Assignments: Degrees of Virtuality
Assignments: Degrees of Virtuality
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Assignments: Degrees of Virtuality
Such employees work not only on a remotely independent basis but also with remote members on virtual teams. Virtual teams are defined as two or more people who (1) work together interdependently with mutual accountability for achieving common goals, (2) do not work in either the same place and/or at the same time, and (3) must use electronic communication and other digital technologies to communicate, coordinate their activities, and complete their team’s tasks. Initially, virtual teams were seen as an alternative to conventional teams that meet face‐to‐face. However, it is simplistic to view teams as either meeting totally face‐to‐face or totally virtually. Rather, teams may reflect varying degrees of virtuality. Virtual team members may be in different locations, organizations, time zones, or work shifts (day, evening, or overnight). Further, like most teams, virtual teams may have distinct, relatively permanent membership, or they may be relatively fluid as they evolve to respond to changing task requirements and as members leave and are replaced by new members.
Virtual teams are thought to have a life cycle like most teams.27 Their lifecycle, shown in Figure 4.4, is note- worthy because it the important activities in team development: Teams are formed; their work is completed; and, the team is disbanded.
Factors Driving Use of Remote Work and Virtual Teams Remote working has been around since the 1970s, but it has steadily been gaining popularity since the late 1990s. One poll of 11,300 employees in 22 countries found that one 1 of 6 telecommute worldwide.28 And as managers move to build teams of the best talent available, they inevitably turn to virtual teams as the mechanism to bring people together for a task. Several factors that drive these trends are shown in Figure 4.5.
The first factor is that work is increasingly knowledge based. The United States and many other world econ- omies continue to shift from manufacturing to service industries. Equipped with the right IT, employees can create, assimilate, and distribute knowledge as effectively from home as they can from an office. The shift to knowledge‐ based work thus tends to minimize the need for a particular locus of activity.
You must proofread your paper. But do not strictly rely on your computer’s spell-checker and grammar-checker; failure to do so indicates a lack of effort on your part and you can expect your grade to suffer accordingly. Papers with numerous misspelled words and grammatical mistakes will be penalized. Read over your paper – in silence and then aloud – before handing it in and make corrections as necessary. Often it is advantageous to have a friend proofread your paper for obvious errors. Handwritten corrections are preferable to uncorrected mistakes.
Use a standard 10 to 12 point (10 to 12 characters per inch) typeface. Smaller or compressed type and papers with small margins or single-spacing are hard to read. It is better to let your essay run over the recommended number of pages than to try to compress it into fewer pages.
Likewise, large type, large margins, large indentations, triple-spacing, increased leading (space between lines), increased kerning (space between letters), and any other such attempts at “padding” to increase the length of a paper are unacceptable, wasteful of trees, and will not fool your professor.
The paper must be neatly formatted, double-spaced with a one-inch margin on the top, bottom, and sides of each page. When submitting hard copy, be sure to use white paper and print out using dark ink. If it is hard to read your essay, it will also be hard to follow your argument.