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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.

This research paper uses responses from social sciences university students in Romania to highlight issues in virtual team working. Ways that trust is built in virtual teams are examined, together with how the personality trait openness to experience can impact virtual team performance. The questionnaire data findings reveal that experiencing trust and leadership-based challenges made the students less willing to work as a virtual team, and less confident that such a team would perform well. Those who were most open to experience were most critical in highlighting the downside of working in virtual teams.

The briefing saves busy executives, strategists 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.

The paper seeks to discuss virtual working, technology utilisation and how technology can be used to enhance human interaction rather than replace it. It is often the fabric of virtual human relationships that remains sadly neglected. This viewpoint paper aims to stimulate a more comprehensive debate about how to work effectively with and through others in our virtual world.

Working closely with global corporations, the author studied both permanent and project‐based virtual teams. Through observation and diagnostics, a comparison of the effectiveness of these teams was made against that of traditional co‐located teams.

Many businesses attempt to treat virtual working in the same way as co‐located working. The human impact and implications of virtual working are not fully understood or dealt with. The cultural retention of practices and policies that are relevant to co‐located traditional work but often counter‐productive for virtual working can result in tensions, conflicts and the ultimate disengagement of the workforce.

This paper offers a sample of the pragmatic tips and approaches the author's organizations brings to its clients. The most practical outcome of reading this paper is the recognition that virtual working has some subtle and key differences that need to be understood and managed by all those involved.

This paper is intended to be thought‐provoking for executive leaders, leaders, human resource professionals, change management agents and – most importantly – members of virtual teams.

While some modern organisations have established “virtual work teams”, which are said to be comprised of people who are geographically separated and who work across boundaries of space and time using computer driven communication technologies, it is also true that many organisations remain structured around conventional face‐to‐face teams. Increasingly, the conventional face‐to‐face team is endeavouring to increase its productivity by utilising some of the technology and characteristics of the virtual team. In fact, it may not be practical any longer to draw a distinction between conventional face‐to‐face teams and virtual teams, due to the invasive nature of technology throughout most modern organisations.

We conceptualized the novel phenomenon of COVID-induced virtual teams and its implications and provided researchers with the required information on how to conduct a phenomenon-based study for conceptualizing novel phenomena in relevant ways.

This article stems from phenomenon-based and, thus, theory-building and grounded qualitative research in the German industrial sector. We conducted 47 problem-centered interviews in two phases (February–July 2021 and February–July 2022) to understand how team members and team leaders experienced COVID-induced virtual teamwork and its subsequent developments.

Empirically, we found COVID-induced virtual teams to be characterized by a high relevance of shaping positive team dynamics via steering internal moderators; crisis is a novel external moderator and transformation becomes the key output factor to be leveraged. Work-from-home leads to specific configuration needs and interrelations between work-from-home and on-site introduce additional dynamics. Methodologically, the phenomenon-based approach is found to be highly suitable for studying the effects of such novel phenomena.

This article is explorative. Thus, we advocate further research on related novel phenomena, such as post-COVID-hybrid and work-from-home teams. A model of how to encourage positive dynamics in post-COVID-hybrid teams is developed and lays the groundwork for further studies on post-COVID teamwork. Concerning methodology, researchers are provided with information on how to conduct phenomenon-based research on novel phenomena, such as the COVID-induced virtual teams that we studied.

Companies receive advice on how to encourage positive dynamics in post-COVID teamwork, e.g. on identifying best practices and resilient individuals.

In a country such as Germany that faces labor shortages, our insights might facilitate better labor-market integration for those with care-work obligations and international workers.

We offer a first conceptualization of a relevant novel phenomenon, namely COVID-induced virtual teams. We exemplify the phenomenon-based approach as a suitable methodology that serves to build relevant theory using active categorization.

This paper aims to determine the impact of perceived virtuality on team dynamics and outcomes by adopting the Input-Mediators-Outcome (IMO) framework. Further, it also investigates the mediating role of team processes and emergent states.

The authors collected survey data from 315 individuals working in virtual teams (VTs) in the information technology sector in India using both offline and online questionnaires. They performed the analysis using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM).

The authors investigated two sets of hypotheses – both direct and indirect (or mediation interactions). Results show that psychological empowerment and conflict management are significant in managing VTs. Also, perceived virtuality impacts team outcomes, i.e. perceived team performance, team satisfaction and subjective well-being.

The interplay between the behavioural team process (conflict management) and the emergent state (psychological empowerment) was examined. The study also helps broaden our understanding of the various psychological variables associated with teamwork in the context of VTs.

Findings from this study will aid in assessing the consequences of virtual teamwork at both individual and organisational levels, such as guiding the design and sustainability of VT arrangements, achieving higher productivity in VTs, and designing effective and interactive solutions in the virtual space.

