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Some ‘real’ problems of ‘virtual’ teamwork

One of the organisational concepts which is currently receiving considerable attention is that of the ‘virtual organisation’ (Dividow and Malone, 1992) and associated notions such as ‘virtual teamwork’. Although admittedly replete with conceptual confusions and clearly accompanied by considerable ‘hype’ such organisational forms, it is claimed, address major transformations in the social, economic and technological environment in which organisations operate. These ‘virtual’ organisational arrangements consist of networks of workers and organisational units, linked by information technology in order to give coordination to their activities, combining their skills and resources to achieve common goals. Such teamworking, "less fettered by the constraints of traditional hierarchies and speres of responsibility, engenders a heightened sense of empowerment, commitment and collective responsibility" (Casey 1995:45). This sort of analysis clearly impacts on the various debates on ‘skill’ but such diagnoses of organisational change need to be subjected to close empirical examination since other views are considerably less sanguine about the consequences of technological change and more sceptical about the likelihood of such a transformation in teamworking, skill, identification and empowerment (Kunda 1992). This paper attempts just such an empirical investigation by reporting on a long term ethnographic study of the implementation of ‘virtual teamworking’ (and the associated issues of organisational change, skill, empowerment and IT use) within a ‘High Street’ Bank. Financal insitutions have long been in the forefront of the use of distributed computer systems and recently have begun to explore, in conjunction with major organisational changes, the increased use of IT to support decision-making, quality control and customer services. These systems are intended to incorporate a much greater support for shared work across the organisational divide that is, 'virtual teamwork' in which organisational function or process is more important than organisational location. ‘Virtual teams’ are an organisational form established in the various specialised centres of the bank and designed to replace the more traditional hierarchical administrative work organisation. The organisational objective was to replace the permanence of administrative structures with the flexibility of task oriented teams which bring skills and expertise together as and when required, and promote the development amongst workers and managers of a new variety of skills, competences and responsibilities. The implementation of ‘virtual teamwork’ is not, however, unproblemmatic and the ethnographic research reported here attempts an in-depth understanding of the interactions between the 'virtual' and the 'real', between organisational change, performance and skill by focussing on the ways in which such strategic plans as ‘virtual teamwork’ are instantiated in day-to-day working practices. The ethnographic research highlights a number of real organisational problems that have emerged with the movement towards virtual teamworking.