Individual’s Self-reflection of the Learning Journal of Collaboration

Introduction:

Fast development in information technology has made it more effective and easier for enterprises to exchange resource and coordinate business activities. The business application about virtual corporations is playing a significant role increasingly in the present business environment. As a graduate student who will graduate from Business College soon, I am glad I have a virtual corporation experience during the study time. This attempt gives me various valuable skills and knowledge to tell me how to work in a virtual corporation effectively. And this individual’s self-reflection could be considered as an integrative critical conclusion for my virtual corporation.

My Role in the Virtual Corporation

Before every activity in the life, whether it is at home or at work, a clear cognition for your role in the activity could be a very significant part. The self-cognition of the role could deicide your expectation, responsibility and attitude, even a detailed task in the activity. So that is why I talk about my role in the virtual corporation firstly.

According to the previous experience in my work, I am always considered as a leader in a team. In the virtual corporation, I, the team leader, played same role. For me with few experiences about working in virtual environment, to be a leader is a real big challenge. However, I adopt the role at last. Some reasons for explaining why I adopt it are mentioned as follow:

1.Compared with other mates in my team, I have suitable capabilities for a leader, such as decision-making, time management and creative thinking. Certain processes in the virtual corporation are same with the traditional corporation. So in a virtual environment, a leader should have some basic capabilities of leaders in a traditional environment all the same.
2.My judgment in the critical issues could help our teams avoid unnecessary argument. Information technology in the virtual environment could take more convenience in communication with barriers to communication. A leader with excellent judgment in critical issues could catch the main and take a smart attitude for various arguments factor in the discussion with cooperators.
3.My third advantage for the role is related experience for the theme of the virtual corporation. The virtual corporation between Ibis which is one of biggest economic hotel all over the world and Backpacker.com.tw which is one of powerful Chinese social website in the travel industry. And I had an internship experience in a hotel for two months and am a senior backpacker. So my professional knowledge and experience in travel industry match the requirement of the leader in the virtual corporation.

three main advantages give me a potential to become a leader in the virtual corporation. Meanwhile I could conclude a personal idea about the requirement of the leader in the virtual corporation. The person who wants to be a leader in virtual corporation should be the one with effective leadership in traditional environment and profession experience and shills, and smart communication style should be a key capability.

My Personal Experience about Internal Issues in the Virtual Corporation

“Throw into confusion outside must first be peace(攘外必先安内.)”This is a very famous Proverb in China. That expresses a simple principle about interaction with external object. The agreements between mates in the internal team could be the first important thing before the implement of the corporation.  Therefore, I introduce my personal experience firstly.

In our virtual corporation, internal agreements between the mates include three main parts, task allocation, communication style and understanding of the corporation. Every part of the agreements will influence the performance of my team and the whole corporation.

1. Task Allocation

Task allocation is the first issue we should think out in the team. It could make us know what I should do. For a small team with three mates in the virtual corporation with others, we define three core tasks, making decision, negotiating with cooperator and monitoring the process. The three tasks correspond to three roles as follow:

Why We Set the Three Key Tasks in Our Virtual Corporation?

At first, making decision is a task in strategy level. It will affect our position and benefits in the corporation. No doubt, decision-making should be key tasks.

Secondly, negotiating with cooperator should be regarded as a key task too. The corporation in a virtual environment limits the communication channel. In the virtual communication channel, there will be an overinformativeness phenomenon for our cooperators to misunderstand us. And we chose Lillian as a Negotiator. She will be responsible for communication and negotiation with cooperators. So our cooperators could catch our expression very clearly.

Finally, the last key task is monitoring the process. This is a work, which ensures the project implementation, meet our requirement and expectation. Shadow as a monitor controlled the implement of the corporation, concluded the result after every discussion and confirmed the fulfillment of schedule.

All in all, clear internal task allocation could make every member in our team take a positive role in the program. This is the foundation for a successful corporation with external partners.

2. Communication Style

Communication style influences the information exchange significantly. Because the noise and overinformativeness will lead to a negative result probably in a virtual communication channel. So a clear communication mechanism is very necessary in my team. The agreement about communication mechanism set the communication timing and channel.

The following table will show detail information:

3. Understanding of the Corporation

Understanding of the corporation means the vision of our team. We should confirm every member in our team understand what is the corporation program, what could we get from the program and how we do define the program creatively. This point comes from another course ----Leadership: Managing in Adverse Situations. Through the transformational leadership theory, we know a vision could help a team have a better performance. So we defined a clear vision for our corporation program. That is that we will create a practical creative virtual trading platform with high social function in leisure industry to communicate Lohas.

