and Asia. Hi-Tech's business strategy in this industry is to be a low-cost producer with high quality products, with a global market. Existing IT systems were
not integrated sufficiently to manage this global business.
For example, month-end closing was a long process during which some systems had to be taken off-line.
Integrating new acquisitions was problematic, because the acquired companies’ IT systems were not compatible with existing systems. And, Hi-Tech faced with Y2K issues in legacy systems. To support their global strategy, the company decided to invest in an ERP system in 1996.
Even before the ERP project, Hi-Tech had both a corporate IT department and local IT groups that handled IT functions within the company. At the Silicon Valley headquarters, IT staff included about 150 members in various departments, in Singapore, approximately 20 staff members. One IT staff member in each of the regional sales and marketing offices provided local support.
Between Silicon Valley and Singapore IT, the IT groups provided approximately 20 hours of continuous operational support daily to company subsidiaries worldwide.
To specify the ERP system and initiate installation, an analysis team composed of business staff members in finance, materials management, and other functional areas from different divisions in the company was assembled.
Along with ERP consultants, team members from Singapore and other offices re-located to Silicon Valley for 12 to 18 months, during the analysis and design phases of the project and for initial training on the software system. Three months prior to system implementation, the expatriate team members went back to their respective sites to help with testing of the software.
IT support groups also worked together to plan for the ERP system. The hardware would be housed in the data center in Silicon Valley, requiring an acceptable service level agreement, escalation procedures, and administrative access rights be negotiated. Support plans called for IT support to be provided both from the Silicon Valley office and the Singapore office to ensure support coverage over most of the 24 hour work day. Both IT groups coordinated stress tests to ensure that the company’s infrastructure would support the systems. To accomplish these tasks, the IT team, composed of IT managers at headquarters and from Singapore, met in Silicon Valley offices periodically, with the Singapore team traveling two times per quarter, for 3 weeks each time (about half- time) during the year of analysis and planning.
Not all the features of the ERP software were implemented at the outset; only essential business functions were completed at cut-over, and other features were implement during the next eight months. At that point, the analysis team was disbanded. One-third of the analysis team members returned to their old jobs, while the rest either joined the IT group or left the company.
After the system was implemented, operational issues arose that required intensive efforts from the IT support team. Within three months of the system going live,
system response time was getting more sluggish each week. Management reports that took less than three minutes to generate initially were running for up to two hours. System and CPU utilization reached peak capacity of 99% for hours each day. To determine causes and solve operational problems, the IT support team conducted weekly team conference calls to diagnose and plan remedies.
After six months of "bumpy" operations, a new technical release of the ERP software was announced.
The IT team studied the new release and eventually proposed adopting it, as recommended by the vendor.
The systems environment was designed to accommodate evaluation of this and other releases, to test new functionality, and to transition new code from test to production environments. Four technical environments were established: i) a “crash and burn” environment for preliminary tests of new versions; ii) the development environment for coding, customization, and testing; iii) a quality environment for alpha, beta, and user acceptance testing; and iv) the production environment. The hardware infrastructure, operated in California, included multiple servers. Managing activities between these four system environments required ongoing communication and coordinated teamwork and support from both the IT teams in Singapore and the U.S., as activities in each environment occurred at both business locations. Dual support teams allowed passing administrative work between sites and up to 20 hours coverage.
Thus, the ERP project, implemented to support Hi- Tech's global business processes, required more than 24 months of planning and implementation by both the business analysis team and the IT team and ongoing IT support to keep the system operating satisfactorily.
Although the IT project was completed successfully from Hi-Tech management's perspective, the teams experience various difficulties. Research findings and theoretical perspectives outlined above suggest ecological factors that influenced team performance and the effectiveness of group adaptation processes, as well as the effectiveness of management practices used to overcome time and distance barriers.
5.2 Group adaptation and survival in the global team setting
Hi-Tech used the strategy of co-locating team members during project initiation and planning, through relocation of some members of the analysis team and frequent visits by the IT team. This strategy facilitated the analysis team's initial social development as a group;
despite cultural and individual differences among team members, the team "gelled" to accomplish their tasks.