The study examined the interplay between behavioural team processes (such as conflict management) and emergent states (such as psychological empowerment). The study also theorises and empirically tests the relationships between perceived virtuality and team outcomes (i.e. both affective and effectiveness). It may serve as a guide to understanding team dynamics in VTs better.

This exploratory study attempts to enhance the current understanding of the research and practice of VTs within a developing economy.

The aim of the investigation is to identify enabling and disenabling factors in the development and operation of virtual teams; to evaluate the importance of factors such as team development, cross‐cultural variables, leadership, communication and social cohesion as contributors to virtual team effectiveness.

A total of 115 employees in virtual teams using an on‐line survey contributed a 55 per cent response rate. An on‐line survey combining both quantitative Likert scale and qualitative explanatory questions measured the following variables in addition to those above: team member roles and responsibilities, relationships and trust and team dynamics.

Results indicated that cross‐cultural communication improvement, managerial and leadership communication, goal and role clarification, and relationship building are most important to virtual team performance.

Further research focusing on particular sectors such as knowledge‐ intensive firms (KIF), including information and telecommunications, and research and development is needed to provide in‐depth insights into virtual team operations. In addition this research highlights potential issues in cross‐cultural composition of virtual teams and the need for further work on appropriate team training, selection factors in comprising virtual teams and communications.

While there is a growing body of research on knowledge and information economy issues and the changing sociology of work for example in the ICT sector and in tele‐remote work and call centres, empirical work specifically on virtual team operation is embryonic. This exploratory research begins to add to the understanding of variables important in the operational effectiveness of virtual teams.

In this paper, the prior research on virtual teams was reviewed to assess the state of the literature. The purpose of this paper is to determine why individuals prefer working in virtual teams (also termed liquid workers and part-time workers). Previous researchers have focussed on the benefits that organizations receive if they hire liquid workers, but to date, no research has been conducted to determine the perspective of these liquid workers. The various definitions of virtual teams are discussed and an integrative definition is proposed that suggests all teams may be defined in terms of their extent of virtualness.

A systematic review of the literature on virtual teams was conducted. The data were collected from 12 informants. A thematic analysis was used to analyse the data.

Six main themes were identified, namely, pliability, opportunities, increased earnings, vigour, family and transportation.

This study was conducted in a three-metropolitan city in India and warrants being extended to rural and international settings to gain additional insights and confirmation of the research findings.

It is suggested that organizations who recruit liquid workers will be in a position for substantial cost savings; this is because organizations usually make payment of liquid workers’ wages on an hourly basis. This will help the organizations to schedule the number of working hours depending on their needs.

The current study is novel as there is a paucity of research in identifying the factors behind working in the virtual community in India. This study presents the first research of its kind to the best knowledge of the author, and the findings will be valuable for companies who are looking for cost savings.

The paper has two primary purposes: the first is to determine antecedents to commitment to a work team; the second to compare how antecedents to commitment differ between collocated and virtual teams.

Survey data were collected using 52 three‐member teams – 28 collocated teams and 24 virtual teams using graduate students from three countries.

Results indicate that team work processes and member effort have a significant, positive relationship with trust in collocated teams, but results for virtual teams show that member efforts is not a significant predictor of trust. Comparing collocated teams and virtual teams, collocated teams had stronger relationships (compared to virtual teams) between member effort and trust, and between trust and normative commitment. Virtual teams had stronger relationships (compared to collocated teams) between work processes and trust, and between trust and affective commitment.

Additional studies of longer‐term teams are needed to see if results remain consistent. One form of commitment (continuance), in particular, can be studied in long‐term teams.

Managers of work teams need to firmly establish a foundation of trust to ensure commitment of team members. Managers of virtual teams should particularly organize and communicate work processes to be followed by virtual team members.

Little research has been conducted examining antecedents to commitment to the work team, as well as commitment to a work team when work is conducted using technology (e.g. virtual teams). This paper fills a void in these two areas.

Using the developmental process of interpersonal relationships as a metaphor, the purpose of this paper is to examine the mediating effects of trust and cohesion on the links between psychosocial factors and work outcomes among Chinese employees.

A three-wave survey method was used to collect data from 388 full-time employees working in virtual teams in diverse industries in Taiwan.

Structural equation modeling confirmed that trust and cohesion were two key psychological mechanisms linking up team psychosocial factors (i.e. psychological similarity, shared activities) and work outcomes (i.e. job satisfaction, team performance).

This study examined virtual teams, which are increasingly prevalent in cloud computing applications, from a largely overlooked social psychological perspective. The results clearly demonstrated that the development and functioning of work teams is similar to the formation and functioning of social relationships. Thus, psychology in general, social psychology in particular, should have a lot to contribute to the better understanding of the rich dynamism of work teams, virtual and face-to-face.

This is the first study testing a comprehensive model of the process of attraction-identification-trust-performance in the virtual team context with a non-western sample. The unique individual-level analysis underlining the human factors complements more often taken approach of organization- and/or team-level analysis of virtuality tackling structural and strategic issues.

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.