Literature review
The global developments in social, political, economic and technology sphere crucially affect organizational survival in the society. These new changes demand that organizations’ management must oblige to developing new management techniques so that their organizations can cope up with harder competition and more demanding market conditions. To large extents, organizations need to raise the performance of their employees through the power of communication (Erogluer, 2011). From the beginning, written and spoken language is considered the way to share meanings and messages for human societies. Often, the most common means of communication for most organizations is face-to-face communication. Communication is the business heart and is important in creating relationships, and the overall success of the business depends on it. Basic functions such as planning, staffing, directing, organizing and controlling cannot be successfully performed without effective communication. In fact, basic units in varied organizations co-exist and operate through communication so that they interact to attain organizational goals. Due to globalization and technological advancements, virtual teams are becoming ever-common in the 21st-century organization. This has changed the communication landscape especially given that these team members lack direct physical contact with each other. This research will aim at examining the relationship between employee performance and organizational communication for virtual teams.
According to research findings, organizational communication is a significant factor that determines the effectiveness of organizations and in improving the job satisfaction of employees and thus productivity (Asamu, 2014). Effective communication in organizations is meant to put across a clear, accurate, and concise message to the organizational workers. Workers’ performance is normally considered as the level of effectiveness of the employees of the organization at dispatching their specified duties. To manage the performance of organizations, the management must set performance expectations and standards, observe, provide feedback and conduct appraisals that enable them to achieve results all of which are done through communication. According to Asamu (2014), employees perform certain tasks if they can identify with their managers or with explicitly named organizational objectives and roles. The relationships between the managers and their employees form the basic agreement of employees to organizational norms so that they can perform. Communication flow creates identification so that workers can internalize desirable values that regard organizational goals and objectives. Better workers’ performance can be achieved where there are reasonable expectation-fit levels and when the social exchange between employees and managers are fair and equal.
However, communication barriers can occur at any stage of communication process which consists of receivers, context, channels, sender, message, and feedback and has the potential of confusion and creating misunderstanding (Harp, 2011). Poor communication results in employees having a low commitment to their organization and, therefore, the organization will be incapable of achieving its set goals. Therefore, there is a need for more research to be conducted so at to examine the relationship between workers’ performance and organizational communication.
Traditionally, managers have spent most of their efforts in exploring how to relate effectively with their employees using face-to-face discussions, notice boards, and public lectures and employee handbooks but today, with the advent of information technology, most of these communication methods are no longer effective to keep companies more profitable and responsive to the needs of their clients (Cummings, 2011). Information technology has rapidly changed the context, channel and message content from senders to receivers. While more research and studies have been carried to explain how communication can be used to reinforce company employees’ performance, less has been done on the same among virtual teams.
One of the global trends in corporates is the significant rise of virtual teams as company assets. These are groups of employees that have the flexibility in work environment often working in geographically dispersed areas towards the achievement of organizational goals. The flexibility to work in other environments was particularly brought by the need to significantly reduce staff turnover as well as increasing employee satisfaction. Global companies like General Electric began to explore exporting teams to their foreign affiliates as well as integrating their global HRM practices (Ruggieri, 2009). Furthermore, new forms of virtualization take place when employees work at home when they are still taking care of their sick children or spouses. In essence, virtual employees are classified as employees who work beyond 50% of their time when they are physically away from their workmates and managers. Virtual teams rely on information technology and telecommunications to accomplish organizational tasks.
The challenge with virtual teams is that communication dynamics for such teams shifts from face-to-face communication that essentially alters societal communication as known today with more body indicators such as body language, eye movement and vocal inflection (Harp, 2011). Ideally, this kind of communication limits the influence of productivity as well as the quality of work that is conducted by virtual teams. Company managers must, therefore, change their mode and approach to communication if they are to succeed in a culture where virtual teams have become a norm. In particular, they must consider the cultural communication contexts of their organization to ensure it positively influences employees to be productive.
