PICMET 2006 Proceedings, 9-13 July, Istanbul, Turkey (c) 2006 PICMET

Virtual Environments, Virtual Works, Virtual Lives?

Gonca Telli Yamamoto I Ali Telli2, Michael Featherstone3, Patricia Borstoff3
1Okan University, Turkey 2TUBITAK, Turkey 3Jacksonville State University, USA

Abstract--Technological advances mostly in Internet and mobile technologies affect our lives in myriad ways. Globally, these technologies are used in many environments; the usage of these technologies also creates virtual environments. The concepts of time, place, language and boundaries disappear; many people from different countries and cultures can communicate with each other and work together. However, besides its benefits, working with many different people brings many problems to be solved such as time synchronization, language gaps, and cultural differences. To observe the problems of virtual environments as a case study, a virtual study group has been established between Turkish and American student groups. In this paper, the observations of this group study will be presented.

I. INTRODUCTION

Due to the impacts of developing information technology, mostly due to the Internet, the business world is continuously changing. The Internet is quickly becoming a global information system that is accessible in nearly all countries [1]. However, there are also many problems and obstacles that must be overcome before all countries can benefit from Internet and e-commerce. Internet also triggers globalization. While the concept of globalization developing the number of worldwide virtual business being conducted is rapidly increasing. The dimensions of virtual business life should be understood and human/cultural dimensions should be observed for better business relations and effectiveness in business.

II. VIRTUAL WORLD, VIRTUAL ORGANIZATIONS, VIRTUAL WORKS

A virtual world is an environment in which people use computer-screens in front of them to access web pages to share common knowledge. There are possibly thousands of virtual worlds on the web, currently. 'The second world' and 'ColonyCity' are some examples [2]. In our definition, a virtual world is an environment where people can share knowledge, do business, study together by using new technological devices such as PCs, laptops, mobile phones, PDAs, PDA phones and other devices by accessing to common networks such as Internet. Today, due to developing integrated circuit technology, the size of electronic devices decreases as their processing power increases. This will result in combining many other functions in one handheld device. So, every single part in the domestic world or business/marketing chain will able to communicate with each other in a safe and a fast way. Moreover, due to

new technologies such as Bluetooth, 3G-4G networks, RFID and GPS/GALILEO, a myriad of new applications and worldwide business opportunities will be available, and many virtual environments will be created [3]. Even though Internet is still in its initial stage and has been seen as a highly unregulated media, Internet does also bring an advantage to users to create their own cognitive conditions or select others in this social environment. It is proven that in virtual environments, people behave much more differently than they behave in their daily lives. So, regulations are sometimes necessary in this business arena. In the virtual world, there are many personal or institutional relationships. While time, place and boundaries are vanishing, there are several new structures being set up due to the evolution of the concepts. One of these structures in this new technological environment is virtual organization. Virtual organizations are generally business and/or social organizations since they do affect the economy and social life. There is other progress being made through virtual works. E-business and virtual enterprises are being set up and promoted. The enterprises that use Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) have started to see the virtual enterprise concept as a new model [4]. This also affects the nature of the work teams of the enterprises. The nature of work teams has changed significantly because of the changes in organizations and the work they do. Moreover, the relationships between people inside and outside an organization have become more important [5]. Virtual teams are supported by technology that operates in multiple modes including face-to-face meetings when possible in the virtual world. Managing virtual teams mean executing the whole spectrum of communication strategies and project management techniques as well as human and social processes in ways, which support the team [6]. These created teams are also expressed as executive teams, project teams and a community of practice firms. In our study, communities of practice and project teams have been discussed. This study has also been done in multicultural environment. In this study, multi-cultural virtual teams are defined as teams whose members have different cultural backgrounds, who communicate entirely via Internet or other virtual methods.
A. LITERATURE REVIEW In a global marketplace, more and more companies need international presence. Due to this reason, much research has

