The Academic Bookshelf Global and Virtual Teamwork

Although globalization has been a political and economic concern for centuries (see Distributed Work, reviewed below) its impact on the engineering education community has become particularly salient since the publication of the Engineer of 2020 (NAE, 2003), Educating the Engineer of 2020 (NAE, 2005) and The World is Flat (Friedman, 2005). These and subsequent publications have emphasized the critical need to train globally competent engineers. Academics, practitioners, and policy makers alike have realized that solving the critical problems facing the world today will require close collaboration among engineers from around the world. Not surprisingly, educational institutions are investing significant resources to train students through a multi-pronged approach. These efforts include opportunities for international activities such as study abroad, student exchange, or international research experiences; virtual or online classes offered between institutions in different geographic locations; and, introduction of content about globalization within existing curricula or as new courses. Although these efforts are noteworthy and have met with some success, none of these efforts directly prepare students for the global workplace. One of the primary characteristics of the global workplace is global or virtual teams—teams that are spread across different geographic locations and in which team members collaborate primarily using information technology. To assist engineering educators involved in preparing students for the global workplace—and those interested to learn more about global and virtual teams in general—this review will look at four offerings: a collection of largely theoretical and empirical articles on distributed work (Distributed Work); a collection of theory-informed articles targeted towards practitioners (Virtual Teams That Work); a detailed social theory based ethnographic study of software engineers working as members of virtual teams (Virtual Migration); and a textbook comprised of readings and cases on working internationally (International Management Behavior). The books reviewed here are primarily from the management and social sciences areas, an indication that research on global and virtual engineering teams is lacking, and add significantly to our understanding of how to work on global and virtual teams.