The main advantages of virtual teams’ development are to harness strengths of individual employees despite where they live since virtual teams rely on performing jobs with most knowledgeable team members rather than who they are close with. Employees for such a scenario must allocate a substantial amount of time to understand additional coordination that results from working virtually. This will be of help when establishing meaningful relationships in work that will make virtual employees be productive and integrating multiple locations (Cummings, 2011). Among virtual teams, intrinsic benefits make it easier to measure productivity including performance. Performance is easier to document as well as a review for virtual teams as interactions, outcomes and commitments are reported automatically and electronically. Thus, accurate records of work accomplished by virtual teams allow objective means for business managers to review virtual team productivity.
Using technology to keep records of work for virtual teams is more accurate than if business managers were using informal evaluations conducted through time bound and random observations of processes in work of traditional teams (Berry, 2011). Evaluating and measuring the productivity of virtual teams includes evaluations through peers that have the capability of proving personal and no-task oriented feedback which is absent in face-to-face interactions and communication.
Despite the fact that virtual teams are more likely to be productive that traditional teams, work productivity will only be sustained through enhanced coordination as delays in communication particularly may cause reduced performance and hence productivity. This is especially when the virtual teams are working across multiple countries having different time zones. Also, cultural and language differences that may be associated with each virtual team members is likely to cause significant delays as well as communication barriers (Schiller, & Cui, 2010). These factors pose greater risks to organizational performance and should be addressed if present organizations are to remain competitive. Other risk factors to the performance of virtual teams related to communication are closely connected to support and technical tools given to the virtual team. Virtual teams must be provided with tools that they need to be successful like instant messaging, email, conferencing, collaborative tools and cell phones. When they have these resources available, there are more chances of a virtual team being more productive.
In virtual teams, the responsibility of business leaders is to communicate fruitfully with the varied teams so as to guarantee that work is done. Fruitful communication means that the team leader is dedicated to engaging, providing coaching and mentoring opportunities to the virtual teams. This is done by inspiring among the virtual teams a sense of community and aliveness, even without using face-to-face contact. Virtual teams utilize electronic communication channels for communication. With virtual team leaders dealing with different personalities, languages, and cultures that have possibilities of making communication more difficult, virtual team leaders must instill attitudes of trust so that the virtual team members can participate in crucial decision making when in a team environment and cultivating appropriate communication behaviors namely timely responses, openness and in-depth feedback (Pinjani & Palvia, 2013). And just as in traditional teams, the challenges of virtual leaders are to strike a balance between interaction and direct supervision.
The available literature and findings show that effective communication is important in creating mutual understanding between virtual teams and members which leads to building genuine relationships with the parties in the organization. Also from the studies, poor communication has been found to affect the performance of employees and thus organizations must articulate objectives, goals and policies to their employees through a suitable communication method to improve the performance of virtual teams. Organizations will, therefore, be required to eliminate barriers to communication among virtual teams by creating participative, efficient and transparent communication media through telecommunication to improve virtual team performance and commitment (Golden, 2009). Studying the relationship between virtual team performance and organizational communication is important in understanding how virtual teams should be managed since they are different from traditional teams in organizations.
Research design
This research design adopts a descriptive survey method since the study will collect information on the impact of communication on virtual team employees’ performance in organizations. Descriptive surveys deal with systematic events description in a factual and accurate manner (Tuckman & Harper, 2012). The study area will primarily focus on large organizations having virtual teams as part of their organizational employees. The study will use a well-structured questionnaire in determining the relationship between virtual team performance and organizational performance. The questionnaire will have two sections with the first section defining respondents’ demographic characteristics such as marital status, sex, and age while the second part will query the respondent’s perception and interpretation of communication impacts on workers performance. The main research question will be: what is the relationship between virtual team performance and organizational performance? Collected data will be analyzed through statistical techniques such as inferential and descriptive statistics which will be used to measure reliability and confirm the hypothesis.
