Thomas Tøth

In traditional collocated work-environment we easily get to know each other: We eat lunch together; gather for social activities after hours; share personal details about our family, interests, vacation and so on. In collocated we automatically establish interpersonal relations that exceeds our professional cooperation over time. This is usually not the case in distributed teams.

In this article we discuss the challenges related to global team work and make suggestions on how to improve… Show more

In traditional collocated work-environment we easily get to know each other: We eat lunch together; gather for social activities after hours; share personal details about our family, interests, vacation and so on. In collocated we automatically establish interpersonal relations that exceeds our professional cooperation over time. This is usually not the case in distributed teams.

In this article we discuss the challenges related to global team work and make suggestions on how to improve virtual team work.

The article is a shortened norwegian version of an article earlier published in Ledelsesidag.dk under the name 'Globale Teams: Skab gode rammer for samarbejde' Show less

Hvad er de vigtigste udfordringer, som den stigende globalisering stiller danske ledere over for, og hvad gør lederne for at håndtere dem? Her er erfaringer fra tre af Danmarks største og mest succesfulde virksomheder: Arla Foods, Rambøll og TDC.

Videndeling er vigtig og skal på arbejdspladsen understøttes bedst muligt. Men videndeling er også lidt af et hurra-ord og dermed et område fyldt med historier og flosker, der udråber videndeling som den eneste sikre vej til succes.

Videndeling er således omgærdet af en vis usikkerhed. Formålet med denne antologi er derfor at skabe større sikkerhed om videndeling og især om, hvad videndeling er, hvordan videndeling udfordrer organisationer, og hvordan videndeling bedst muligt… Show more

Videndeling er vigtig og skal på arbejdspladsen understøttes bedst muligt. Men videndeling er også lidt af et hurra-ord og dermed et område fyldt med historier og flosker, der udråber videndeling som den eneste sikre vej til succes.

Videndeling er således omgærdet af en vis usikkerhed. Formålet med denne antologi er derfor at skabe større sikkerhed om videndeling og især om, hvad videndeling er, hvordan videndeling udfordrer organisationer, og hvordan videndeling bedst muligt understøttes.

Med bidrag fra 11 forskere giver antologien opdateret viden om væsentlige muligheder og udfordringer ved videndeling og berører en lang række områder som fx arbejdsrum, distancearbejde, dovenskab, HRM, ledelse, møder og netværk, der alle netop påvirker – og er påvirket af – videndeling.

Bogen er skrevet til undervisere og studerende på videregående uddannelser samt praktikere med arbejdsopgaver inden for videndeling, som for det første ønsker en solid forståelse af videndeling og for det andet søger viden om den nyeste forskning inden for området. Show less

Alle taler om det, men de færreste virksomheder lykkes rent faktisk med vidensdeling. Som leder i en globalt forankret virksomhed ligger udfordringen i at identificere de faldgruber, der hæmmer vidensdelingen, og samtidig være med til at skabe grundlag for et velfungerende samarbejde.

Læs her om tre perspektiver på vidensdeling og deres betydning for samarbejde på tværs af landegrænser.

This book shares the insights of seven industry experts with regard to managing people remotely. In the first chapter, Darel Cullen’s article,“How to Motivate Your Team,” applies Maslow’s pyramid of needs to offshore teams.
In the second chapter, “How to Create a Self-Supporting Team,”NicoKrijnen shares his experiences with building a remote team from scratch in the Ukraine.
In chapter three, Hugo Messer take you through the differences between managing a local team versus a remote… Show more

This book shares the insights of seven industry experts with regard to managing people remotely. In the first chapter, Darel Cullen’s article,“How to Motivate Your Team,” applies Maslow’s pyramid of needs to offshore teams.
In the second chapter, “How to Create a Self-Supporting Team,”NicoKrijnen shares his experiences with building a remote team from scratch in the Ukraine.
In chapter three, Hugo Messer take you through the differences between managing a local team versus a remote team. Oscar Halfhide explains how relationships are the cornerstone of outsourced work.
In his chapter, “Making Distributed Teams Work: Trust, Imitation, and Control,”Thomas Tøth shows us how important it is to build emotional connections in real life between the team members. Anneke Keller’s chapter, “Outsourcing and Different Generations,” looks at people from a different perspective to demonstrate how generational differences influence offshore collaboration.
In the last chapter, “Getting Into India,” MartijnLeliveld shares his experiences with building a team in India from the ground up. Show less

The PhD dissertation is entitled: “Trustworthiness: Enabling Global Collaboration – An Ethnographic Study of Trust, Distance, Control, Culture and Boundary Spanning within Offshore Outsourcing of IT Services”

My PhD dissertation is an ethnographic field study of the collaboration between a leading media company in Denmark, and their Indian IT service provider – one of the largest IT service providers worldwide. The dissertation studies the day-to-day operational collaboration between… Show more

The PhD dissertation is entitled: “Trustworthiness: Enabling Global Collaboration – An Ethnographic Study of Trust, Distance, Control, Culture and Boundary Spanning within Offshore Outsourcing of IT Services”

My PhD dissertation is an ethnographic field study of the collaboration between a leading media company in Denmark, and their Indian IT service provider – one of the largest IT service providers worldwide. The dissertation studies the day-to-day operational collaboration between actors from the client organization and the vendor organization in order to understand how vendor-side actors, as individuals and as a collective, can be constructed as trustworthy collaborators in the eyes of the client-side actors.