Social bonds, alliances and social networks formed among team members during this time. After this period
of co-location, however, adaptation and survival became problematic for the analysis team. The team did not adapt well to the global teamwork context. When the analysis team members returned to their respective sites and offices, less frequent communication and interaction were possible, and the social ties that were established while team members were working side-by-side weakened.
Remotely located team members were not able to participate in many of the face-to-face meetings in which key decisions were made, and their inputs were not sought after meetings. The Singapore team members felt left out and ostracized by team members in Silicon Valley, and integration and pattern maintenance processes disintegrated. The team resorted to blame shifting for project delays and problems as group cohesion melted away.
Imprecise uses of information and communication technologies (i.e., e-mail and phone calls) did not compensate for time and geographic distance, and in fact, worsened coordination issues, further weakening team survival processes. Singapore team members became increasing frustrated with breakdowns in coordination and communication resulting from the 15-hour time difference between the two sites and the inadequately specified information technologies used to transmit information and coordinate work. Requests for system adjustments were delayed as the e-mailed work requests were "buried" in the system administrator's e-mail inbox; the administrator, located in Silicon Valley, was deluged with e-mails and hence had difficulty attending to work requests. The situation worsened as Singapore team members, after receiving no response, sent duplicate requests, often copying other team members and supervisors. If there was still no response, team members used follow-up phone calls, and, if the administrator were not there, a
"telephone tag" series of voice-mails ensued. As a result of these unrestrained exchanges, all team members were inundated with e-mails, many irrelevant for their tasks, and sifting through them became a time-consuming and cumbersome chore. After the ERP system went live, the IT support group instituted a protocol for who could talk to whom about systems problems and developed a request handling system that triggered e-mail notifications to administrators. This system (similar to the call tracking software Remedy) designed and structured workflows to reduce communication overload and coordination issues among staff members.
Group adaptation processes progressed differently for the IT support team. Though there had been personnel changes, the technical team had worked together for several years supporting existing, legacy systems, and thus had established patterns and routines for cooperative work which enabled them to focus on goals and tasks, despite being globally dispersed. The group's level of maturation as a functional global team thus facilitated
their ability to adapt to increased demands for coordinated support of the new, integrated ERP system. For example, IT team members had established communication and coordination patterns. They used weekly teleconference calls and occasional video conferencing to discuss support problems, diagnose causes, and plan actions. The Infrastructure and Operations Manager (IOM) of the Singapore site coordinated the conference call, sending out an agenda three days prior to the scheduled call.
During this conference call, updates on the various projects, problem resolution, strategies, site visits, etc.
were discussed. In addition to the weekly conference calls, technical team members communicated with their counterparts regularly, though with some difficulty. The IOM often called his counterparts in Silicon Valley between 4 to 6 am (from Singapore) in order to talk to them in the early afternoon. In the event of a problem with the system in Silicon Valley, the IOM would be notified, even at 2 am Singapore time. Ironically, the IOM at times would contact various IT members, get updates from them and then update other team members-- all of whom were at the same site and time zone -- to coordinate these exchanges from Singapore. The role played by the IOM in managing communication and coordination illustrates how, when team survival is threatened by changing environmental circumstances, one or more members may step in to facilitate group survival processes.
The IT support team continued to use face-to-face meetings, though frequent visits among IT staff members.
These face-to-face meetings reinforced existing ties and relationships, providing opportunities for greater social connection among the team members and for new team members to get acquainted and establish social networks.
Such interactions were important to maintain patterns and routines that affirmed and reinforced team norms. This, in turn, facilitated viability of an effective IT support team.
Group survival processes, in the context of increased demands for global coordination and team work to support the ERP system, differed in these two teams, and resulted in different outcomes: the analysis team was disbanded, while the IT support team's responsibilities grew. From Hi-Tech's perspective, survival of the analysis team was less problematic, once the ERP system was initially installed, while survival and adaptation of the IT support team became increasingly important, as emphasis shifted towards ongoing support of the operational ERP system.