The independent variable in this study is the levels of communication, and the dependent variable is the levels of employee performance. This relationship will be depicted as follows; levels of communication will be categorized into high, average and low while dependent variables performance levels will be operationalized as Very High, High, Average, and Low.
Hypothesis: From the studies, poor communication has been found to affect the performance of employees and thus organizations must articulate objectives, goals and policies to their employees through a suitable communication method to improve the performance of virtual teams (Asamu, 2014). Organizations will, therefore, be required to eliminate barriers to communication among virtual teams by creating participative, efficient and transparent communication media through telecommunication to improve virtual team performance and commitment. The Hypothesis in this study is that organizational communication affects virtual team performance.
Implications: When the hypothesis is confirmed, it will reinforce the existing research findings that Organizational communication affects virtual team performance just as it does for traditional employees.
Scenario for rejecting the hypothesis: When no correlation between organizational communication and virtual team performance is discovered in the data.
Research and Analysis
This section details the methodology used in studying the effects of communication on the performance of employees in virtual teams for modern organizations. This section has a different process that the research we through in specific reference to research approach, data collection, sampling method and data analysis plan utilized for this study.
Research Process
The research approach for this study is positivism since it aims at collecting, analyzing and presenting data. The emphasis of the research is the adoption of a structured methodology that will facilitate replication and quantifiable observations which can be subjected to statistical analysis (Saunders, 2011). This has the implication that it will be possible to apply the generalization law in this study.
Research Design and Methodologies
In understanding the relationship between employee performance and organizational communication, this study adopts a research design that is deductive and descriptive in nature. The deductive method is deemed appropriate because such an approach enables the researcher to deduce and test the hypothesis that organizational communication affects virtual team performance. The collected information will be used to measure the impact of virtual team employees’ communication in organizations. Descriptive surveys, according to researchers, basically have the objective of systematically describing events using factual and accurate data (Gall, Borg & Gall, 1996). The collected data from the study using descriptive research approach is concerned with presenting the nature as well as the status of the relationship, if one exists, between communication and the performance of virtual teams. In general, deductive research designs are concerned with finding out the communication relationships as well as processes that exist in modern organizations.
Study Area
This study is carried out over the internet with the geographical area being corporates within the United States. Such corporates must also be having virtual teams as part of their organizational employees. The United States is selected primarily because it is the most industrialized country in the world and generally has a large number of organizations that have virtual teams that operate throughout the world to accomplish their business goals and objectives. This makes the study relevant in the area of effective communication among virtual employees and how it has a rippling effect on their performance. Further, such a virtual team in modern corporates appreciates the dynamics of virtual team communication caused by cultural, language and time differences.
Sampling techniques and Sample Size
Since a lot of modern organizations are already implementing virtual teams in project management, sampling is used to scale down the total population and use the sample selected as a generalization of the attributes, distribution, relationships and patterns observed to represent those of the population. This is because the population is too large to carry out a large-scale study and thus this study used a restricted fair sample to draw valid conclusions about the relationship between communication and performance of virtual project teams. This study generally used convenience sampling strategy which is more flexible to choose a sample than statistical sampling methods (Gall, Borg & Gall, 1996). This sampling strategy was also important in considering adjustments that are needed when some respondents fail to participate even when expected to do so. Convenience sampling strategy is also justifiable since employees to be surveyed for this study are only those in organizations that have adopted virtual teams as part of their employees. The sample size selected for investigation includes 20 large and mid-sized corporations with one or two virtual teams as part of their team composition. The total number of respondents for the sample is 40 individual employees involved in virtual teams for each selected company. The selected organizations are distributed across all the sectors of the economy from the manufacturing sector, financial services, educational and legal services. This makes the study inclusive of all types of employees hence will be important in making generalizations that fit within the whole population.
