The Handbook of High Performance Virtual Teams: A Toolkit for Collaborating Across Boundaries

Chapter 30. The Virtual, Networked Organization: How One Company Became Transparent

Jeffrey Stamps, Jessica Lipnack

Although we have based the story told here on a real company and real people, the identities of both have been disguised in the interest of privacy.

Virtual teams live in much larger organizations and, as this handbook indicates, depend on collaboration. Indeed, without working together, the literal meaning of collaborate, organizations cannot innovate, produce results, or even conduct a proper teleconference. The previous chapters lay out the fundamental practices by which these new groups carry out their daily work. Here we examine the larger context in which virtual teams exist and bring a different perspective to what can be learned ...