Uniting the Virtual Workforce: Transforming Leadership and Innovation in the Globally Integrated Enterprise

Book description

Praise for Uniting the Virtual Workforce

"Uniting the Virtual Workforce offers much-needed guidance on how to navigate the largely unmapped territory of virtual work environments in the global economy. The authors do an outstanding job of presenting how organizations should address the challenges of virtual workforces so as to reap the huge potential benefits of increased growth, productivity, and innovation."

-C. Warren Axelrod, PhD, Chief Privacy Officer and Business Information Security Officer, U.S. Trust, and author of Outsourcing Information Security

"Lojeski and Reilly bring us something that readers of business books so rarely get-no nonsense practical guidance on how to manage distance, especially where it most often serves as an impediment to working effectively.? If you interface with widely dispersed team members who rarely see one another and communicate by virtue of impersonal electronics, you may expect to find this book provocative, counterintuitive, and above all, exciting. It gives all of us who have to struggle, while working with talent stretched across distance, hope, that maybe there are ways to do this right!"

-Patrick J. McKenna, author of First Among Equals?

"A must-read for global corporate executives who manage geographically dispersed job sharing teams. Practical strategies for preventing productivity loss and optimizing innovation. The authors pull no punches in showing the real downsides to the virtual work phenomenon; they have done a great service for us all."

-Jeff Saperstein, author of Creating Regional Wealth in the Innovation Economy

"Uniting the Virtual Workforce charts the course for competing in the twenty-first century by tapping into the powers of virtual work. Any manager who ignores the virtual workforce is underperforming, and any company or organization that does not appreciate virtual work is already at a competitive disadvantage. Karen and Dick have tapped into a key ingredient in the recipe for global growth."

-Jerry MacArthur Hultin, President, Polytechnic University, and former Under Secretary of the Navy

"Authors Sobel Lojeski and Reilly have provided a useful primer for the harried executive striving for productivity improvements while seeing the workload expand and the workforce disperse. Using conceptual definitions of Physical, Operational, and Affinity Distance to describe the multifaceted dimensions of building teams of people to work effectively together, the authors construct a very powerful set of metrics for a manager to improve the capability of his or her workgroup, no matter where it resides or how it is composed. The book is rich in anecdotes and specific studies that illustrate the concepts in an engaging, pertinent, and easy-to-understand manner. In an age of outsourcing, offshoring, and decentralizing groups of people who have to get things done together, reading this small book will repay itself many times over."

-Charles House, Director, Media X Lab at Stanford University, and former Director of the Societal Impact of Technology, Intel Corporation

Table of contents

  1. Title Page
  2. Copyright Page
  3. Dedication
  4. Foreword
  5. Preface
    1. HOW THE BOOK IS ORGANIZED
  6. Acknowledgements
  7. Introduction
    1. NOTES
  8. Part One - MEETING, MEASURING, MAPPING, AND MANAGING VIRTUAL DISTANCE
    1. Chapter 1 - Redefining Distance
      1. LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION
      2. GLOBALIZATION, DIVERSITY, AND NETWORKS
      3. THE YIN AND YANG OF WORK
      4. VIRTUAL WORK AND VIRTUAL DISTANCE
      5. SUMMARY
      6. NOTES
    2. Chapter 2 - Meeting Virtual Distance
      1. PHYSICAL DISTANCE
      2. OPERATIONAL DISTANCE
      3. AFFINITY DISTANCE
      4. THE VIRTUAL DISTANCE MODEL: PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER
      5. NOTES
    3. Chapter 3 - Measuring Virtual Distance
      1. VIRTUAL DISTANCE AND TRUST
      2. VIRTUAL DISTANCE AND INNOVATION
      3. VIRTUAL DISTANCE AND ORGANIZATIONAL CITIZENSHIP
      4. VIRTUAL DISTANCE AND SATISFACTION
      5. VIRTUAL DISTANCE AND CLARITY OF VISION
      6. PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER: VIRTUAL DISTANCE AND SUCCESS
      7. NOTES
    4. Chapter 4 - Mapping Virtual Distance
      1. CASE STUDY: MAPPING VIRTUAL DISTANCE
      2. INSTRUCTIONS FOR MAPPING VIRTUAL DISTANCE
      3. NOTE
    5. Chapter 5 - Managing Virtual Distance
      1. ESTABLISH OR REESTABLISH A CLEAR PROJECT GOAL
      2. SELECT SHORT-TERM TACTICS AND LONG-TERM STRATEGIES
      3. NOTE
  9. Part Two - HIGH-IMPACT VIRTUAL DISTANCE STRATEGIES
    1. Chapter 6 - Redefining Teams
      1. A BRIEF HISTORY OF TEAMS
      2. TODAY’S WORKPLACE
      3. VIRTUAL ENSEMBLES
      4. NOTES
    2. Chapter 7 - Ambassadorial Leadership
      1. TRANSACTIONAL LEADERSHIP
      2. CHARISMATIC LEADERSHIP
      3. TRANSFORMATIONAL LEADERSHIP
      4. PHYSICAL DISTANCE AND LEADERSHIP
      5. OPERATIONAL DISTANCE AND LEADERSHIP
      6. AFFINITY DISTANCE AND LEADERSHIP
      7. THE LEADER AS AMBASSADOR
      8. CASE STUDY: GLOBAL IT AT J&J
      9. SOME FINAL THOUGHTS
      10. NOTES
    3. Chapter 8 - Re-imagining Innovation
      1. BRAINWAVES AND MUSICAL CREATIVITY
      2. BRAINSTORMING CREATIVITY
      3. CREATIVITY VERSUS INNOVATION
      4. INNOVATION AND GOLF BALLS
      5. SOCIAL NETWORKS AND TACIT KNOWLEDGE
      6. CASE STUDY: THE HUB
      7. THE WEB
      8. VIRTUAL DISTANCE AND INNOVATION
      9. EFFECTIVE COLLABORATION
      10. PROCESS
      11. SENIOR MANAGEMENT INVOLVEMENT
      12. INFORMATION EXCHANGE
      13. NOTES
    4. Chapter 9 - Technology: The Elephant in the Room
      1. AUDIO CONFERENCING
      2. VIDEOCONFERENCING
      3. TECHNOLOGY AND VIRTUAL DISTANCE: SOME PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS
      4. NOTES
    5. Chapter 10 - The Future
      1. CULTURAL TECHNOLOGIES THAT CHANGED THE WORLD
      2. NOTES
  10. Index

Product information

  • Title: Uniting the Virtual Workforce: Transforming Leadership and Innovation in the Globally Integrated Enterprise
  • Author(s):
  • Release date: April 2008
  • Publisher(s): Wiley
  • ISBN: 9780470193952