The internal agreement in understanding of corporation makes us know what we want. As result of the agreement, we could finish the corporation with a very overt position.

My Personal Experience about External Issues in the Virtual Corporation

In the virtual corporation between two different teams, the experience about external issues could be one of most valuable harvest. For my personal feeling, this is an unusual experience. Reviewing the whole process of cooperation, there are two parts that are worth for a reflective thinking.

1.     Negotiation based on virtual communication platform

In traditional business model, virtual communication platform is always considered as an auxiliary communication channel. However, in the virtual corporation virtual communication platform becomes the main channel for information exchange. It takes more challenges for cooperators. Especially, there are two teams with totally different position for corporation. Obviously, an effective Negotiation between cooperators in the condition should be very difficult.

Firstly, negotiation based on virtual communication platform limit the spread of information effectively and accurately. In face-to-face negotiation, negotiators could catch more information through voice tone, eye and other body languages. That is very efficient for catch the emotion of negotiators. But negotiation based on virtual communication platform limited these expressions of emotion; even video conversations will miss more detail for expression of negotiators’ emotion.

Next, delays of feedback exist in most virtual communication channels. Virtual communication channels could transfer the information to receiver immediately, while receiver may delay the reply because of receivers’ personal reasons and receive delay. It will increase the time cost for negotiation.

Lastly, negotiation based on virtual communication platform always creates overinformativeness. In face-to-face negotiation, negotiators could catch key point through the logic of oral expression. How, virtual communication channel is too much and information there is dispersive. Overinformativeness could take a negative influence for negotiation.

Focusing on the problem above, we have some solutions as follow:

1.One voice in the Negotiation based on virtual communication platform.

Detail reason I have mentioned in part two: My Personal Experience about Internal Issues in the Virtual Corporation.
2.Different virtual communication channel,Different contents.

       

3.     Smart negotiation style for covering the shortage of negotiation based on virtual communication platform

Though the negotiation based on virtual communication platform takes some communication barriers, a smart negotiation style could cover the shortages. Negotiation style is a very useful theory in the class and we applied it in our program. We divided the important level for different topic, and take a suitable negotiation style for this topic. For example: Our cooperators have more professional experience in organization structure design. So when we talked about the organization structure of virtual company, my team used an accommodating style. And when we face an agreement about the name of the virtual company in the initial stage, we avoid the topic. Because we want to discuss it later and the topic is not very significant for the whole corporation.

To summarize, negotiation based on virtual communication platform is very fresh and give me a special experience. That will improve my ability to handle a virtual corporation. 

2. Creativity and Innovation for virtual corporation

In my virtual cooperation program, we set a virtual company in leisure industry. Depended on our goals, we want to create a special one with innovative idea. But it is very difficult to define a special company with innovative ideas in the leisure industry. Through a long time discussion, we choose three key conceptions to support our program creative and innovative.

High Practice in Real Business

High Practice in real business is the principal condition for a creative and innovative business idea. That means the business idea should have reasonable investment and benefits for the cooperators. We should develop the creative and innovative virtual corporation under this rule.

Differentiation with Competitors

In the present leisure market, there are just companies to supply information service, hotel booking and social service separately. We could find some excellent company with competitive business mode in this area. For instance, Booking.com and Agoda have a very performance in hotel booking; Qiong You could be professional as an information platform with limited trade ability. However, there is not one company integrated the three functions for costumers. The integration could be regarded as a differentiation with competitors to take us program creativity.

Attractiveness for Customer

Creating a special attractiveness for customer should be anther sources for new idea. At present, the hotel booking websites just supply booking service of hotel but satisfy the social demand of travelers, while the website like CouchSurfing just could social service for travelers but confirm the quality of the room and the host. So through the analysis about costumers’ demand, our starting point is supplying the high quality room with low price and potential friends to the costumer. We think this point could attract the costumers strongly.

Sum up, through the review in the self-reflection, I find the virtual program take me a very wonderful and amazing experience. The knowledge and skills, which I get from the program, will improve my performance of work in a related virtual environment.

References:
Organizing for Innovation:When Is Virtual Virtuous? by Henry W.Chenesbrough and David J.Teece The INNOVATIVE ENTERPRISE 2002.8.
Managing the virtual world by Golnaz Sadri and John Condia Industrial Management 2012.1-2
High Performing Teams: The Moderating Effects of Communication Channels by AIR FORCE INST OF TECH WRIGHT-PATTERSON AFB OH SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING AND MANAGEMENT 2008.2.