Article Preview
Top1. Introduction
Lawal and Yekini (2012) and Yekini (2014) define Information and Communication Technology (ICT) as ‘a form of assimilated and unified telecommunications (wired and wireless) and communications, electronic gadgets, computers and other electronic gadgets based communication, towards controlling information, data accessing, storing data and data transmission (visual and audio) between users’. Later in 2015, Assar defined and argued that, ICT is not a novel concept, rather just an extension of Information Technology (IT) and combination-method with Information Systems (IS). Thus ICT could be derived as an ‘incorporated communication resource’. ICT is considered vital in various sectors, since communication and services are the core operations. Without ICT and ICT tools for communication, operations in IT and telecommunication, financial and banking, hospitality, healthcare and many other sectors would collapse. Usage of ICT tools in IT sector, especially for developing software in virtual environment is considered as significant and vital (Adamczewski, 2016) rather than traditional environment, in an organization. In virtual teams, communication is completely rendered by ICT and thus barriers and challenges are inevitable which causes ripple-effect in team performance. The ICT tools-based services namely, e-mail, video and audio communication, social media and online discussions through collaborative tools (printers-&-scanners, digital camera, data projectors, laptops, computers, software programs and interactive teaching-box) are classified according to users’ necessities like group discussions, meetings, integration of clients of different geographical-zones, and more in organizational context (Ghavifekr et al., 2016).
Currently Covid 19 has impacted the IT sector and telecommunications where people either were forced or personally volunteered to work-from-home to prevent spreading of infection and to maintain social-distancing. According to Adamczewski, (2015), employees in an organization uses ICT as tools majorly for e-mailing (93%), work-support discussions and meetings (89%), accounting/ finance (82%) and human resources (71%). Other functions like warehouse management (49%), purchase-and-sales services (54%), Customer relationship management (49%) and production management (19%). Virtual Teams (VTs) in organizations belong to technical aspects (software development), human resources, accounting and office-works. However, in early 90s, VTs were not widely accepted due to more barriers and also due to less trust among team members, with no transparency (Adamczewski, 2016). Later, in early 20s (i.e. after a decade), the acceptance of VTs in organization gained positive impact, since ICT tools in communication and services improved with advanced technological implications (Ghavifekr et al., 2016).
In VTs, each individual is connected through ICT, from different geographical-zones, with different language, ethnicity and work experiences. The VTs are generally monitored and managed by team leaders or team managers, to maintain rapport and achieve organizational goal. However, impact of individual satisfaction in VTs affects the team’s effectiveness and thus results in poor performances (Harerimana and Mtshali, 2017). Thus in VTs, team result, team coordination, trust and individual satisfaction determines the teams’ survivability. Contrarily, leadership skills in VTs includes, monitoring, managing, allocating tasks, communicating information and projecting organizational goal into individuals to achieve individual satisfaction and higher team performance (Lee, 2016).