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This paper aims to review the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoint practical implications from cutting-edge research and case studies.

This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context.

Technological advances have served to increase the shift toward remote ways of working. While there are several advantages of having virtual teams, firms must be conscious of the fact they are still being outperformed by colocated teams with regard to certain key performance indicators (KPIs).

The briefing saves busy executives and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy-to-digest format.

Global virtual teams (GVTs) – composed of members in two or more countries who work together primarily using information and communication technologies – are increasingly prevalent in organizations today. There has been a burgeoning of research on this relatively new organizational unit, spanning various academic disciplines. In this chapter, we review and discuss the major developments in this area of research. Based on our review, we identify areas in need of future research, suggest research directions that have the potential to enhance theory development, and provide practical guidelines on managing and working in GVTs.

The purpose of this study was to understand the effects of colocation on office workers' perception of workplace design and interaction freedom in organizations.

The study was conducted at six different departments of an office organization that moved from geographically dispersed office buildings to one office building. The pre‐move data were collected three to six months before the move, and the post‐move data were collected almost one year after the move through questionnaire surveys. Out of 284 workers, 169 office workers filled out the questionnaire in the pre‐move survey, and 175 filled out the questionnaire in the post‐move survey.

Based on statistical analyses of the data, the study found that colocation did not help improve office workers' overall perception of interaction freedom in the organization, but it helped eliminate perceptual disparities concerning interaction freedom among its different departments. The study also found that office workers' perception of workplace design support for interaction and workstation location were strong predictors of their perception of interaction freedom in the organization. Overall, the findings of the study indicated that the purpose of colocation might be defeated if organizational behavior and culture were not modified simultaneously to promote workers' perception in support of interaction freedom.

The study considered only one type of colocation that involved bringing people of different organizational units together from geographically dispersed places to one place. Therefore, these findings cannot be generalized for all other types of colocation.

The findings of the study are important for corporate real estate (CRE) strategists and organizational leaders who are actively considering colocation as a strategy to improve interaction and team effectiveness in the organization.

The study investigates different mechanisms involving the effects of colocation on office workers' perception of workplace design and interaction freedom in organizations; and identifies important distinctions to consider for achieving the benefits of colocation in terms of face‐to‐face interactions in the workplace.

Despite advances in information technology, telecommuting, or work away from the workplace (at home, on the road, etc.) via low‐bandwidth telephone lines, remains an inhibited phenomenon. High bandwidth communication available at the workplace, on the other hand, enables members of virtual teams to collaborate with peers and share information and knowledge despite being dispersed at several work locations. Members of virtual teams thus substitute real proximity to information resources and to knowledgeable peers with virtual proximity and are better positioned for effective group collaboration than telecommuters. The “telecommuting paradox” is that, despite enormous improvements in IT, the prevalence of telecommuting is lower than expected. In an attempt to shed light on the paradox, focuses on the infrastructural factors that have affected telecommuting throughout its history.

Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, project management was undergoing gradual shift and moving from traditional ways of working toward embracing digitization. The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated this transformation. This paper highlights the importance of digital project management (DPM), its adoption of digital technologies, the changing role of digital project manager, significant and abrupt swing in the rise of virtual teams and the benefits and challenges of remote project teams. This paper aims to discuss the latest development in project management and to lay out the rationale why DPM is here to stay even after the pandemic.

The author has based this research on reviewing publications from the project management journals and publications, interviews of project management professionals and analyzing data from a project management consultancy.

The pandemic accelerated the digitalization of project management including the adoption of digital tools and technologies, embracing an agile approach to implementing projects; working collaborative in remote teams; and breaking traditional barriers of geography, time zones and fundamentally how project teams collaborate.

Project management is being digitized, changing how teams work. Fueled by the pandemic, DPM accelerated its momentum. The rate of adoption is likely to be strong after the pandemic. Organizations and individuals should consider embracing DPM but with the full knowledge of both benefits and challenges.

DPM is still in its early days even though the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated its use. Today and likely after the pandemic, organizations and people are increasingly embracing digital technologies, remote teams and agile project management approaches to project management. It is likely that in the foreseeable future, nearly all project managers will be digital project managers, giving rise to the importance of understanding the challenges and benefits and building the digital skills for both individuals and organizations.

The purpose of this study is to describe the implementation of a digital-based team coaching intervention aimed at improving team communication in the workplace through social network visualization. The study examined recipients’ perceptions of the intervention at two time points and assessed the temporal stability of various factors, including the intervention’s integrity, design, transferability, acceptance and the usability of the adopted visualization tool. The moderating role of digital usability was also evaluated.

Four team coaching sessions were delivered to 62 participants from seven teams across three departments within a large public health-care organization in Northern Italy. Perceptions of the intervention dimensions were collected after the second and fourth sessions.

Results indicated that, at both time points, recipients appreciated the intervention’s integrity and usability more than its design, transferability and acceptance. Furthermore, no significant changes in recipients’ perceptions were observed over time. The transferability of the intervention was significantly associated with its acceptance, but only when the usability of the digital tool was high.

The study enriches existing literature on digital interventions in group communication by focusing on process dimensions like recipients’ perceptions of various aspects and the implementation process. Furthermore, the study underscores the potential of integrating specific techniques such as sociomapping and coaching within health-care organizations, encouraging more research and development in these areas.

The study emphasizes the critical role of usability and integrity in digital-based team coaching interventions, suggesting that high-quality, user-friendly tools not only lead to initial effectiveness but also sustain positive impacts over time, while also increasing transferability and acceptance.

The present study uniquely deploys a longitudinal approach to examine recipients’ perceptions of a digital-based intervention that combines social network visualization and team coaching to enhance team communication.

Purpose – Existing research in organizational behavior and social psychology focuses on comparisons in behaviors and attitudes across national groups, instead of studies on interactions among individuals with different national cultural backgrounds. In this chapter, we hope to motivate efforts within cross-national literatures to address some largely unexamined questions regarding dynamics in multicultural diverse teams.

Design/approach – Through a review of the prior perspectives on multicultural teams and a summary of findings in a recent meta-analysis study on multicultural teams in both single nation and multinational settings, we critique the limitations of the current perspectives and propose a new theoretical framework that draws on status perspectives in sociological and ethological research.

Findings – Drawing from status literatures, we explore how the status construction process and the status differential hierarchy of the team may affect trust, psychological safety, and creative problem solving of complex tasks in multicultural teams.

Originality/value – We propose a new theoretical angle of status for future research on interaction dynamics in multicultural teams, and diverse teams in general.

While the competencies required for global leaders' boundary-spanning have been significantly explored in literature, less attention has been paid to the processes involved in this work. This chapter examines global leaders' boundary-spanning actions, highlighting the need for leadership practices that enhance team cohesion and reinforce an organization's identity to global members. We introduce the organizational-theory concept of identity custodianship and demonstrate its use for understanding the social processes involved in global leaders' boundary-spanning.

Stagl, Salas, Rosen, Priest, Burke, Goodwin, and Johnston review a series of factors determining the effectiveness of distributed team performance, thereby providing an effective overview of existing literature, particularly at the intrapersonal and interpersonal levels. Although the effort to provide guidelines for future research in the form of 14 propositions is less effective than might have been hoped, there is sufficient focus to suggest fruitful areas for future inquiry. The exploration of their work suggests that it would prove valuable to both scholars and practitioners if greater attention were concentrated on the interactive effects of distributed teams and organizational-level phenomena.