Transformations  in
Business & Economics

Influence of Virtual Environment on a Human Factor within the Virtual Teamwork
Ingrida Šarkiūnaitė, Dalia Krikščiūnienė

ABSTRACT. Information and communication technologies are getting tightly integrated into working life of people, more and more employees are learning to communicate and work together by using technologies. In this way, new opportunities are opening for employees, who work at the offices in geographically dispersed locations, such as possibility to communicate, share and collaborate in order to achieve common business goals. Co-workers can communicate to each another via e-mail, organize conferences in cyberspace, they can achieve their common goals, working as a team which consists of virtual staff, rather than living and working face-to-face.

The article discusses a number of important changes, which occur due to influence of virtual environment to the human resources, working within the virtual teamwork. In the article, the main focus lays on people collaboration aspects, affected by usage of virtual collaborative learning (VCL) platform. The findings of empirical study, conducted in seven international virtual teams, have revealed, that the „soft“ side, oriented to perceptions of the human resource, working in virtual collaboration environment, is very important factor for virtual teamwork efficiency analysis, and it requires wider research.

KEYWORDS: virtual teamwork, virtual environment, virtual collaboration, human resource, Lithuania.

JEL classification: J24, O15, O33.