For online collaboration to work, forget internal corporate structures, just build human relations
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Here’s some of my coverage from the ICIS Conference in St. Louis. I was covering the event for Dice and Dice News.
When you’re collaborating online with a virtual team, which relationship dynamic works the best? A rigid internal structure of system roles or human relations?
The latter, discovered Nabila Jawadi, an assistant professor at Amiens School of Management, in her research paper, “Leader-Member Exchange in Virtual Team: Exploring the Effects of E-Leaders’ Behavioral Complexity.” The paper was co-authored by Mohamed Daassi at the University of Brest, Marc Favier at the University Pierre Mendes France and Michael Kalika at the EM Strasbourg Business School.
Jawadi and team tried to see what were the rules leaders used to facilitate communications and create a good e-collaboration environment. They found that internal system rules that deal with control and coordination don’t carry much weight in a virtual environment.
For those leaders looking to improve online collaboration, said Jawadi, have a suite of communications tools in place and use human relation rules, not power structure, for management and facilitation.
