Title: Employee profile configurator: a tool to improve effectiveness of a virtual team

Authors: Swati Kaul Bhat; Neerja Pande; Vandana Ahuja

Addresses: A-10, Sector 62, Jaypee Business School, Noida, Uttar Pradesh 201307, India ' No. B-1, Sector-62, Institutional Area, IIM Lucknow Noida Campus, Noida, Uttar Pradesh 201307, India ' A-10, Sector 62, Noida, Jaypee Business School, Uttar Pradesh 201307, India

Abstract: Advancement in technology has made the working style of organisations boundary-less. Shrinking the barriers of the teams spread across geographically disparate locations has led to the formation of 'virtual teams'. This paper aims to explain that it is vital for any organisation to understand the abilities of their employees which help them to function in a competent manner. Exploratory research method has been used for the study and factors affecting trust, information sharing and communication, in virtual teams were extracted. This study segregates the virtual team members on the basis of the score given to them by their managers on the factors identified. These composite scores are subjected to K-means cluster analysis where every cluster profile extracted, represents a detailed summary of the employees in the cluster. This forms the basis for creation of our tool - the employee profile configurator. The tool helps organisations and managers to identify the unique characteristics of the employees to classify them accordingly in a specific cluster.

Keywords: virtual teams; trust; information sharing; communication; employee profile configurator; employee skill set.

DOI: 10.1504/IJNVO.2017.088459

International Journal of Networking and Virtual Organisations, 2017 Vol.17 No.4, pp.392 - 409

Received: 18 Jan 2016
Accepted: 08 Mar 2016
Published online: 11 Dec 2017 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article