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A virtual team concept is a group of individuals who work across time, space and organizational boundaries with links strengthened by webs of communication technology, Powell, Piccoli and Ives define virtual teams in their literature review article "as groups of geographically, organizationally and/or time dispersed workers brought together by information and telecommunication technologies to accomplish one or more organizational tasks.
A virtual team is a dispersed group of people connected together to achieve a tea objective. They dont see eye to eye, geographyacally far away from each other and are connected by ICT (Information Communication Technology), yet they work as members of the staff of a single company achieving similar goals as a company operating from a single building or office.
Let me draw some example from my experience in2000 the start of the millenium where virtual teams were evident. In Gateway, a customer from Japan came to me in Sri Lanka with a laptop bought in Tokyo, with International warranty whose hard disk has packed up and needed to be replaced. The customer had to leave Sri Lanka in3 days and leaving his Colombo Hotel in the same night. Gateway had its Asian region RMA (Returned Merchandise Authorization) dept in Malaysia. I was able to give the customer a piece of paper with a tracking number for his hard disk and a list of technical supplort places in the region where he can replace the hard disk in just two and a half hours. That is the time it took the customer to have his meal and retun to my office.
Before he left Sri Lanka his hard disk was replaced and he went very happy.
In this example:
1. I had to raise a electronic RMA Form which gave details of the problem to RMA office in Malaysia
2. My colleague in Malaysia had to verify his warranty from the records at Gateway's Tokyo branch
3. He had to accept my technical briefing of the status of the present hard disk
4. He had to inform the Gateway stores to release the exact part number by courier
5. He had to collect the courier tracking number and pass it to the customer through me
6. The courier had to phone the customer and ahnd over the part
7. The customer had to inform me and get a technician to fix his part at his hotel at no cost
8. The whole incident had to be reported to the Tokyo branch for information and follow up
All these and more work involving3 countries and8 locations were resolved in just2.5 hours and the customer made happy. This is globalization and operation of a simple virtual team, mind you14 years ago. Imagine what is possible today?
