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The impact of organisational structure on the performance of virtual teams
Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2012.
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University of Pretoria
2013
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| _version_ | 1867613491410501632 |
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| access_status_str | Open Access |
| author2 | Voss-Price, Lucy |
| author_browse | Voss-Price, Lucy |
| author_facet | Voss-Price, Lucy |
| collection | Thesis |
| dc_rights_str_mv | © 2012 University of Pretoria. All rights reserved. The copyright in this work vests in the University of Pretoria. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the University of Pretoria. |
| description | Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2012. |
| format | Thesis |
| id | oai:repository.up.ac.za:2263/29515 |
| institution | University of Pretoria (South Africa) |
| last_indexed | 2026-06-10T12:36:59.722Z |
| license_str | Other — see source repository |
| provenance_str_mv | Harvested via OAI-PMH from UPSpace — University of Pretoria Institutional Repository |
| publishDate | 2013 |
| publishDateRange | 2013 |
| publishDateSort | 2013 |
| publisher | University of Pretoria |
| publisherStr | University of Pretoria |
| record_format | dspace |
| source_str | UPSpace — University of Pretoria Institutional Repository |
| spelling | oai:repository.up.ac.za:2263/29515 The impact of organisational structure on the performance of virtual teams Voss-Price, Lucy ichelp@gibs.co.za Danzfuss, Theodor Werner UCTD Virtual teams Organisational structure Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2012. Globalisation and advances in Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) are contributing to the increased virtualisation of work teams within organisations. Researchers are in agreement that most modern day work teams have some degree of virtualisation (Workman, 2007) and that it is critical for researchers and practitioners alike to understand the impact of virtualisation on the inputs, process and outputs of work teams. Benefits commonly associated with increased team virtualisation such as increased knowledge retention (Dietz-Uhler&Bishop-Clark, 2001), cost savings (Bergiel, Bergiel,&Balsmeier, 2008) and flexibility (Clemons&Kroth, 2011) are proven and well researched. However we know that no benefit can be obtained without incurring some sort of a cost (Colander, 2010) and research showed that virtual teams typically incur additional challenges in the areas of communication, culture, technology and leadership (Kayworth&Leidner, 2000).This research hypothesised that the three levers of organizational structure as defined by Satô (2010) namely the formalization, standardization and centralization of organisational elements can ease the negative effects caused by an increase in team virtualisation. We evaluated the impact that the organisational structure has on the performance of work teams throughout the team virtualisation continuum by conducting a set of interviews, a survey and performing descriptive quantitative analysis on the results. A total of three interviews were conducted which served as confirmation of our research questions and provided guidance to construct the questionnaire. A total of 87 respondents participated in our online survey of which 69 responses were included in the quantitative analysis phase. The responses received were equally distributed between four categories namely: Organic Face-to-face, Mechanistic Face-to-face, Organic Virtual and Mechanistic Virtual.The results revealed that there is no statistically significant relationship between the organisational structure and the performance of virtual teams. We further noticed a higher variance in the performance scores of virtual teams which indicates that the performance of virtual teams are more inconsistent than that of Face-to-face teams. The key finding of the research is that virtual teams perform equally well in both organic and mechanistic organisational structures. Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) unrestricted 2013-09-07T15:49:34Z 2013-04-26 2013-09-07T15:49:34Z 2013-04-25 2012 2013-02-16 Dissertation Danzfuss, TW 2012, The impact of organisational structure on the performance of virtual teams, MBA dissertation, University of Pretoria, Pretoria, viewed yymmdd < http://hdl.handle.net/2263/29515 > F13/4/144/zw http://hdl.handle.net/2263/29515 http://upetd.up.ac.za/thesis/available/etd-02162013-141035/ © 2012 University of Pretoria. All rights reserved. The copyright in this work vests in the University of Pretoria. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the University of Pretoria. application/pdf University of Pretoria |
| spellingShingle | UCTD Virtual teams Organisational structure The impact of organisational structure on the performance of virtual teams |
| title | The impact of organisational structure on the performance of virtual teams |
| title_full | The impact of organisational structure on the performance of virtual teams |
| title_fullStr | The impact of organisational structure on the performance of virtual teams |
| title_full_unstemmed | The impact of organisational structure on the performance of virtual teams |
| title_short | The impact of organisational structure on the performance of virtual teams |
| title_sort | impact of organisational structure on the performance of virtual teams |
| topic | UCTD Virtual teams Organisational structure |
| url | http://hdl.handle.net/2263/29515 http://upetd.up.ac.za/thesis/available/etd-02162013-141035/ |