Based on the study, I present a number of practice-oriented suggestions on how the client-side actors’ perceptions of the vendor-side’s trustworthiness can be improved – and thus, how global teams can increase performance, satisfaction and motivation. Show less

In an ever more globalized world we are faced with the challenges of collaborating across geographical distance. This article examines how trust is established in an offshore outsourcing engagement of IT operations between a leading Danish media company and an Indian IT-service provider.
The findings presented in this paper are a subset of a larger ethnographic research project including more than four hundred hours of participant observation and twenty-nine semi-structured interviews. Thus,… Show more

In an ever more globalized world we are faced with the challenges of collaborating across geographical distance. This article examines how trust is established in an offshore outsourcing engagement of IT operations between a leading Danish media company and an Indian IT-service provider.
The findings presented in this paper are a subset of a larger ethnographic research project including more than four hundred hours of participant observation and twenty-nine semi-structured interviews. Thus, the article contributes with a empirical investigation of collaboration across national and organizational boundaries within the field of IT offshore outsourcing.
The article concludes that trust is primarily established when the teams are meeting face-to-face and in order to establish trust at a distance they are dependent on technology being readily available and on engaging in active trust building, by imitating the way they communicate face-to-face, when collaborating virtually. Show less

In this paper, we report from a longitudinal project about knowledge transfer conducted in a major financial company headquartered in Denmark and an offshore development center located in Bangalore, India. We identify the main knowledge transfer challenges experienced by the case company. The challenges inform the conceptual design of a systematic five-step approach to the company’s knowledge transfer. Our main contribution is to illustrate how extant research can be applied to understand and… Show more

In this paper, we report from a longitudinal project about knowledge transfer conducted in a major financial company headquartered in Denmark and an offshore development center located in Bangalore, India. We identify the main knowledge transfer challenges experienced by the case company. The challenges inform the conceptual design of a systematic five-step approach to the company’s knowledge transfer. Our main contribution is to illustrate how extant research can be applied to understand and solve the knowledge transfer challenges of a particular company in a way that fits with the outsourcing setup and the company culture. We also draw attention to the fact that client side managers play a crucial role in determining how and with what priority knowledge transfer can take place. Our research indicates that a first, important step towards ensuring successful knowledge transfer in outsourcing is to focus on the training and support of client side managers. Show less

[English Abstract below!]

Ledelse af teams spredt over tidszoner og landegrænser er i stigende grad en udfordring for danske ledere. Her er gode råd til at opbygge relationer og tillid mellem kollegaer, der skal skabe fælles resultater på distancen.

In traditional collocated work-environment we easily get to know each other: We eat lunch together; gather for social activities after hours; share personal details about our family, interests, vacation and so on. In collocated we… Show more

[English Abstract below!]

Ledelse af teams spredt over tidszoner og landegrænser er i stigende grad en udfordring for danske ledere. Her er gode råd til at opbygge relationer og tillid mellem kollegaer, der skal skabe fælles resultater på distancen.

In traditional collocated work-environment we easily get to know each other: We eat lunch together; gather for social activities after hours; share personal details about our family, interests, vacation and so on. In collocated we automatically establish interpersonal relations that exceeds our professional cooperation over time. This is usually not the case in distributed teams.

In this article I provide hands on advice on how to improve virtual team work. Show less

This paper reports from an empirical study of one of the largest IT and BPO offshore outsourcing endeavors in Scandinavia.

Based on observations of structured, video-mediated handover meetings and follow-up interviews with the involved stakeholders, it presents an account of how the implementation of handover meetings affected client-side employees ́ perception of their Indian counterparts in terms of work attitude, competence and reliability – and ultimately how these handover meetings… Show more

This paper reports from an empirical study of one of the largest IT and BPO offshore outsourcing endeavors in Scandinavia.

Based on observations of structured, video-mediated handover meetings and follow-up interviews with the involved stakeholders, it presents an account of how the implementation of handover meetings affected client-side employees ́ perception of their Indian counterparts in terms of work attitude, competence and reliability – and ultimately how these handover meetings increased the client-side employees ́ willingness and ability to trust their Indian counterparts.

Contemporary research on trust in virtual teams is used to provide a theoretical framing of the empirical findings. The paper furthermore draws on Sabherwal’s (2003) categorizations of coordination as being either biased towards organic mutual adjustments or towards a priori structures.

Through this perspective the findings suggest that formal coordination can be seen as a catalyst for building trust in virtual teams. Show less