5.3 Ecological factors of the global IT support team
The experiences of the IT team at Hi-Tech highlight ecological factors that played important roles in the global
team's effectiveness. First team development reached a higher level of maturation in the IT support team than it did for the analysis team. The IT support team drew on shared norms for IT support and members held similar roles, contributing to the team's social cohesion. In contrast, the analysis team was drawn not only from multiple geographical areas, but also multiple functional areas and organizations (e.g., ERP consultants). Group cohesion was strong when these diverse members were co-located, but deteriorated rapidly when members were globally dispersed, resulting in high levels of political infighting and blame shifting among these team members.
The IT support team did face differences in work team differentiation between the larger Silicon Valley site and the smaller Singapore IT site, which increased complexity of team interactions. The Silicon Valley IT staff has narrow, focused roles, such as Help desk, Data Center, Telecom, Network Operations, intranet, training, and various application development groups. In contrast, the Singapore site staff’s job descriptions were much broader, with basically two groups, application development and Infrastructure and Operations. As a result, the Singapore IOM would typically have five to seven counterparts in the Silicon Valley site with whom he had to coordinate to solve problems. This individual, coming from the smaller and more peripheral site, became the team agent to facilitate adaptation processes.
The technology/task design differed for the two teams as well. IT support functions at Hi-Tech had developed in the context of providing global IT support. The technical team has procedures in place for various emergencies and escalation processes before the ERP project was implemented. In contrast, the analysis team did not establish procedures and processes when they were co- located; when they were globally dispersed, they had difficulty adjusting to the difficulties that arose due to geographical and time zone differences.
Interestingly, the IT support team worked well using open-ended communication technologies (e.g., telephone or video conference calls), whereas the analysis team's use of e-mail in an open-ended manner exaggerated coordination and communication breakdowns. Given the less developed team structure of the analysis team, higher structure was apparently needed in IT systems (the call escalation system) to promote efficient technology use and task completion.
5.4 Case summary and discussion
This case example highlights the contributions that the literatures reviewed earlier can make to our understanding of global IT support teams. First, Hi-Tech used common strategies such as co-location early in the project to facilitate teamwork, and task responsibilities were designed to take advantage of global dispersion of IT
support staff (i.e., 20 hour coverage). Small group dynamics theory focuses on evolution of team processes, in interaction with the group’s embedding context. The business team’s survival processes proved to be inadequate for the global teamwork context. This group did not adjust well to loss of convenient, face-to-face interactions, and ICT use did not adequately compensate for this loss. The IT support team, on the other hand, had established patterns and routines that helped them maintain group integration, and the actions of team members such as the IOM helped ensure group survival.
These teams were complex systems that adapted dynamically to contextual changes, such as increased demands for global coordination, reduced organizational demand for the analysis team's "output" after initial ERP installation, and increased demand for coordinated support once the ERP system was operational, illustrating the interplay between team process and embedding context predicted by small group theory.
Understanding group adaptation processes and their outcomes requires an appreciation of a group's history and developmental trajectory, as well as the ecological context in which it operates [3]. At Hi-Tech, the IT support team's maturation and history facilitated the group's adaptation to the task of global IT teamwork, and ecological factors were more favorable for this complex task than with the business team. As a result, team members were able to operate effectively through a mixture of IT-mediated and face-to-face communication and coordination. Nonetheless, ecological challenges for this group included work team differentiation between the remote and headquarters groups, which required extra effort by the IOM to manage.
The Hi-Tech IT support team managed temporal patterns in similar ways as those reported in other studies of virtual teams, e.g., periodic face-to-face meetings or scheduled conference calls, interspersed with ongoing phone calls and e-mail messages. These practices served also to reinforce team processes for maintaining focus and reinforcing routines. Interestingly, this coordination role was assumed primarily by the IOM at the smaller, satellite site.