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been done about virtual environments in literature. Some examples of recent studies are given below: * Harvey et al. have studied human, social, political and cross-cultural capital factors for the effectiveness of the Global Virtual Team (GVT). According to this study, it will become evident that most organizations will not have the resources to 'fully man' operations throughout the world [7]. * Panteli and Davison have explored the importance of subgroups in global virtual teams. They considered the impacts of subgroups on communication pattems and studied the interactions of these teams [6]. * Matlay and Westhead have taken the resulting turbulence within the intemational small business community that has facilitated the evolutions of innovative organizational firms that are structured dynamically to ensure sustainable competitive advantage in local, national or global markets. In their study, virtual teams consist of subgroups of geographically distributed members who interact through interdependent tasks and common interests [8]. * Jacobs et al. searched the effects of virtual development on product quality from the viewpoint of conforming to product specifications [9]. Virtual developments refer to the development of products by teams distributed across space, time and organizational boundaries. * Caballer and Peiro analyzed the direct and combined effects of the communication media and time pressure in-group work on the effective responses of team members while performing intellectual tasks. They also analyzed the direct effects of the communication media on the degree of satisfaction with the process that confirms the prediction of the media-task fit model, and also examined the negative effects of time pressure on satisfaction with group results and commitment to those results [10]. * According to Rico and Cohen, the superior virtual team performance is contingent on the match between the natures of the task and choice of the communications modality [11]. * Ocker explored the influences on creativity in virtual teams. She discovered dominance, domain knowledge, downward norm pressure, lack of shared understanding, time pressure and technical difficulties being the significant inhibitors of the creative performance of team members. The existence of a variety of social influences, a collaborative team climate, and both the surfacing and reduction of equivocally are significant enhancers [12].
B. IMPLEMENTATION Our study was carried out between Okan and Jacksonville University students in Turkey and in the USA who were studying 'virtual enterprise' and 'research methodology' courses. In this interdisciplinary study, virtual

relationships are examined. This is one of the first practices of two cross cultural project teams conceming global virtual works. Any interdisciplinary project could put thousands of employees all around the world to work according to their specialty. In our project, the desired outputs for the students are: * To make network contacts with each other * To learn to work with groupware * To learn to work with different cultures * To experience the problems of working in virtual teams * To leam how to communicate in the virtual world * To evaluate communication based events * To explore the dimensions of cultural awareness
A plan has been created before actually creating the virtual teams according to the universities' academic rules, calendars, the student profiles, ages, communication environments and communication channels. During the project cycle, some organizational problems have also been reviewed and solved. A problem rose due to scheduling because the academic calendars did not match. A one-month time lack resulted in time delay. This study lasted for 3 months. In order to facilitate effective communication between students, some reports and time schedule sheets have been prepared and sent to the students. The dimensions of working that have been considered are: * Same time, same place * Same time, different place * Different time, same place * Different time, different place

collaboration between different national colleagues and their

It was observed that the fourth suggestion was the most suitable for both international students according to their working schedules. The communication environment is also another important factor to consider in the project. Mentors of parties talked to each other frequently using all the materials they suggested to the students in order to follow up any problems concerning the usage of these devices. Mentors have also decided to communicate with each other within a yahoo group, by SKYPE (if vocal communication is needed) or by e-mail, phone or fax to share knowledge with each other in order to set up the instructions to the students. Students were also free to use any other communications media while they were doing their projects. Some trendy groupware programs were also suggested such as 'Grouper'. However, this was considered as a supplementary. A student yahoo group has been created for students to meet each other and to stay in contact. Students have been formed as active members of the group. Their mentors have motivated them on the study.

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Students have been notified that they should have conducted a cross-cultural project during their semester for preparation of this kind of study. Then, they have been invited to join the team room (as remarked yahoogroups) to have their first contact with each other. While American students were generally seniors from management, information management and international trade departments, Turkish students were mainly MBA students who graduated from different departments. Twenty-four feasible pairs were selected to work with each other as virtual teams. First e-mails sent to the group were giving brief information about the students. The mentors added the members directly to the yahoo group. For new members, they were allowed to read old messages from group's web page. Some new members were added separately. After a short introductory message to facilitate communication amongst students, they were given permission to submit informal messages to the group for the following week. They also had an initiative to contact their colleagues. There were several proposed student projects under five selected topics. These topics were posted for students in the yahoo groups. When the project headlines were sent to the group, students were divided into 2 Turkish and 2 American student pairs in new smaller teams (subgroups) with a given project. The mentors created the rules of this study. Students who wanted to select posted project had to send reply e-mail to the group. Then, the teams of Turkish and American students had been formed on "first come first serve" basis. After that, according to the study projects, the two people groups had been merged and four-people groups had been created. At initial stages, the group was set as 'moderated'. However, it became difficult to moderate the group due to the high level of activities. At this stage, the group was left as "un-moderated". If there were some students left, they were manually assigned to the project. If there were one or two students who had no projects, the project teams expanded to five/six members considering the accommodation. After the project teams had been formed, it was also recommended to create subgroups for discussions in detail. The students had been assigned to be involved in the projects in which every student communicated with each other as part of a discreet event and both teams of students were supposed to document the communications that had taken and to place problems they had encountered (if there were any). At the beginning, some difficulties and some frustration with some of the communication events had been reviewed by mentors. Students were also asked to anticipate these potential problems and develop strategies to minimize them. Mentors suggested posting some photos of the members/universities to create a team spirit and to show an established contact. English is an international language all around the world. Therefore, English was selected as the communication language. The mentors also suggested a project that would be an evaluation of the translation software available on the web.

