Glob­al­isa­tion, Out­sourcing and Vir­tu­al Or­gan­ising

Course content

The course will take its point of departure in the global organization of industries and firms and examines how this organization is affected by and affects virtual platforms and virtual teamwork. Moreover, the course will examine drivers of MNC virtual team work related to politics, economics, the Covid pandemic and especially, technological developments.

The scene will be set with introductory lectures on team work in multinational corporations (MNCs). The introductory lectures will examine MNC global organizing and strategies and explain how IT and other technological developments allow MNCs to expand and deepen the geographical scope of their activities, to configuring their value chains and value added activities across borders in new ways and to embark on very rapid global expansion paths, so called Born Global strategies. The introductory lectures will then zoom in on global virtual teams and try to understand what teams are and what the platforms are that facilitates global organization of virtual team work.

The second module of the course deals with challenges and opportunities of global team work. The challenges and opportunities are to a large extent associated with communication across geographical, professional and cultural boundaries and about issues relates to lack of trust and identity on virtual cross border and cross cultural settings. The module will take up issues relates to choice of common language, choice of communication technologies and media, perceived cultural differences and challenges of trust-building. It will be examined how diversity - cultural, professional, geographical – can be both a strength and a challenge for global team work.  

The third module zooms in on management and leadership in global team work. This module examines how socalled boundary spanners can facilitate coordination of activities within and between of global virtual teams. We will also look into the construction of global communities of practice and distributed and coordinated learning processes and critically assess the limits to managing virtual organizations. This section draws on literature on organizational learning and knowledge sharing.

During the course, students will be presented to a number of cases of virtual team work in MNCs that may inspire them to choose a case for their exam synopsis. Students will get an opportunity to pitch their case ideas for the class and the faculty and get feed back.