FORMING AND MAINTAINING COHESION METHODS IN A VIRTUAL TEAM

Abstract

Introduction. The active development of digital communication technologies significantly expands the possibilities of organizing joint work of teams from different cities, countries and even continents. The concept of a virtual or distributed team in modern management practice is becoming commonplace today. Simultaneously with the «virtualization» and «hybridization» (a combination of face-to-face and remote work) of collaboration, the problem of managing the cohesion of such collectives and teams is being actualized. The purpose of the article is to analyze the efficiency and effectiveness of existing methods and practices of virtual team building in a digital environment and propose a new method for forming and maintaining virtual team cohesion.

Materials and methods. To achieve this goal, scientific publications devoted to the formation and maintenance of cohesion of virtual teams were analyzed, existing digital methods and practices of cohesion using the ICE framework were compared, the author's synthesis of this material was made and a description of a new integrated method for the formation and maintenance of cohesion of virtual teams was given.

Results. As a result, the signs of a virtual team are formalized and classified, the author's interpretation of the concept of team cohesion is formulated, the prerequisites of team cohesion are generalized and classified, 8 main existing methods of virtual team cohesion in a digital environment are identified and evaluated, negative group effects of team cohesion are systematized and a comprehensive method of forming and maintaining virtual team cohesion is proposed, including the prevention of the mentioned negative group effects. Scientific novelty: a comparison of existing digital methods and cohesion practices using the ICE framework has been carried out, the negative group effects of team cohesion have been generalized and systematized, a comprehensive method for forming and maintaining virtual team cohesion has been developed, including the prevention of negative group effects and including practices such as cooperative video games, team page management and informal video meetings prevention of negative group effects and accounting of the team's work schedule, carried out using a specially designed chatbot.

Discussion. In the theory and practice of formation and maintenance of virtual team cohesion, there is a lack of comprehensive methods, the existing studied practices do not offer prevention of negative group effects, a convenient combination of practices with the team's work schedule is not provided, the effect of using most methods has not yet been sufficiently investigated. The proposed integrated approach seems to be a promising direction for the development of virtual team building methods.