The reason for suggesting this kind of material was to allow students to participate at best level. There are software programs for these kinds of problems but they are not free and widely available. For example, if the languages were French, Spanish or Chinese 'babelfish' type of translation software could have been suggested. Turkish students had enough English knowledge to communicate so the problem above was solved easily.
C. RESULTS Some of the problems that our multi-cultural virtual teams faced include the following: * Time delays in replies: Time delay was an important problem and many problems rose during holiday times. It is apparent that students cannot reach team members while they are having class at the same time. In our study, time zones were discussed before starting the project. This problem had been well understood and analyzed in the projectplanning phase. The students had experienced this condition in cross-cultural way and it was well understood that there were some different applications while working worldwide. Also, it was understood that this time disadvantages could become advantages for virtual teams. If there is a good time planning, this may turn into an opportunity for preparing reports, tracking works, following money and back-to-back affairs. * Lack of synergy among cross-cultural team members: It is not easy to participate in an overseas project. The study should be best understood and defined. Also, there should be a good communication channel established between the students. However, communicating with people from different geographical locations, different time zones, and whom you only know by their (different pronounced) names and demographic characteristics may cause some problems. For success, there should be a well-defined objective. In our study, by keeping these in mind, virtual group mentors motivated the team members and created a synergy. * Communication breakdowns due to cultural variances: Communication with people abroad might be enjoyable but working with them for a certain project that has a time limit is difficult. Differences in language, religion and habits may cause big problems. Ethical and gender issues may results in discussions in mail groups. In our study, using slang terms were forewarned at initial stage and mentors blocked extreme stimulations. The students had also been wamed against these kinds of emails. * Communication breakdowns due to personnel variances: There are many different personalities around the world. These may cause also serious problems in multicultural virtual studies. In our study, some personal characteristics observed such as trustless, introspectiveness, selfishness, truthfulness and self-

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assertiveness. Curiosity for a special life could be another problem. Priorities are also important for this kind of studies. Over-insistence and/or lack of immediacy could also create some problems. Communication breakdowns due to technological/ geographical variances: Another challenge was available technology. The current state of the technology is such that virtual teams can technically function well in many parts of the world. However, some members living in different regions may not have access to new communications infrastructures, especially in rural areas, and members in other countries may be subject to old versions. Some other problems include incompatible networks, slow computers, and traffic on the network.

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A decade ago, virtual teams were almost unheard. However, today, they are an integral part of every organization and they have received considerable attention in the literature. This paper examines the use of virtual teams, which aims to carry out projects through information technology and globalization. "Virtual teams" are becoming more and more common in the business world and in educational settings. Multi-cultural virtual teams are important in these days due to the increasing globalization of

8/ Yamamoto G. T. and Telli A. (2005), "High Technology for Marketing: New Applications and Integrated Circuits", 4th International Conference on Science Marketing 2005, CSIR International Convention Center, Pretoria, South Africa. [4] Introne, L.D., Moore, H., Cushman, M. (1999), "The Virtual Organization- Technical or Social Innovation?", Lessons from the Film Industry", Working Paper Series 72, London School of Economics. http://is.lse.ac Retrieved 23.12.05. [5] Kimball, Lisa (1997). "Managing Virtual Teams," speech given at Team Strategies Conference.
[3] [6] Retrieved 20.12.05. Harvey, M., Novicevic, M. M., Garrison G. (2005), "Global Virtual Teams: A Human Resource Capital Architecture", The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 16, 9, 1583. [7] Panteli N., and Davison R.M. (2005), "The Role of Subgroups in the Communication Patterns of Global Virtual Teams", IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication. [8] Matlay, H. and Westhead, P. (2005), Virtual Teams and rise of eEntrepreneurship, Europe International Small Business Journal, 23, [9] Jacobs, J., Moll, J. van, Krause, P., Kusters, R.J., Trienekens, J.J.M. (2005), Exploring defect causes in products developed by virtual teams. Information and Software Technology, 47-6, 399-410. [10] Caballer, A., Gracia, F. and Peiro, J. (2005), "Affective Responses to Work Process and Outcomes in Virtual Teams: Effects of Communication Media and Time Pressure", Journal of Managerial Psychology, 20, 3/4. [11] Rico, R. and Cohen, S.G. (2005), "Effects of Task Interdependence and Type Of Communication on Performance in Virtual Teams", Journal of Managerial Psychology, 20, 3/4. [12] Ocker, R. (2005), "Influences on Creativity in Asynchronous Virtual Teams: A Qualitative Analysis of Experimental Teams", IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication, 48, 1.

organizations. In the future, these kinds of relationships and studies will be available all around the world as a preparation for the establishment of the virtual (business) world. These kinds of studies will give a differential advantage to students and their universities who are involved in these kinds of projects.

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