Globalization and Virtual Teams: The key role of HRM and ICTs in enhancing firm performance

Abstract

Globalization has enhanced the integration of economies and markets leading to a new competitive world. In this scenario of change also the management of work has been shaped. It’s interesting to understand the important role that human resource management plays, especially in global companies. Also, a technological revolution has been fuelled by the globalization process, ICTs are now easily accessible and can enhance the competitive advantage of firms in various way. One way that needs to be considered is the working environment as they facilitate communications and the transportation of data across companies. For what concerns HRM all these changes lead to a new way of managing people, HRM in the digital era has to face several challenges that are represented by: digital employees, digital word and digital employee management. What is important in this scenario of ICTs adoption is the level of technological awareness and knowledge of workers inside companies. Companies could rely on different kind of teams for the development of projects, among these there are: permanent teams, temporary teams, project teams, functional teams and virtual teams. Technology has enabled virtual teams to work together even if members live in different countries or are far away from each other. In this sense Virtual teams (VTs) represent the answer to an increase technological and globalized business world that needs to increase flexibility, productivity and dynamism. They present a great number of advantages but at the same time they could present also some cons, infact, by taking together people from different backgrounds and cultures opportunities for non-conformance and dysfunctional activities are present and tacit knowledge is not easily transferible among members. HRM should assess some precise competences that team members need to possess in order to lead to a successful outcome of the virtual team, among these self-related competences and team context-related competences. HRM should contribute to the enhancement of virtual teams by building an appropriate architecture able to ease the flow of knowledge and communication. In this scenario collaborative software play a central role in facilitating communication among members of virtual teams and represent a necessary tool that will be highly used for group decision making. Critical factors for the success of virtual teams are, indubitably, human resource policies, that should support working virtually and reward people in a fair way, but it’s also important the technical support for working remotely. Successful virtual teams are made of employees that are well trained and master ICTs, plus they manage to leverage cross-cultural differences. This thesis has the aim of assessing virtual team's related literature with the purpose of finding important aspects that should be in place in virtual teams in order to correctly exploit their advantages, with a particular focus on technology and collaborative software adoption.