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The concept of teams and teamwork is increasingly becoming an important key to productivity and employee satisfaction in the contemporary workplace. This paper looks at the concept of teams and teamwork and several innovative ways of using teams. Among the innovative ways of using teams are globally networked teams, team‐based strategic planning, flexible‐jobbing, the horizontal corporation, and the virtual corporation. The use of computer‐mediated communication technologies and other groupware technologies provide a workable, reliable, and flexible base of systems for creating the platforms for virtual teams and virtual organizations. An overview of current information technology available for supporting teams and which types of information technology are most valuable in enhancing the new team applications is briefly addressed. Supporting technologies include groupware for facilitating communication, supporting information storage and retrieval, and supporting decision making. Lastly, the many competitive advantages to the use of virtual teaming in the global environment as well as its managerial implications and strategic recommendations for improving the performance of virtual teams are presented.

Just imagine … you are sitting down to a quiet, restful dinner after a hard day at the office. Your food is ready, and all thoughts of work are banished. Until the phone rings. To ignore it is out of the question. Why? Because you are a member of a hi‐tech, 24‐hour virtual team who must be available as and when required by other group members. The concept of virtual teaming has been around for over 20 years, but with the upsurge of globalization and the recent wave of technological developments it has taken on a new impetus. So what has changed? And is this type of teaming really as effective as some organizations claim?

While some modern organisations have established “virtual work teams”, which are said to be comprised of people who are geographically separated and who work across boundaries of space and time using computer driven communication technologies, it is also true that many organisations remain structured around conventional face‐to‐face teams. Increasingly, the conventional face‐to‐face team is endeavouring to increase its productivity by utilising some of the technology and characteristics of the virtual team. In fact, it may not be practical any longer to draw a distinction between conventional face‐to‐face teams and virtual teams, due to the invasive nature of technology throughout most modern organisations.