Emerging collaboration tools effect on virtual teams' risk management

Global teams, with multiple cultures, norms and trends, use virtual collaboration tools to facilitate the frequency of team meetings and to mitigate expenses which occur with face-to-face gatherings. Assessing what minimal in-person interaction may be necessary for risk management is important as environment and social forces, illustrated by tsunamis and labor disruptions, challenge global teams. This research proposes collaboraton tools for program managers and the potential to align team member's risk tolerance using four properties of propensity, attitude, capacity, and knowledge, or RiskPACK. Observation findings in a pilot study evaluating combinations of conference calls with virtual rooms, email, and SharePoint websites, indicate virtual rooms enhance conference calls and SharePoint websites improve agility and effective response time. Controlling for the team's familiarity with the tools, the study finds diverse cultures and norms neutralized by a combination of a nominal in-person meeting and formally scheduled periodic virtual meetings. Proposing to expand the potential for significant improvements in identifying RiskPACK for teams by combining all three of the collaboration tools, this session reviews the value in further structured research.