Knowledge Sharing and Virtual Team Performance in Supply Chain Management: Challenges and Strategic Implications

Abstract

It is important for an organisation to ensure that its virtual teams can run smoothly and can complete organisational projects successfully and on time. Due to this change in working practices, the growth of virtual team usage in organisations expanded in an unprecedented fashion. Organisations were taken unawares by these unforeseen restrictions on their way of conducting business, and didn’t have the inherent knowledge to cope with a huge number of virtual staff, let alone large virtual teams. Organisations, therefore, faced many challenges, especially in the early stages of the pandemic. A virtual team, as per the researcher’s observations, is a geographically dispersed group of individuals who communicate and coordinate their work, using technology. The growth in the use of virtual teams since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic has prompted organisations to look into the challenges that these teams face. In the near – and even far – future, organisations are likely to remain more virtual, as going back to pre-COVID times, where people worked full-time from offices, is likely to prove difficult. Other scholars assessed virtual teams from different perspectives, but it was never assessed from a supply chain management (SCM) perspective when working on an information systems (IS) project. Secondly, none of the studies provided information on how virtual team challenges and their performance are linked from supply chain management (SCM) perspectives when working on an IS project. Lastly, none of the studies provided information on dealing with virtual teams’ challenges based on knowledge sharing practices from supply chain management (SCM) perspectives. Knowledge sharing (KS) in an organisation can make employees feel important and motivated towards their job. This can not only improve job satisfaction among employees but can also help them feel like a part of an organisation, even if they are sitting at home or at a virtual site, taking care of job duties without seeing any of the team members for a long time. During a supply chain management (SCM) related IS project, organisations face many challenges whilst using virtual teams. These challenges can impact virtual teams’ performance and frustrate the company’s goals and objectives. Therefore, organisations involved need to find a way to deal with these challenges.
The aim of the study is to critically investigate key challenges that virtual teams face in supply chain management, the link of challenges with virtual teams’ performance and the assistance that knowledge sharing practices provide in dealing with virtual team challenges, with reference to IS projects. A mixed-methods approach was used as a methodology to conduct this study. It was adopted for this study because of the nature of the research problem, which needs both exploration (qualitative) and confirmation (quantitative). From design perspectives, the exploratory sequential mixed-methods design was applied as part of a mixed-methods methodology. Findings of the study suggested that virtual teams, when working on supply chain management related IS project, face challenges like communication gap, ineffective technological infrastructure, ineffective transition, cultural background difference, work life conflicts, different time zones and schedules, real time feedback and support and that a link exists between virtual team challenges and their respective performance. The study also found that a relationship exists between challenges and knowledge sharing; by increasing knowledge sharing practices or by building a knowledge sharing culture in an organisation, organisation can not only build a bond among virtual team members that can help them perform better, but can also deal with virtual team challenges more appropriately and effectively. While prior studies have examined virtual teams and supply chain coordination separately, limited research has explored how knowledge-sharing practices shape the performance of virtual teams within information systems (IS) project environments. This study addresses this gap by providing an in-depth examination of the challenges experienced by virtual teams in IS-enabled supply chains and how knowledge sharing moderates these challenges. This research is novel in its focus on the intersection of virtual teams, knowledge sharing, and information systems projects within supply chain management, an area that has received limited scholarly attention. The findings of the study will move existing knowledge and professional practice forward. It will inform future DBAs and project managers about the importance of knowledge sharing in overcoming relevant challenges in supply chain management (SCM) related IS projects. In a nutshell, with knowledge sharing in place in the supply chain organisation as part of SCM practices, the organisation will be able to deal with virtual teams’ challenges appropriately and ensure that its virtual teams can run smoothly and complete organisational projects in a timely fashion.

Date of Award	30 Mar 2026
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	University of Northampton
Supervisor	Rahul Mor (Supervisor) & Divya Shukla (Supervisor)