Making Virtual Teamwork Really Work
“We are witnessing a conscious transformation of the structures, values, and business practices that drive contemporary organizations to encourage and support collaboration on many levels,” so say editors Jill Nemiro, Michael M. Beyerlein, Lori Bradley, and Susan Beyerlein as they introduce their comprehensive new Handbook of High Performance Virtual Teams: A Toolkit for Collaborating Across Boundaries. They point out that while collaboration may involve collective work of individuals, it often takes place in an organizational context. They describe the collaborative organization as one that supports informal and formal forms of collaboration, and collaborative work systems that reflect a conscious effort to create cultures, values, policies and practices which enable individuals and groups to productively work together. The thirty chapters of the book cover virtual teamwork and collaboration from the perspectives of leaders, team members, as well as those who design teams and select, assign, and train team members (Nemiro, Beyerlein, Bradley, & Beyerlein, 2008).
Both scholars and practitioners will want to make room on their bookshelves. It is a valuable resource for scholars who want to understand principles and read case studies, and practitioners who want practical tools. The freely available companion website offers assessment surveys, checklists, worksheets and other tools as well as additional chapters.
Let’s discuss your ideas and experiences with online collaboration and teamwork!
Nemiro, J., Beyerlein, M. M., Bradley, L., & Beyerlein, S. (2008). The handbook of high performance virtual Teams: A toolkit for collaborating across boundaries. San Francisco: Wiley.
This entry was posted on Friday, July 18th, 2008 at 11:07 am and is filed under Books and Publications. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
July 28th, 2008 at 1:06 pm
Many of the editors and contributors to the Handbook of High Performance Virtual Teams: A Toolkit for Collaborating Across Boundaries will be presenting at the Collaboration & Innovation 2008
Organizational Leadership & Supervision conference which will be held at Purdue University on September 14-17, 2008. Details are available at http://www.cci.purdue.edu. (I will be there as a presenter, too!)
July 29th, 2008 at 9:48 pm
Hello Dr. Salmons,
That looks like a great book for my dissertation
Can you tell me (if you have read it) if the book touches on any of the areas I am working on in my study?
Thanks!
-Brandon
July 31st, 2008 at 8:49 pm
Brandon– and others studying this topic– my answer is yes! This collection brings together writers/consultants/researchers who have been working in this field for a long time. They bring both scholarly and practical expertise to their writings. This is not a superficial treatment of virtual teamwork. I recommend it.
August 14th, 2008 at 1:19 pm
This looks like a useful book! Here is a link to a related article: “A Surprising Truth About Geographically Dispersed Teams” http://sloanreview.mit.edu/smr/issue/2008/summer/03/
September 2nd, 2008 at 2:39 pm
Trina Hoefling, contributor to this Handbook and author of Working Virtually: Managing People for Successful Virtual Teams and Organizations by Working Virtually: Managing People for Successful Virtual Teams and Organizations was interviewed by Rob McNealy of StartUp Radio. The podcast is now posted here:
http://www.startupstoryradio.com/working-virtually-with-trina-hoefling/
September 18th, 2008 at 9:33 am
I was fortunate enough to be one of the contributors to the book. Even so, I have not read all of the book. It is a reference. One great contribution is the bibliographies/references provided in the book. If a topic is missing, I would fully expect that there would be a great reference list to get the information needed.
My plan is to write a short summary of the panel discussions at the collaboration & Innovation conference that covered some of the chapters in the book. I hope to get to that this weekend.