In the 13 chapters presented here, the authors offer a well-rounded picture of the current state of virtual team practice and research; that is, what is working and what is still problematic. In addition, the chapters contain invaluable advice on how to manage the conditions that will facilitate the most effective virtual teams. Virtual team members, leaders, managers, senior executives in IT, HR, and other functional areas—as well as researchers—can all gain from a careful reading of this book.
The current notion of virtual teams has been around since the mid-1990s. First addressed by the practitioner literature (Grenier & Metes, 1995; Lipnack & Stamps, 1997; O’Hara-Devereaux & Johansen, 1994), and then by researchers investigating primarily student populations (Jarvenpaa, Knoll, & Leidner, 1998; Sahay, Sarker, & Lau, 1999; Warkenten & Beranek, 1999), research on virtual teams in organizations has only emerged in the last few years. As the reader will soon see, researchers are grappling with everything from defining what makes a virtual team virtual to all the various team, communication, and project processes and protocols that might influence how well a team works together and accomplishes its tasks, as well as the influence of organizational policies, technology, and boundary crossing on virtual team dynamics and effectiveness.