Write an essay on behaviourally competencies in virtual-teams.
Assessment Brief – M503 Behavioral Competencies in Virtual Teams
Winter Semester, Quarter 2,2024
Part I: General Information
Module
Primary Assignment Title
Weighting
M503 Behavioral Competences in Virtual Teams
Individual Written Essay
70% Primary Assessment Task
15% class participation
15% online assessments
Distributed on:
To be submitted on:
Submission Method
W/C 15th January,2024
12th April,2024, 18:00 CET
The essay must be submitted electronically via the virtual learning system or by email.
You must submit your work accompanied by an Assessed Submission Form, which must be completed in full. The assignment will not be accepted by the Registry unless the form is completed correctly.
Length
The submitted essay should have 2,500 words with +/- 5%
Part II: Assessment Details
Assessment Topic
You are tasked with building a new team. You will find all relevant information about this task in the addendum that forms an integral part of this assessment brief.
You will have to submit a written report.
Assessment Guidelines
All points for you to cover are included in the addendum. If you feel points are missing or you would like to cover additional aspects worth mentioning in the context of the assessment, please be welcome.
Purpose
Successfully managing virtual teams requires managers to understand what some of the challenges might be and having a good command of tools for managing people who they may only see or hear through digital media. Also, success depends on team composition and planification of communication, rules of conduct, and clear boundaries. These elements of successful virtual teams can and should be planned before works of the virtual team commences.
Links to module intended learning outcomes
The assignment relates to the following intended learning outcomes for the module:
• Understand different team roles in volatile and complex virtual contexts
• Reflect on practical experience in virtual teams.
Special Instructions

• Assess their own strengths and weaknesses in a team context as well as their individual development needs
• Eplain and synthesize the principles of collaboration in virtual teams themselves
• Construct the factors leading to the emergence of a leader in a virtual team in different stages of virtual team development

Make sure you don’t miss the right entry point into the assessment. This is about you as the benchmark so to speak, in building a virtual team. I want to see how you approach the task. So don’t write “how managers should do this,” I want to see you planning the task. One of the key theories in this module is that each of us has leadership and design competencies and therefore each of us is suited to be a manager – if, and this is the crux, we know our competencies and select team members based on their complementary competencies to ours. Selecting team members based on
similarity, that’s not what counts in team building.
Also, remember to never submit files in generic formats such as Word or Powerpoint. Always submit PDFs that can be checked for plagiarism through Turnitin
The use of generative AI technologies (such as ChatGPT) in your final assignments is not allowed unless the assessment guidelines explicitly clarify, under which terms, you are allowed to use these technologies. Any violation of this rule will result in an investigation of academic misconduct.
Additional Assessment
Components
GISMA University rewards in class participation, and engagement with asynchronous content, at a rate of 30% per module.
Students participating ? 80% (factoring on possible extenuating circumstances) of their synchronous classes as per their due mode of delivery, will gain 15% towards their final module mark.
Students successfully engaging with asynchronous material on the gamification/microlearning path and completing all summative assessments in the asynchronous environment, will equally gain 15% towards their final module mark.
The above also entail that, students falling below 80% of participation, although they will be still allowed to submit, they will have their final mark capped at 85/100. Equally, if they fail to engage with the asynchronous material and complete the short summative assessments included in specific checkpoints during each term (usually 4), their module mark, irrespective of their engagement and participation in synchronous delivery, will drop by a maximum rate of 15%.
Part III: Marking Criteria / Assessment Criteria
Mark
Weight
Part IV: Tips for Successfully Engaging with this Assessment
Answer the Question
How to use Assessment
Criteria
It may seem obvious, but make sure you are answering the question you have been set, not the question you would prefer to answer. If the brief has a number of tasks or parts, answer all of them. Parts that involve evaluation or analysis are usually longer and worth more marks than parts that ask for description or explanation. Keep the brief in front of you and check it regularly.
