The influence of virtual teams on business communication in a selected South African financial organisation

Abstract

This study focused on the influence of virtual teams on business communication in selected South African financial and non-profit organisations. The aim of the case study was to observe and understand business communication practices, in terms of the creation of meaning, the development of relationships and how messages are received and interpreted (Mastersincommunication.com 2019), among virtual teams, as a basis to recommend effective and efficient guidelines to improve the use of communications technology practices, that is, the technology, systems, and channels used to deliver different modes of communication (Mastersincommunication.com 2019), to enhance trust and shared identity within these organisations in South Africa as well as adding much needed research data on virtual teams in the South African context. This study was conducted using a descriptive research process with a core purpose to describe the situation as it was at the time of the research. The researcher used empirical and ethnographic research since she had personal experience and observation opportunities in both companies in daily operations. Quantitative and qualitative methods were used in questionnaires for the purpose of measuring feedback and responses to questions and analysing the themes of open-ended questions. The main findings confirm existing literature and respond to the key research questions, namely, what the existing communication practices in the organisation are, what communications technologies do these organisations incorporate to enable effective virtual team productivity and how do communication practices in virtual teams affect trust and shared identity in these organisations. The study revealed that the organisations in this study incorporated adequate communications technologies but did not incorporate sufficient training on the technical aspect of utilising these technologies. The organisations in this study incorporated most of the common technologies for virtual teams, that there is a high level of shared identity in co-located teams compared with their virtual team members and while trust levels in these organisations are acceptable for individuals to work together, more work can be done to improve trust to enhance productivity The implications of the study reveal that there are still trust issues in the South African organisational environment and the biggest contribution of this study was to add insights from the South African perspective to existing literature on virtual teams.