Decision-Making in a Distributed Global Environment (DDGE): Lessons from Web-Based Education (WBE)

Outsourcing is changing the decision-making environment. Tasks are becoming distributed and geographically dispersed. Groups must make decisions in a virtual environment. Virtual group collaboration efforts are quite different than face-to-face groups. Virtual group dynamics can be simulated from virtual groups used in web-based education (WBE). Both environments have many common elements. Experiences gained from WBE can then be extended to global virtual groups. This paper addresses issues related to virtual teams in a cross-cultural environment in a WBE environment and extends them to virtual global teams. Introduction In the borderless economy, outsourcing has become a major cost cutting tool for multinationals. Outsourcing is touching all operational aspects of the organization, i.e., manufacturing, software development, telemedicine and IT services. Outsourcing started small but is becoming a giant industry as is evident by the latest results of giant outsourcing companies like Infosys and Wipro, India. These companies are growing at almost a rate of 35% every year. Many researchers (Engardio, 2006; King 2005) are rating off shoring as one of the most important developments of the current century-making virtual group decision-making in a distributed environment a necessity and a reality. Many issues arise when members and/or tasks are geographically dispersed. These issues to some extent have been studied in the context of virtual groups in WBE. This paper looks at issues in the context of virtual teams in WBE and their implication for distributed decision making for global virtual teams. Tasks and Nature of Outsourcing Watson & Carlson (1982) identified three broad task types: structured, semi-structured and unstructured. Initial outsourcing/off shoring involved structured tasks. However, the focus is shifting to outsourcing/off shoring semi-. or even mission critical tasks. As companies develop confidence and mature (Carmel et al., 2002; Helper et al., 2004), these organizations are beginning to outsource middle managers’ tasks. This is creating more virtual teams that must work together irrespective of time and location in real time. It is becoming important to understand the factors and dynamics of virtual teams. The next section describes virtual global teams and web-based learning. Global Virtual Teams Global virtual teams have been defined in many different ways by different researchers (Pinsonneault, 2005; Lipnack, 2000; Sobol, 1995), but they all have the following general characteristics: