Question

Martin Sorrell, chairman of WPP Group PLC, the huge $15 billion advertising and public relations firm, is a strong believer in the use of email. He emails all of his employees once a month to discuss how the company is doing, address specific issues, and offer his perspectives on hot issues, such as new business models for the Internet. He believes that it keeps people abreast of what he is working on. Technology can also enable much more sophisticated forms of communication in addition to knowledge sharing. Cisco, for example, launched Integrated Workforce Experience (IWE) in 2010.109 It is a social business platform designed to facilitate internal and external collaboration and decentralize decision making. It functions much like a Facebook “wall”: A real-time news feed provides updates on employees’ status and activities as well as information about relevant communities, business projects, and customer and partner interactions. (400words)

A. Explain how technology can enable sophisticated forms of communication to be used for knowledge sharing within an organization.

B. Critically discuss why “electronic” or “virtual” teams are critical in combining and leveraging knowledge in organizations and how they can be made more effective

N.B In your answer, you should show critical, analytical and justification skills of the subject matter, rather than mere description.

Answer 1

A. For the successful running of the organization, proper communication is very important. The technological development has facilitated this communication process and created a healthy atmosphere in the organization at all levels. Technology can enable sophisticated forms of communication to be used for knowledge sharing within an organization in the following ways-

a) The communications have become faster and people could more easily convey messages amongst themselves as well as in the organization.

b) The search for information has become very simple and easy, whenever there is a doubtful situation, it can be immediately sorted out with the help of technology.

c) The option of doing one to one communication helps to improve the relationship between the employees and with the management as well.

d) Now the managerial level persons can directly interact or can have more information about the work activities and facilitate efficiency in management.

e)Now providing training and conducting meetings through technological gadgets has increased the efficiency of the employees as well proved to be of great importance to the different levels of management.

f)Communication with the people working in faraway places has made them quite nearer to the communicator by the use of technology.

g)The world has become a smaller place by the use of technology not only for communication but also for imparting and sharing of knowledge worldwide, across the globe. The delegation of powers has increased in every sphere by the use of technology.

B. Electronic or virtual teams are the team where the members are scattered all around the geographical locations and are connected by technology. The teammates communicate and share knowledge with technological devices. This helps the organization to have talented and intellectual knowledgable people without any geographical location constraint. The team member is so far away that sometimes they never met personally but always stay connected by using technology. Although virtual team members are scattered, they don't realize it as they perform their meeting, take and impart training just like they are physically present at the location. But this type of thing often led to some types of confusion like in case of technological failure, the work hampers as there is no communication available, as well as it also led to a lack of trust as people do not know each other personally. The feeling of belonging to a team does not crop up with the technology. Sometimes there may be a loss of revenue due to technical failure and information is not obtained in time. Like if some participants from the virtual team do not respond to any work, nobody can do anything except waiting for him. There are both the positive and the negative sides of the virtual teams and the use of technical gadgets in the organization but they help a lot in knowledge sharing in the organization. But there are ways so that we can use virtual teams effectively-

1. By making a rule for daily communication among the members

2. Try to build up trust by fair and open communication with in the members.

3. Managing the groups effectively so that there is no scope of dissatisfaction among them.

4. Assigning proper roles and responsibilities among the members.

5. Making the performance standards clearer among the team.

6. Communicating the goal properly to avoid ambiguity.