6. A research agenda for studying global IT
support teams
Although the operation of global, virtual teams is a relatively recent organizational phenomenon, a growing body of practice-based and theoretical research provides a good starting point for examining teamwork in global IT support teams. We have seen that, in practice, global teams utilize various means to overcome time and distance barriers, from temporary co-location to designing tasks and technologies in ways that reduce the need for interaction and close collaboration. The group dynamics
literature suggests that attention be paid to group processes and to the embedding context in which groups operate. We have suggested that dynamic models of group survival highlight key processes, such as adaptation and maintaining patterns and routines. Design and use of information technologies undoubtedly play a role in the viability and effectiveness of these processes, as research on virtual teams suggests. For global IT support teams, the embedding context necessarily entail geographic separation, time zone differences, and the mediating influence of information technologies on communication and coordination, all of which have received some research attention in the virtual teams literature.
However, the ecological framework depicted in Figure 1 outlines a broader array of factors that may influence team effectiveness, and these factors may interact with global team characteristics in ways not previously studied.
Drawing these various perspectives together, we suggest the following research questions can guide future study of global IT support teams:
1. How do global software support teams carry on team survival processes (e.g., adapting, maintaining focus, integrating members, maintaining patterns and routines) when separated by time zone and geography? Are these processes transformed in the global context or are new processes required?
2. Which ecological elements are most sensitive to time zone and geographic differences in global software support teams? How do ecological variations affect team communication, coordination, and effectiveness?
3. Do IT applications take on specialized or influential roles in team survival processes when team members are globally distributed? Do IT-enabled forms of communication or task collaboration arise to fulfill these processes?
4. Can IT use help overcome ecological "deficiencies"
in globally distributed teams? How are coordination and communication tasks carried out, and what roles do IT applications take on, under various global, ecological conditions?
To-date, much of the published research on global IT teams focuses on systems development projects, rather than ongoing IT support activities (cf. [8]), while virtual team research emphasizes ad-hoc teams rather than permanent groups. Paré and Dubé [29], for example, propose a framework for studying virtual ad hoc teams (such as development project teams), addressing factors such as project context, ICT use, team dynamics, and project management strategies. Permanent teams, such as
ongoing IT support groups, have as yet received less research attention. While group processes for ad-hoc and permanent IT groups undoubtedly have similarities, there may be important differences in group survival processes and in the ecological and contextual factors that promote team effectiveness, which will require special attention.
Historically, small group research has been conducted with co-located groups, often using experimental design methods. Research on virtual teams has also, to-date, relied heavily on experimental design methods using student populations. Such approaches can be useful to investigate well-defined theoretical models in a controlled setting. However, to conduct the type of research we are suggesting, particularly to focus realistically on ecological factors within organizational contexts, will likely require other methodological approaches. Yin [39] recommends case study research to investigate contemporary phenomenon within its real-life context, when the boundaries between the phenomenon and the context are not clearly evident, to study “how”
and “why” questions, and when multiple sources of evidence are needed. This is often the situation when studying information systems development and information technology use in organizational contexts, and case studies are a common design used in IS research.
Case studies are also valuable for exploratory research [10, 26, 39]. Here, where we seek to understand group processes and their interplay with contextual factors, we believe case study methods will be preferable to laboratory studies. Survey methods may also be appropriate to investigate how extensively particular communication and coordination practices are used, and to collect data from a broader array of ecological settings than may be possible through case studies.
A longitudinal case study design would be ideal, to examine change and evolution in group processes as they naturally emerge. However, longitudinal studies are costly in terms of researcher time, and often difficult to negotiate with research sites. Two alternative design strategies that help address change over time are the use of retrospective interviews, to collect historical data about group development activities, and selection of research sites where global IT support teams are in different stages of development (i.e., newly formed versus established).
