The Human Capital Dimension within the Organizational Equation. Gliding Between Virtual and Traditional Teams

There is a body of literature on virtual teams that is growing faster and faster; however, the knowledge about the benefits and the challenges faced by the virtual teams are still not very well outlined or thoroughly discussed. The purpose of this paper is to fill a part of the gap by reviewing specialized literature about the effectiveness of the virtual teams versus the traditional teams. Moreover, the study underlines the challenges faced by the virtual teams from different standpoints (i.e., identity, culture and diversity, leadership, communication and motivation, decision-making and conflicts, technology, creativity) and highlights the best ways/tools to cope with them. By performing this theoretical overview, the study aims to advance an articulate perspective on the organizational landscape and processes in line with today’s challenges in terms of human capital, in particular and of intellectual capital, in general. As the depicted research directions indicated, people are not ready yet to totally move to the virtual world and to give up face-to-face communication, feeling more comfortable to work within a traditional team. This situation is illustrative of the fact that there is still much to explore about the virtual teams and about how they can reach their best potential in order to be effective.