Virtual teams in practice - challenges faced and lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic based on a case study

Lara Glut

Master's thesis

Abstract:

The thesis deals with the topic of virtual teaming in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic which has underlined the significance and relevance of virtual teams, especially during emergency situations. The work aims at analysing the firm VIVnetworks.com s.r.o. which was as many other businesses forced to move all of its operations to the virtual space in the first half of 2020 and therefore had to relocate its employees from a face-to-face to a solely virtual team. The research aims at identifying main challenges that employees and their leader had to face during working from home which represented a new and unknown situation for the team and summarize lessons that the team learned from this experience. The study uses two research methods including a questionnaire and interview in order to assess perceptions of both, the team and its leader to objectively determine whether and how the change in the work environment affected the team’s performance and overall functioning and which areas of the team’s operations were affected the most. Concluding, the work summarizes main findings and offers recommendations on possible improvements and in case of future recurrences.

Keywords

team operation in emergency situation, challenges of virtual teams, virtual versus face-to-face work environment, management of virtual teams, COVID-19, working from home, case study

Language used: English

Date on which the thesis was submitted / produced: 12. 3. 2021

Thesis defence

• Supervisor: Ing. Richard Selby, Ph.D.

Czech University of Life Sciences Prague

Faculty of Economics and Management

Master programme / field:
Economics and Management / Economics and Management