[Music] [Music] there are two main reasons for the changes in the way we work in both traditional collocated settings and in Virtual ones techn olog like instant messaging video conferencing and remote access are in constant use even if we share an office with someone and exchange with them face Toof face on a regular basis today's working relationships are at least partly built on our digital connections through email social media or file sharing programs the second main driver of the increase in Virtual teams apart from technology is the increasing Global nature of business telecommuting is also
gaining in popularity as remote access lets us work from any number of locations outside the office meanwhile firms like Yahoo have dialed back on their telecommuting policy and managers are frequently expressing concerns about being able to achieve the same results from the virtual teams as they do from the traditional teams a recurring question has become are longdistance relationships as strong as productive as the work relationships we cultivate at the office age old wisdom and a solid stream of Prior research tells us that close physical proximity is an essential ingredient to forging interpersonal links in both
social and professional settings however my findings bolster a smaller stream of research that argues that how close we feel is more important than how close we actually are we call this Fe in perceived proximity first perceived proximity can be generated between two distant colleagues as they share personal information an employee in Paris for example might discover that they have similar interests or belongs to a similar social category as a colleague in Texas through working together these colleagues may also develop a common pool of jointly lived experiences and actions and the emails and other exchanges that
they share might may convey a commitment to Shared work goals and demonstrate dependability feelings of symbolic closeness can develop regardless of any Geographic closeness or separation furthermore we found that this constellation of factors frequent communication a deep level of joint interests and perceived proximity predicted relationship quality how satisfied people were with their relationships whether they learned from them and whether they were interested in seeing those relationships continue continue even for colleagues who are an average of 825 mil apart what if anything is left of the physical distance one may ask in fact symbolic systems may
have evolved to the point where communication and shared identity can create perceptions of proximity that are as strong for dispersed colleagues as they are for collocated ones the good news for managers is that virtual colleagues who never meet face Toof face may be working harder to communicate and develop strong working relationships with fellow team members so it may actually be easier than they think to create a strong team dynamic in brief virtual managers should focus Less on objective distance and more on how to faster perceive proximity the factor that will ultimately have the greatest impact
on team cohesion and performance in some instances virtual relationships are actually preferred the notion of perceived proximity in organizational studies and the results of our study help understand some of the major current changes in working relationships technology Global work people's communicative practices have evolved to the point where collocated work is no longer the appropriate standard for assessing virtual relationships and where virtuality infuses almost every work relationship [Music] [Music]