Research Instrument
A structured questionnaire was used as the research instrument used in collecting data for the survey. The structured questionnaires were issued formally to the respondents in the study via online platforms such as emails where they will first be briefed about the aims and objectives of the study and then given instructions on how to fill the survey questionnaire. The respondents were then given the freedom to ask questions that they felt were not clear before they could fill in their responses. The questionnaire took an average of 16 to 20 minutes to fill. The survey questionnaire consisted of two sections with the first section intended to acquire participants’ demographic profiles, the second section dealing with attitudes towards their organizational communication strategies and the third section having indicators of employee performance aimed at collecting information about the virtual employee’s performance and productivity. Performance and attitudes were based on numerical values ranging from 0 to 4 that indicated the extent and degree of disagreement and agreement with the factor being investigated. Thus numerical values would be calculated for the responses.
Data Analysis
Given the nature of this investigation, data was analyzed through statistical techniques that included both inferential and descriptive statistics. In particular, frequency, as well as percentage table, were employed for descriptive statistics. On the other hand, non-parametric tests such as goodness fit test were utilized for inferential data analysis so as to confirm the hypothesis that was formulated for this investigation and measure the reliability of the data collected, its significance and determining if the data has a deviation from the hypotheses (Saunders, 2011). This, thus, makes it possible to accept or reject the hypothesis. The data that was analyzed fell under four categories namely communication, employee perception, performance, and open questions. The category communication was primarily meant to acquire respondents’ opinion in the contexts of their organizations, while the employee perception category was aimed at providing the researcher with points of view of the respondent on the appropriateness of communication in their organization. The open questions were meant to give the researcher deeper understanding of the respondents while the performance category were aimed at indicating the performance levels of organizations.
Results
This section of the study reports the analysis of the data that was collected on the relationship between communication and the performance of employees in virtual teams in organizations that were selected for this study. The collected results show that organizations that have virtual teams a part of their human capital strategy have lower communication between employees and managers as compared to companies only implementing physical activities. From the results only 30% of virtual team respondents strongly agreed that there exist frequent and sufficient communications between them and managers. In addition, 50% of the respondents strongly admitted they rely on information from other employees when they want to make a decision on the progress of the project. Employees in virtual teams indicated that whenever communication happens between employees and managers, it is often insufficient mainly due to language and cultural barriers. Virtual teams strongly agree there exist mistrust and tension at the beginning of the project phase due to ineffective orientation. Also, results also indicated that only 30% of all projects being undertaken by virtual teams will most likely be completed on time, within budgets and still be within the expected quality levels. This, therefore, can be used to explain why projects that are carried out via digital virtual teams are more likely to be delayed due to lower communication between managers and virtual teams.
The results also show that most virtual employees agree that communication plays a critical role in the overall financial performance of organizations with 57% of all respondents positively identifying this factor. In particular, most virtual employees cited that effective communication is a form of motivation that drives workers’ performance just like compensation policies. It was also found out that most virtual team members are unaware of their colleagues in projects that they are working on mainly because they are not oriented or properly briefed before a project starts. It was also established that employees working on virtual projects were uninformed of the company mission, quality standards, and company management. On the question of whether employees are at ease when communicating with their managers, the results indicate that 62.5 % of the employees disagree with it. Of those who disagreed with this statement, only 30% indicate that they had completed a project on time and within budget. When this statement is approached from the view that employees in project teams want to discuss or comment on the project progress, it can translate that virtual teams have minimal communication contact with their managers and hence lower performance. When virtual employees can freely communicate with other members of the organization, they feel part of the organization and are motivated to perform well (Kandlousi, Ali & Abdollahi, 2010).
Conclusion
When these results are used in answering to the main research question which is whether there exist a correlation between communication and performance of virtual teams in organizations, they indicate that there indeed exist a bidirectional relationship and is directly proportional in nature. Previous research findings that effective communication plays a significant role in enhancing the performance of project teams either physical or virtual still holds for this study (García‐Morales, Matías‐Reche & Verdú‐Jover, 2011). Thus, the hypothesis that organizational communication affects virtual team performance is confirmed.
References
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