7. Closing thoughts
The study of global IT support teams provides a rich setting to investigate issues related to globalization of business enterprises, the role of information technologies in globalization, the factors that influence effectiveness, and thus competitiveness, of organizations dependent on global teamwork. Use of information technologies is pervasive in modern organizations, yet effective development, deployment and management of IT remains
an elusive goal for many. When IT efforts "go global,"
issues and challenges are magnified. It is vitally important for firms operating in the global business environment to effectively manage their global IT resources effectively. The research agenda we have outlined can contribute to the growing body of knowledge on how this complex organizational task may be accomplished effectively, by focusing attention on the vital task of global IT support.
Furthermore, studying global IT support teams will contribute to theoretical understanding of small group processes generally, by investigating group survival and adaptation processes in the context of geographically dispersed teamwork. Small group research has developed primarily in studies of co-located groups, many of them in laboratory settings. Yet, in modern businesses, most groups are to some degree "virtual" -- even when team members are located on different floors of the same building, or different buildings of the same campus, the benefits of co-location quickly diminish. Examining global IT support teams in their embedding context, one that necessarily entails time zone and geographic barriers and some degree of computer mediated communication, will allow us to “stress test” small group theory and to identify and evaluate its limitations for understanding virtual team processes. Examining the ecological context of global IT team will help us to identify contextual features that are particularly important to virtual team effectiveness and to better understand the affordances and limitations of IT-mediated communication characteristic of global, virtual teamwork.
6. References:
[1] Abramson, (1999). IT, Phone Home. CIO Magazine.
Retrieved January 23, 2002 from
http://www.cio.com/archive/enterprise/021599_afar.ht ml
[2] Alexander, S. (2000, November). Virtual Teams Going Global. InfoWorld. Retrieved October 9, 2001 from http://www.infoworld.com/articles/ca/xml/
00/11/13/001113cavirtual.xml.
[3] Arrow, H., McGrath J. E., and Berdahl, J. (2000).
Small Groups as Complex Systems: Formation Coordination, Development and Adaptation. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
[4] Babcock, D. L. (1996). Managing Engineering and Technology: An Introduction to Management for Engineers. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice Hall.
[5] Battin et. al, (1999). Leveraging Resources in Global Software Development. IEEE Software, March/April, 70-77.
[6] Benett, G. (2001). Working Together, Apart. Intranet Journal. Retrieved October 9, 2001 from
http://www.intranetjournal.com/features/idm0398- pm1.shtml.
[7] Carmel, E. (1997). The Explosion of Global Software Teams. Computerworld. Retrieved January 23, 2002 from http://www.computerworld.com/cwi/story/
0,1199,NAV47_STO14717,00.html
[8] Carmel, E. (1999). Global Software Teams:
Collaborating across Borders and Time Zones. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice Hall.
[9] Carmel, E., and Agarwal, R. (2001). Tactical Approaches for Alleviating Distance in Global Software Development. IEEE Software, March/April, 22-29.
[10] Eisenhardt, Kathleen M. (1989). Building Theory for Case Study Research. Academy of Management Review, 14(4), 532-550.
[11] Fritz, M. B. W., Narasimhan, S., and Rhee, H.
(1998). Communication and Coordination in the Virtual Office. Journal of Management Information Systems, 14(4), 7-28.
[12] Furst, S., Blackburn, R., and Rosen, B. (1999).
Virtual Team Effectiveness: A Proposed Research Agenda. Information Systems Journal, 9(4), 249-269.
[13] Grundy, J. (1998). Trust in Virtual Teams. Harvard Business Review, 76(6).
[14] Harris, T. E. (1993). Applied Organizational Communication: Perspectives, Principles, and
Pragmatics. Hillsdale, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
[15] Hinds, P. J., and Bailey, D. E. (2000). Virtual Teams:
Anticipating the Impact of Virtuality on Team Process and Performance. Academy of Management Proceeding 2000.
[16] Jarvenpaa, S. L., Knoll, K., and Leidner, D. E.
(1998). Is Anybody Out There? Antecedents of trust in Global Virtual Teams. Journal of Management Information Systems, 14(4) 29-64.
