ABSTRACT
It is easy to see some of the drivers behind virtual working and virtual teams. Today, many people working in Europe, North America, Australasia and South-east Asia are touched by virtual working in one form or another—relying, at the very least, on the telephone, fax or e-mail for contact with colleagues at other locations. Virtual working has increasingly been identified as a financially viable and effective solution to meet needs of globally distributed customers. From a human resource and behavioural perspective, companies face great difficulties that require increasing attention as they begin to rely on virtual solutions. As with many other developments in information and communications technology, there is a strong push from the developers for virtual work technology. The requirements of a virtual team of three bankers who make daily international financial investment decisions are very different from those of a design engineer, a manufacturing engineer, a marketing manager and a client working on new engineering design.