The assessment criteria document is not usually a guide to the structure of your assignment. Each section of the criteria is not a separate paragraph in your assignment, but qualities that you need to demonstrate throughout.
Treat the assessment criteria as a checklist at the end not as a plan at the beginning. Also, the criteria document often tells you what to demonstrate (e.g., critical analysis) but not necessarily how to do it. For how to do it, look back at the skills and activities you have covered in the rest of the module.
Above all, remember this is not a test of how much you know or how much you have read about the topic. It is a test of how well you can use your knowledge to answer the specific question set.
Planning and Preparation
Referencing
Make sure you attend the lectures, especially the first and the last one, where we will be ‘unpacking’ this assignment in greater detail.
GISMA Business School requires that students use Harvard Referencing.
Plagiarism and Cheating
Your attention is drawn to the University’s stated position on plagiarism. THE WORK OF OTHERS THAT IS INCLUDED IN THE ASSIGNMENT MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO ITS SOURCE (a list of references and bibliography must be submitted).
Please note that this is intended to be an individual piece of work. Ensure that you read through your work prior to submission. Action will be taken where a student is suspected of having cheated or engaged in any dishonest practice. Students are referred to the University regulations on plagiarism and other forms of academic misconduct. Students must not copy or collude with one another or present any information that they themselves have not generated.
For more information on Plagiarism, please see the relevant section in your Programme Handbook.
Case study: Build a Transformation Team for the “Axis”.
Briefing for Assessment in M503 Behavioral Competencies in Virtual Teams
You work as a Transformation Manager for Liquid Assets (LA), a financial service provider who has global operations. LA has made substantial acquisitions over the last 10 years but has so far never made the effort of integrating these acquisitions. While there is a common IT backbone system, such a backbone does not exist in processes of branding, products, clients, and administration. Management is convinced that there is a lot of potential for uniting LA’s operations and its several acquisitions under one common brand.
Specifically, LA sees tremendous opportunities in its Latin American and Asian sales territories, particularly India, China and Australia. In particular, LA’s operations and acquisitions in Mexico, Brazil, India, Mainland China, Hong Kong and Australia are critical to LA’s future strategy because they are growth markets. The plan is to closely integrate operations in North America, South America, Africa, Europe, Asia, Australia into an entity internally referred to as “the Axis.”
The transition of the various operations in the diverse geographies should be managed by a team that you are given the responsibility for as the Team Lead. Your team must not exceed the headcount of 10 including yourself.
Your management gives you full discretion to select the people you want in your team.
However, your manager thinks that it is politically wise to have a fair balance of team members representing as many geographies as possible in your team. Functionally, you will know that you need people with IT skills, with a project management background, and with sales/business development, and also aboveaverage communication skills in your team. You pull together a team of experts to prepare yourself for that important career step that is due for you now.
What you put together in a brief presentation or report for your manager is an overview of the how you are going to build the team, how you conduct the selection process, what infrastructure, processes and policies you plan to do install to get your team up and running:
Team composition — how are you going to select the people and what are your assumptions about competencies and personal characteristics of the people in your team 2. Communication policy incl. ground rules 3. Communication infrastructure incl. technologies, meeting schedule
4. Even if you all get it right — what can still go wrong 1.
Ad 1. You have just gone through a training on psychometric testing and you aware of several tools which you can you to build assumptions about the competencies of people who you need to get the team to performance.
Ad 2. You are aware that you will have a truly global team with representatives of different cultures. You think that speaking English will iron out most of the intercultural difficulties that may occur. Your expert team alerts you that you need to build a truly inclusive team culture and advise you that you should document your ideas about a positive and inclusive intercultural team in a kind of
“Team Manifesto“.
Ad 3. /Ad 4. You are aware that you have to communicate a lot with your team. You are uncertain how to set up communication and which technology to use. Your expert team has some brilliant
ideas. Effectively, you see the need to build an organizational agenda (which is what the presentation or report will cover) but there is also your own agenda i.e., your power sphere which you do not want to share with your manager, but you are keen to hear what advise your team of experts has about this.