[17] Jarvenpaa, S. L., and Leidner, D. E. (1998).
Communication and Trust in Global Virtual Teams.
Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 3(4).
[18] Jones, C. (1999). Mass-Updates and Project
Management in IS Organizations. Artemis Management System. Retrieved January 23, 2002 from
http://www.artemis.it/artemis/artemis/lang_en/libreria/
mass-updates.htm
[19] Karolak, D. W. (1998). Global Software Development: Managing Virtual Teams and Environments. Loa Alamitos, California: IEEE Computer Society Press.
[20] Kimble, C., Li, F., and Barlow, A. (2000). Effective Virtual teams through communities of practices.
Strathclyde Business School Research Paper 2000/9.
[21] King, W. R., and Sethi, V. (1999). An Empirical Assessment of the Organization of Transnational
Information Systems. Journal of Management Information Systems, 15(4), 7-28.
[22] Maznevski, M. L., and Chudob, K. M. (2000).
Bridging Space over Time: Global Virtual Team Dynamics and Effectiveness. Organization Science, 11(5), 473-492.
[23] McDonough, E. F. III., and Cedrone, D. (2000).
Meeting the Challenge of Global Team Management.
Research Technology Management, July/August, 12-17.
[24] McGrath, J. E., and Arrow, H. (1993). Groups, Tasks, and Technology. Small Group Research, 24(3), 406-420.
[25] Meredith, J. R., and Mantel, S. J. Jr. (1995). Project Management: A Managerial Approach. New York:
John Wiley & Sons.
[26] Miles, M., and Huberman, A. M. (1994). Qualitative Data Analysis. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
[27] Mills, T. M. (1984). The Sociology of Small Groups.
2nd ed. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall.
[28] Montoya-Weiss, M. M.; Massey, A. P.; and Song, M.
(2001). Getting it Together: Temporal Coordination and Conflict Management in Global Virtual Teams.
Academy of Management Journal, 44(6), 1251-1262.
[29] Paré, G. and Dubé, L. (2000). Ad Hoc Virtual Teams: A Multi-Disciplinary Framework and a Research Agenda. Proceedings of the Information Resources Management Association International Conference, Anchorage, Alaska.
[30] Parsons, T., Bales, R. F., and Shils, E. A. (1953).
Working Papers in the Theory of Action. Elencoe, Illinois: The Free Press.
[31] Quarterly, M. (2002). IT productivity and the U.S.
economy. CNET News. Retrieved January 4, 2002 from http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1003-202-8399124.html.
[32] Ramesh, V., and Dennis, A. (2002). The Object- Oriented Team: Lessons for Virtual Teams from Global Software Development. Proceedings of the 35th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, Hawaii, Hawaii.
[33] Sarker, S., and Sahay, S. (2002). Information Systems Development by US-Norwegian Virtual Teams: Implications of Time and Space. Proceedings of the 35th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, Hawaii, Hawaii.
[34] Smith, H. J., Keil, M., and Depledge, G. (2001).
Keeping Mum as the Project Goes Under: Towards an explanatory Model. Journal of Management
Information Systems, 18(2), 189-227.
[35]Suchan, J., and Hayzak, G. (2001). The
Communication Characteristics of Virtual Teams: A Case Study. IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication, 44(3).
[36] Sundstrom, E. S., De Meuse, K. P., & Futrell, D.
(1990). Work Teams: Applications and Effectiveness.
American Psychologist, 45(2), 120-133.
[37] United Nations Conference on Trade and
Development. (2000). World Investment Report 2000:
Cross border mergers and acquisitions and development.
[38] Watson, W, Kumar, K, and Michaelsen, L. (1993).
Cultural Diversity's Impact on Interaction Process and Performance: Comparing Homogeneous and Diverse Task Groups. Academy of Management Journal, 36(3), 590-602.
[39] Yin, R. (1994). Case Study Research: Design and Methods. 2nd ed. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications.